Surf City’s long-awaited 50-year beach nourishment project is moving forward with federal funding, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District announced Tuesday.

The district has been given the green light to use previously appropriated Disaster Relief Act of 2019 construction funds for the project, which entails placing about 6.5 million cubic yards of sand along the town’s roughly six-mile shoreline. The project also calls for building a new dune and an estimated 50-foot-wide beach berm.

“This approval represents an important milestone for the Surf City Coastal Storm Risk Management Project and allows us to begin the final steps necessary before construction can begin,” Wilmington District Commander Col. Brad Morgan stated in a release. “We appreciate the continued partnership with the Town of Surf City as we work together to deliver a project that will provide long-term coastal storm risk reduction for the Surf City community.”

The approved funding allows the Corps to execute a project partnership agreement with Surf City, complete final engineering and design activities, and begin preparations for construction of the federally authorized coastal storm risk management project.

“Today’s announcement marks a major milestone for Surf City and the future of our coastline,” Surf City Mayor Teresa Batts stated in a release. “The approval to move this project forward reflects years of hard work, collaboration, and a shared commitment among the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and our federal, state, county, and local partners. We’re grateful to everyone who helped bring us to this point, and we look forward to beginning the construction phase. This project will help protect our shoreline, preserve our beaches, strengthen our community, and ensure Surf City remains a place that residents and visitors can enjoy for generations to come.”

More than 20 years has passed since Surf City and North Topsail Beach initiated a feasibility study to evaluate long-term beach restorations efforts. North Topsail Beach in 2021 withdrew from the project, which required additional federal review and approvals.

In 2024, Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., secured language in the Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, 2024 directing the Corps to expedite a report for Surf City’s coastal storm risk management project.

The Corps finalized that report in July 2025.

“The Town of Surf City, after years of work, now has the federal approval and funding it needs to strengthen its coastal resilience and better safeguard the community’s homes, businesses and infrastructure from future storms for decades to come,” Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., stated Tuesday in a release. “I am proud to have been a part of this effort, and I thank all who have been involved for their great work to make this a reality, including the critical work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Trump Administration.”

Under the recently released WRDA 2026, the North Topsail Beach portion of the project is deauthorized and Surf City’s project will receive $362.3 million in federal funding for future beach renourishment.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District is hosting a series of public meetings in June to discuss long-term strategies for maintaining North Carolina’s federal harbor channels.

The meetings, which will be held in-person and virtually, are an opportunity for the community to engage on the development of environmental impact statements for the Morehead City and Wilmington harbors.

Notices of intent for the Morehead City Harbor and Wilmington Harbor were published on Thursday.

The environmental impact statements will evaluate “reasonably foreseeable” environmental-related impacts to proposed updates to operation and maintenance, or O&M, dredging and associated activities, according to a Corps release.

Key topics include environmental compliance, navigational safety, and risk-based analysis.

The environmental impact statements will not evaluate or examine any changes in channel dimensions, dredged material volumes, or options where dredged material may be placed.

“Updates to O&M activities are expected to improve operational flexibility by updating avoidance and minimization measures, including adjusting the timing of dredging operations,” the release continues.

Morehead City Harbor meetings are scheduled as follows:

• In-person on Monday, June 8 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Morehead City Elementary School media room, 3316 Arendell St.
• Virtual, session 1, on Tuesday, June 9 from 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Virtual, session 2, on Monday, June 15 from 5:30-7 p.m.

Meetings for the Wilmington Harbor will be held:

• In-person on Tuesday, June 9 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Edwin A. Alderman Elementary School cafeteria/multi-purpose room, 2025 Independence Boulevard.
• Virtual, session 1, on Monday, June 15 from 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m.
• Virtual, session 2, on Tuesday, June 16 from 5:30 – 7 p.m.

The Corps will accept public comments at the meetings as well as by email to CESAW-WHOMEIS@usace.army.mil, online at https://sardn-eis-sardn.hub.arcgis.com/, or by mail: Attention: Teresa Young, Environmental Resources Section, USACE Wilmington District, 69 Darlington Avenue, Wilmington, NC 28403.

Comments will be accepted through June 29.

Reprinted from Island Free Press

The long-planned effort to repair one of Buxton’s historic groins can now officially move forward after the final major federal permit required for the project was issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week.

According to Dare County Assistant County Manager Dustin Peele, county officials received the Army Corps permit Tuesday, clearing the final regulatory hurdle for the project after approvals had already been secured from other stakeholder agencies, including the National Park Service and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

“We had a pre-construction meeting Monday for the groin project,” Peele said in an update Wednesday. “Bids are due back later this month. We intend to have a low bidder ready for Board approval during the June 9 meeting.”

The permit approval marks a major milestone for a project that has been in development for years and was intentionally fast-tracked to align with the county’s upcoming 2026 beach nourishment project in Buxton.

Officials have previously noted that obtaining permits for shoreline stabilization work can often take two years or longer due to the extensive environmental reviews and coordination required among multiple agencies. In this case, the process was streamlined as much as possible to coincide with the scheduled beach nourishment effort, which is now expected to begin in mid-June.

The repair project focuses on the southernmost of Buxton’s three groins, which are located along the shoreline near the end of Old Lighthouse Road.

The structures were originally constructed by the U.S. Navy in 1969 and 1970 near the former Naval Facility Cape Hatteras in an effort to slow shoreline erosion and help protect nearby infrastructure. However, maintenance of the groins largely ceased after the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was relocated approximately 2,900 feet inland in 1999.

Over time, the groins deteriorated significantly under constant wave action and lack of maintenance.

Under current North Carolina coastal regulations, only the southernmost groin qualifies for repair. State officials determined that enough of the structure remained intact, at least 50%, for the project to be considered a repair rather than a reconstruction, allowing it to move forward under existing rules. The other two groins have deteriorated beyond that threshold and are not eligible for reconstruction under current regulations.

County officials and coastal engineers have emphasized that the repair project is not intended to stop erosion entirely, but rather to help retain sand placed during nourishment operations and slow the rate of shoreline loss in a small but vulnerable stretch of oceanfront.

Plans for the repair work include removing deteriorated materials, installing new steel sheet piles, and placing additional stone scour protection around the structure. The final repaired groin will follow the same footprint, extending 640 feet into the ocean.

The groin repairs are intended to work in conjunction with the 2026 Buxton beach nourishment project, which is now expected to place roughly 2 million cubic yards of sand along approximately 2.9 miles of shoreline extending from the Haulover Day Use Area to the groin area near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

Dare County officials have repeatedly described the nourishment and groin repair efforts as complementary projects aimed at improving the resilience of Buxton’s shoreline and protecting N.C. Highway 12 from future erosion and storm impacts.

The Army Corps permit was issued through the agency’s Wilmington District under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, authorizing work within federally regulated waters and wetlands.

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

BUXTON — Large amounts of underground oil contamination left behind decades ago at a former beachfront U.S Naval facility may finally be gone after the recent completion of an intensive seven-month excavation project, but additional sampling will still need to be done in the fall to confirm that petroleum is no longer a threat.

By month’s end, Army Corps of Engineers contractors, after removing tons of tainted soil and untold gallons of polluted water, will have restored dug-up areas off Buxton Beach and removed the heavy equipment.

“We’re hoping to be out of your hair when the tourists get in your hair,” joked Hillary Weber, program manager for contractor Bay West, at the April 30 quarterly update held in Buxton.

In a presentation at what is officially known as the Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB, for the Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) property, Weber provided details about the latest challenge in the decades-long effort to clean up the former Navy base, with sporadic, reoccurring incidents since September 2023 of petroleum odors, sheen and shoreline tar balls on the eroded beach and nearshore ocean area after storms.

In the wake of a report of sheen by Cape Hatteras National Seashore last August, the Corps’ Savannah District awarded a contract for petroleum containment, limited soil removal, and monitoring, and then another contract in September for removal of petroleum-contaminated soil.

“It takes quite a bit of effort to get to this site,” Weber said. “A lot of man hours were put in in September and October to get us ready for a successful season.”

Inherent project challenges weren’t helped by heavy rain that saturated the site in November, she said. Still, the first load of soil was able to be removed starting in December.

“Our goal was to minimize our footprint before the holidays,” Weber told the RAB members and a small audience at the Cape Hatteras Anglers Club building. By January, “we really hit our stride,” she said, with excavation at the areas of highest impact.

The site demobilization was originally scheduled to be completed by May 7, but the exit was delayed until just before Memorial Day to allow more time to bring in additional sand to restore the site.

Although Weber reported that 17,000 cubic yards of affected soil and 315,000 gallons of water were removed, Sara Keisler, the Corps’ Savannah District FUDS Program manager, said in a later interview that those numbers were merely estimates. But the exact amounts, which have specific contractual maximum volume limits, were still being calculated, she added. 

“So the intent of this action was to remove a majority of that contamination that potentially could be eroded away and washed out to sea,” Keisler told Coastal Review. “And that’s what we accomplished during this this response action.”

All told, Keisler confirmed, the project consumed about 31,500 labor hours, required 10 “pieces of yellow iron” — heavy equipment — and removed an estimated 275 feet of asbestos pipe, 5 million pounds of concrete, and 2,800 pounds of infrastructure debris.

As Keisler explained, the contaminated soil was sent to a regulated hazardous waste landfill in Canada. The Emelle, Alabama, Subtitle-C landfill that the Corps used in 2024 to dispose of earlier excavated soil from Buxton was not currently available, she said.

Much of the Corps’ time and resources have been dedicated to cleaning up the former top-secret submarine-monitoring facility, which operated from 1956 until 1982 through a special-use permit with the National Park Service, the property owner.

Starting in 1989, the Corps, the federal entity designated to clean up FUDS properties, removed above-ground storage tanks. Next, the FUDS office handled removal of below-ground storage tanks. Subsequent years involved testing, sampling, removing, and monitoring contaminated soil and/or water at various areas of the 50-acre site.

There was a lull, except for some monitoring, after September 2009, when the Corps determined that no further action was warranted. But in September 2023, severe shoreline erosion associated with a series of storms exposed chunks of buried infrastructure and evidence of even more petroleum contamination. Since then, the Corps has spent parts of every year investigating and cleaning up the site.

In the fall, another contractor will sample soil and groundwater within the project area to determine if and where any additional petroleum contamination remains.

Much of the petroleum contamination removed in the recent excavation had been at the site of a former heating plant, Keisler said, which lines up to where there was a previous fuel pipeline.

“That was where the bulk was that we were able to find,” she said. But because the extent of the contamination at that location in the polygon used to delineate areas at the site wasn’t initially known, a modification had to be made to the contract.

“The comprehensive sampling contract was awarded prior to this response action that we’re working on right now,” Keisler said. “When we awarded it, we were basing it upon other data. Then we had to award this response action because we were actively seeing releases again.

“And so, because in that whole polygon, the soil was all mixed up,” she elaborated, “because we were digging it and removing and putting new soil in. We went and modified that contract so that it would be a more evenly dispersed amount of borings across the entire polygon so that we would get the data we need, since the site conditions change due to that response action.”

If further remediation is required, the Corps would have to address it in an additional response action, she said.

Meanwhile, once funding is obtained, the Savannah office plans to return to Buxton for yet another project, known as “a Military Munitions Response Program,” which would address lead contamination at the former small arms range. Compared to decades of environmental cleanup of petroleum and other dangers, remnants of some ammunition almost may seem innocuous. 

“It’s located on the southwest side of that pond,” Keisler said. “It’s a very small area. It’s got a whole bunch of growth on it. It’s not accessible.” 

Notorious for its bloated and rigid regulatory structure, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Civil Works program is looking to slim down and speed up, all while redirecting resources and prioritizing programs.

As detailed in 12 memorandums released in March, the agency’s new initiative, “Building Infrastructure, Not Paperwork,” seeks “to deliver critical projects and programs for the nation more efficiently, sooner, and at less cost than the current ways of doing business,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam R. Telle stated in a February press release.

“This will eliminate bureaucratic delays and provide fast, clear decisions needed to save lives and empower our economy,” he added.

According to the release, the plan’s 27 initiatives are grouped under five categories: maximizing ability to deliver national infrastructure, cutting red tape, and focusing on efficiency, transparency and accountability and prioritization. The plan would not affect the Corps’ execution of its emergency response support to natural and human-made disasters.

Even by federal government standards, the Corps’ Civil Works is massive, managing about $259 billion in water resource assets and employing an estimated 37,000 full-time-equivalent employees, 98% of whom are civilians, according to a 2025 congressional report.

Through the initiatives, there are assurances that all projects are reviewed for the best path forward, said Eugene Pawlik with the Corps’ public affairs in an email, responding to questions from Coastal Review. “(The Corps) will be focused on strategically allocating available resources to prioritize the most pressing infrastructure needs across the country.”

The slow pace of the permit approval process will be addressed with new technology and geospatial tools that will expedite jurisdictional and permitting decision-making as well as reduce subjectivity in identification and elimination of Clean Water Act areas, Pawlik said.

Additional permitting goals, he wrote, include reissue and expand the existing Nationwide Permit program, eliminate barriers that prevent establishment of new mitigation banks, leverage private capital to modernize and expand generating capacity at Corps facilities, provide long-term leases with rights to additional revenues to entities willing to pay for capital improvements, and reform how the Corps conducts Section 408 reviews and engineering oversight.

The Section 408 program allows people or entities to make changes to a civil works project following reviews that are to verify that the changes do not have negative effects on the public interest or the project itself.

No additional funds nor dedicated budget item is being requested to implement the program.

“We believe the transformation initiatives will be a more effective use of annual appropriations,” Pawlik said.

But a closer look at just two interconnected and increasingly important tasks that the Corps is charged with in North Carolina and numerous other states — that is, dredging clogged inlets and nourishing eroding beaches by pumping in sand — may seem logical and sensible. But it’s not that simple.

With both activities being done more frequently, while sand supplies are becoming more sparse, the Corps is more often being asked to put the dredged sand from navigation channels on the beach. And more often, and to the enormous frustration of the permit applicant, it’s not permitted.

“In the Wilmington District, maintenance dredging often serves a dual purpose through the Beneficial Use of Dredged Material,” the Corps press release said, referring to a program created under the Water Resources Development Act of 2016. “The district uses beach-quality sand removed from navigation channels and inlets to provide for North Carolina’s coastal communities.”

On the Outer Banks, for instance, dredged material from Oregon Inlet in past years had been pumped onto an adjacent beach on the north end of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge.

“Maintenance dredging is about more than just keeping the channels clear and ships moving; in North Carolina, it’s also a critical tool for coastal resiliency,” said Col. Brad A. Morgan, commander of the Corps’ Wilmington District. “By placing dredged sand back onto our beaches, we aren’t just maintaining a channel—we are protecting coastal infrastructure, supporting the local tourism economy, and restoring vital habitats.”

But the state Division of Environmental Quality has to permit sediment placed on state beaches, and it requires that sand to meet standards. On federal lands, such as the Pea Island refuge and Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the U.S. Department of Interior also must permit the sand placement. Even when sand is removed from a nearby location, it’s not necessarily transferable to the beach where it’s needed.  Dredged sand may be the wrong color or size, or testing has revealed pollutants or toxins. It might be mucky and unsuitable for bird habitat. It might be too fine for the targeted location, meaning it would soon blow away. Or as happened in 2015 at North Topsail Beach, it could be too rocky.

Still, the Corps would continue to ensure that dredged material used as beach fill meets required standards, Pawlik said.

“The Flood and Coastal Storm Risk Reduction programs reduce risk for millions of Americans and billions of dollars of infrastructure,” he wrote. “(The initiative) will ensure USACE pursues cost efficiency through better use and scheduling of dredging assets nationally and increased use of dredged materials for beneficial use.”

Pawlik said that the Corps’ district commanders would review all projects and be “key players” in forward motion of projects and allocation of resources “to prioritize the most pressing infrastructure needs across the country.”

Each of the 12 memorandums provides details of different aspects of implementation of the “Building Infrastructure, Not Paperwork” program, addressing what many people have frequently noted about the agency.

As one excerpt from the memo, “Prioritization of Efforts Within the Army Civil Works Program” reveals, there’s room for improvement: “In recent years, the Corps has prioritized every effort all at once, which of course means there are no priorities and that we can mask lack of delivery with progress on paper.”

Coastal Review will not publish Friday as our offices will be closed in observance of Good Friday.

Have ideas on ways the federal government might better streamline the nationwide permit program?

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wants to hear from you.

The Corps recently announced it is accepting input on ways to make nationwide permits, which authorize activities that are similar in nature and cause no more than minimal adverse environmental impacts to aquatic resources, more efficient.

Those activities include work associated with aids to navigation, residential developments, utility lines, and maintenance activities.

Comments will be “considered in future rulemaking related to the nationwide permits,” according to a Corps release.

This year’s nationwide permits went into effect on March 15. The 2026 permits may be modified before they expire March 15, 2031.

Comments sought on the nationwide permits may include, but are limited to ways to eliminate unnecessary review over activities that require a Corps permit, ways to boost efficiency in the reviews of requests for permit verifications, activities categories that the Corps should consider for establishing new nationwide permits, and measures to improve conditions or processes that would ensure authorized activities would not cause more than minimal adverse environmental effects.

Written comments will be accepted through May 15 through the Federal eRulemaking portal at docket number COE-2026-0001. Comments may also be submitted by mail to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Attn: CECW-CO-R, 441 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20314-1000.

Construction and other projects expected to affect waters or wetlands will now be vetted through a newly implemented state process.

Depending on a its impacts to streams and wetlands, some projects will get to bypass a 30-day notice as part of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources Clean Water Act 401 general certifications updates that took effect March 15.

The new certificate of coverage process is anticipated to apply to “many project” currently requiring individual Clean Water Act Section 401 water quality certifications, according to a DEQ release.

Applicants must still apply to the division through the new process, but those that meet thresholds and conditions under the general certification will receive a letter of concurrence, which will allow the project to proceed without a 30-day notice.

Project located in sensitive areas, those with a significant quantity of impacts to waters or wetlands, or those that cannot meet the general certification conditions must still go through the process of a 30-day public notice and project-specific decision letter to obtain individual 401 water quality certification.

The state’s update reflects corresponding U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 404 Nationwide Permits, which have been modified following a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that changed the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS.

That same year, the North Carolina General Assembly passed session law directing the state Environmental Management Commission to adopt a rule that aligns the state’s definition of wetlands to those of the federal definition.

The latest definition excludes noncontiguous wetlands, or those that are not connected to navigable waters.

The Corps has extended a one-year grace period to projects it has approved for permitting to complete impacts to waters outlined under their existing federal permit. New certifications will not be required for those projects.

DEQ advises permittees to check with their Corps representative to confirm whether the grace period is applicable to their projects.

The division has included a list of frequently asked questions online for general information.

Ocean Isle Beach hopes to pump tens of thousands of cubic yards of sand onto the beach at the easternmost tip of the island by this spring as an erosion stopgap.

The Brunswick County town has asked the Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District for authorization to have up to 70,000 cubic yards of sand placed east of its terminal groin where erosion has been chipping away at the shoreline in front of a luxury neighborhood.

The Corps announced late last week that it is accepting public comments through March 8 on the town’s application to modify the federal permit it received in 2016 to build the terminal groin at Shallotte Inlet. 

As it stands, that permit does not allow sand to be placed east of the terminal groin.

A terminal groin is a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas with high rates of erosion.

Proposed modifications to the permit include placing sand along an 1,875-foot stretch of shoreline at The Pointe, a gated community whose oceanfront property owners have been desperately trying to hold back an encroaching sea.

Under the terms of the proposed permit changes, this would be a one-time beach nourishment project.

The town is also asking for its permitted sand borrow source in Shallotte Inlet to be expanded from about 83 acres to a little more than 117 acres, to add a new borrow area within the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and be allowed to work outside of the environmental window for dredging from April 30 to June 15.

Ocean Isle Beach Town Manager Justin Whiteside said on Tuesday that the town wants to get the modified permit as quickly as possible in hopes that the sand placement project would coincide with a federal dredging project.

The Corps announced last September it had awarded a nearly $8.5 million contract to maintenance dredge several areas along the Intracoastal, including at the Shallotte Inlet crossing.

Whiteside explained that Ocean Isle Beach anticipates receiving 25,000 cubic yards of sand “that the town is paying for” from the Corps through the inlet crossing project.

“The hope is to get this permit modified within the timeframe that the Corps’ contractor is here on site and then we could contract with them possibly to dredge more in that federal channel or go into that inlet borrow area to put that additional sand there,” he said.

Whiteside said the town does not yet have an approximate cost of its proposal to nourish the beach east of the terminal groin.

Ocean Isle’s east end had for decades been losing ground to chronic erosion, the worst of which occurred along about a mile of ocean shoreline beginning near the inlet.

An encroaching ocean claimed homes, damaged and destroyed public utilities and prompted the North Carolina Department of Transportation to abandon state-maintained streets there.

To stave off further erosion, the town in 2005 was permitted to install a wall of sandbags to protect public roads and infrastructure from getting swallowed up by the sea.

In 2011, Ocean Isle Beach was, along with a handful of other beach communities, allowed to pursue the option of installing a terminal groin at an inlet area after the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a law that banned hardened erosion control structures on the state’s ocean shorelines.

Five years later, the town received state and federal approval to build a 750-foot terminal groin.

But before construction could begin, the Southern Environmental Law Center in August 2017 filed a lawsuit on behalf of the National Audubon Society challenging the Corps’ approval of the project.

More than three years passed before the lawsuit, which later included the town, concluded after an appellate court affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the proposed project.

Construction of the $11 million project was completed in the spring of 2022, the same year the final plan for The Pointe, a 44-lot subdivision, was approved for development.

By fall 2025, The Pointe’s oceanfront properties were suffering significant erosion.

Last November, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission unanimously agreed to grant permission to the owners of eight lots in that neighborhood to install larger than typically allowed sandbag structures waterward of their land.

Whiteside said Tuesday that those sandbags had not been installed.

Sand in the area east of the terminal groin, he said, appears to be “recovering a little bit.”

“We think over the past month and a half or so that we’ve gained, just looking at aerial photographs, approximately 5,000 cubic yards of sand that’s deposited east of the groin, so some of the beach is building back up in that area,” Whiteside said.

He explained that in 2022 the town’s federal beach nourishment project took place in conjunction with the construction of the terminal groin.

“The dredger came through and we had a huge spit on the east end of the island and that contractor came through and just dredged right through that spit and took it down to a negative 15-foot elevation,” Whitesaid said. “It’s kind of filled back in now and we’re thinking that’s why we’re seeing the growth back east of the groin. We’re hoping this shows that that’s some of what contributed to it, that it was maybe our own nourishment project through the Corps.”

“But, in the meantime, we know this is a short-term solution that we’ve got to figure out some type of long-term solution to, so our engineer firm is going to be doing some modeling to see what kind of modifications, if any, need to take place to the existing groin,” he continued.

Comments on the proposed project should refer the permit application number (SAW-2011-01241) and may be submitted to the Corps electronically through the Regulatory Request System at https://rrs.usace.army.mil/rrs or by email to Tyler Crumbley at tyler.a.crumbley2@usace.army.mil. 

Written comments may be mailed to Commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District, Attention: Tyler Crumbley, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC  28403.

The Corps will consider written requests for a public hearing to be held to consider the proposed application modifications.

Note: This story has been updated to correct the misspelling of Louis Bacon’s first name.

Restoring land as close to how it was more than two centuries ago is by no means a cheap venture.

Just ask Louis Moore Bacon.

Since 2012, Bacon has invested more than $100 million in the property on which his ancestor, Roger Moore, founded Orton Plantation in 1725 off the lower Cape Fear River’s western bank in Brunswick County.

Nearly a third of that cost has gone toward restoring an expansive, historic rice field system and an earthen dike enslaved Africans built some 250 years ago to protect the fields they planted, grew, and harvested Carolina Gold rice from the river.

If the state green lights a proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Port of Wilmington, all of it – the dike, 350 acres of historic rice fields and hundreds of acres of freshwater wetlands – will face threat of “irreversible damage,” according to Bacon.

In a 22-page letter he submitted to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management late last year, Bacon detailed how the proposed Wilmington Harbor 403 navigation project “threatens the failure” of the earthen dike.

“The structural integrity of the dike is Orton’s number one concern,” Bacon wrote. “The Project poses a real and unacceptable risk of catastrophic failure of the dike system. Failure of the dike will result in a cascading series of events including saltwater intrusion into the historic rice fields, rendering them incapable of growing rice and destroying the freshwater ecological water system at the Orton Property. Failure of the dike would flood the rice fields and freshwater ponds with saltwater, erasing what stands today as a preserved monument to enslaved African Americans dating back centuries.”

He closed the Nov. 24, 2025, letter with an ardent request of the division: Object to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ determination that the proposed project aligns with the state’s coastal policies and rules.

The Corps, Bacon wrote, failed to analyze how the proposed project to deepen and widen the harbor channel might affect historic and cultural resources along the river.

His objections echo those of other individuals and groups voicing concerns about how the project the N.C. State Ports Authority says is needed to keep the Wilmington Port competitive might impact those sites along the river.

Deepening the river channel from 42 feet to 47 feet and widening it along areas throughout the river will allow larger vessels to travel to and from the port, attracting more business, according to the authority.

But opponents of the proposed project say that, in addition to threatening historic and cultural resources along the river, it will accelerate erosion and exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, disperse contaminants in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, and is not economically justified.

Like Bacon, their hope is that the Division of Coastal Management rejects the Corps’ determination.

The determination

Two days before the New Year, NCDEQ announced that the Corps was giving the Division of Coastal Management more time to complete its review of the federal determination, pushing the division’s deadline from Jan. 5 to Jan. 19.

Division officials have until then to determine whether the proposed project is consistent with the state’s coastal rules, including those under the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA.

The division must decide whether to concur with Corps’ determination, concur with conditions, or object.

Related: Wilmington residents see no good in proposed harbor project

If the division decides the latter, that could shutter the proposed project altogether.

“An objection generally prevents the federal permit or approval from being issued unless DCM and the project proponent negotiate a resolution that would allow the project to go forward,” according to the division’s Dec. 30 release notifying the public about the extension.

The Corps “may be entitled to certain mediation/appeal privileges” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management, which heads programs including the National Coastal Zone Management Program and Estuarine Research Reserves and works with coastal states, territories and partners to manage resources and address impacts from climate change.

The division has to render its decision months before the Corps wraps what it says will be a detailed examination to identify all historic and cultural properties within the project study area.

“To ensure historical and cultural sites are identified and evaluated properly, the Corps is executing a study specific Programmatic Agreement (PA) with the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, the General Services Administration, the North Carolina State Ports Authority, and possibly the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation,” Jed Cayton, public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District, said in an email responding to questions.

The programmatic agreement, he wrote, is a “commonly applied strategy to protect cultural and historical resources.”

“It facilitates more informed decision-making by allowing time for additional data collection and formal coordination efforts to extend beyond the feasibility study phase,” Cayton said.

The agreement, which is currently being reviewed, must be signed before the agency finalizes project plans, which would occur some time after the Corps releases its final environmental impact statement on the proposed project.

Under a tentative timeline the Corps has shared with the public, the federal agency is expected to release the final EIS sometime this summer.

Construction on the project would not begin until 2030 and take about six years to complete, a schedule Corps officials have said is optimistic.

‘Necessary analysis’

Today, the Orton property spans about 14,000 acres. More than 830 acres of that land, including 6,800 feet of restored and repaired earthen dike and coinciding system of canals, roads, dams, and ditches, around the rice fields is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In his letter to the division last year, Bacon argued that CAMA protects the historic resources on his land “from irreversible damage and it protects the Property’s significant ecological resources from adverse impacts.”

The draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, the Corps released last September, “does not disclose these obvious impacts,” Bacon wrote.

“There is no analysis in the Draft EIS about the effects of the Project on the Orton Property or the CAMA-protected resources at Orton. None. This analysis cannot be deferred. The Corps’ consistency determination must be supported by ‘comprehensive data and information.’”

“The Corps’ failure to undertake the necessary analysis is the simplest reason that Division should object to the consistency determination,” he continued.

His land is among nearly 30 historic sites and properties the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Office lists as being within the proposed projects area of potential effects.

Last October, that office penned a letter to the Corps requesting the programmatic agreement, “so as to address effects on known and potentially National Register-eligible historic properties to be adversely affected by the proposed undertaking and the regularly scheduled maintenance dredging, spoil placement, and environmental mitigation measures following the proposed undertaking.”

While Corps studies of historic properties that may be affected by the proposed project “appear to have focused solely on the physical impacts of dredging the river-bottom, placement of dredged materials, and locations of mitigation measures, we believe from nearly two decades of observation and monitoring erosion at historic properties along the channel that we can expect other effects will result from the proposed project,” the letter states.

Dark Branch

Among the list of 28 sites and properties identified in that letter is Dark Branch, a community in unincorporated Brunswick County where land remains largely owned by the descendants of emancipated slaves.

Dark Branch, also known as Kendall Chapel, was founded in the early 1870s by a handful of formerly enslaved people, including Robert “Hooper” Clark, who’d been forced to work the rice fields of Orton, Lilliput, and Kendal plantations.

The land they purchased between those plantations became “a thriving hub of Black farming, entrepreneurship, and civil rights activism,” according to the Historic Wilmington Foundation.

Dr. Charles Chavis Jr., Clark’s fourth-great-grandson and executive director of the Dark Branch Descendants Association, explained in a telephone interview that there is a direct connection between the cultural resources that have been restored at Orton and those members of the Dark Branch community have taken upon themselves to preserve.

“Everything that Mr. Moore Bacon has sought to preserve is the work of our ancestors and those who were enslaved on the various plantations,” Chavis said. “For us, this is not only about protecting our cultural resources, but also about protecting our community.”

Chavis, an assistant professor at George Mason University and founding director of the university’s John Mitchell Jr. Program for History, Justice, and Race, started the association about three years ago to preserve the community’s history.

There are about 20 historical structures in Dark Branch, including homes, a store, and sharecropping and slave cabins.

Some of those structures, as well as the community cemetery, one Chavis calls one of Dark Branch’s most sacred sites, are under threat of riverine flooding.

“We just can’t afford for it to get worse and we’re working with local organizations to try and get resources around historic resource preservation,” he said. “We’re concerned that any potential harm or more work done to the river is going to make our job as an organization harder to protect the cultural resources that we have. Based on the assessments and our conversations with those we’ve consulted with, it’s not going to get better. It’s going to get worse.”

Dark Branch is a member of the National Park Service’s Reconstruction Era National Historic Network.

According to the Division of State Historic Sites, the Dark Branch Community Historic District was added to the National Historic Preservation Study List in 2024.

Sites that make that list are good potential candidates for the National Register.

The association continues to pursue a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.

The Dark Branch community lies within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, which encompasses 12,000 square miles of coastal area that runs up the southern Atlantic Coast from St. John’s County, Florida, to Pender County.

The corridor links places of historic significance to the Gullah Geechee, West Africans torn from their native land and enslaved on plantations along the southern Atlantic Coast, and tells stories of their lives on the plantations and in the coastal plains after abolition.

Efforts are underway to build the North Carolina Gullah Geechee Greenway Blueway Heritage Trail that will run from Navassa to Southport.

Last summer, the North Carolina General Assembly authorized the trail’s construction.

Veronica Carter, chairwoman of the heritage trail and member of the Leland Town Council, also raised concerns about how the proposed project might affect land within the trail. Carter is also board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“Deepening the Cape Fear River will negatively impact our culturally significant, state-established North Carolina Gullah Geechee Blueway portion of our trail by increasing saltwater intrusion, worsening erosion, and degrading water quality, thereby threatening sensitive habitats,” she wrote Col. Brad Morgan, the Corps’ Wilmington District commander.

The Corps acknowledges that “more surveys are needed to determine the presence of additional historic and cultural properties within the study area,” Cayton said by email. “We have already included conservative cost estimates for this work, based on known resources identified within Wilmington Harbor and experiences at other similar projects, to ensure these resources are properly managed and respected.”

The two agencies that enforce the Clean Water Act have proposed changes to the waterbodies considered jurisdictional, or under federal protection, and the deadline for the public to comment is here.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers published on Nov. 20 in the Federal Register the “Updated Definition of ‘Waters of the United States,’” opening the public comment period that ends 11:59 p.m. Monday, Jan. 5. Information on how to submit comments is on the EPA website.

The agencies said the proposed rule revises “the regulations defining the scope of waters federally covered under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, as amended, also known as the Clean Water Act, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.”

The agencies argue that their proposed amendments to the “waters of the United States” definition when finalized, will provide clarity and align with the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Sackett case that the “Clean Water Act extends to relatively permanent bodies of water connected to traditional navigable waters and wetlands with a continuous surface connection to those waters ‘so that there is no clear demarcation between “waters” and wetlands.’”

Environmental organizations argue that the proposed changes will gut basic water quality protections, which were already compromised by the 2023 Supreme Court decision on Sackett v. EPA that essentially left nontidal wetlands without protection. Nontidal wetlands are usually in floodplains along rivers and streams, in isolated depressions surrounded by dry land, along the margins of lakes and ponds, and in other low-lying areas where the groundwater intercepts the soil surface or where precipitation sufficiently saturates the soil, according to the EPA.

“When it comes to the definition of ‘waters of the United States,’ EPA has an important responsibility to protect water resources while setting clear and practical rules of the road that accelerate economic growth and opportunity,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a Nov. 17 press release. “EPA is delivering on President Trump’s promise to finalize a revised definition for WOTUS that protects the nation’s navigable waters from pollution, advances cooperative federalism by empowering states, and will result in economic growth across the country.”

Environmental Defense Fund Coasts and Watersheds Science Senior Manager Dr. Adam Gold told Coastal Review that the “proposed rule could increase the pace of wetlands loss and lead to more flooding impacts for communities. Wetlands loss increases downstream flooding impacts, and at the same time, any new infrastructure built in former wetlands is also at increased flood risk.”

Under the agencies’ proposed rule, the term “waters of the United States” would include “(1) traditional navigable waters and the territorial seas; (2) most impoundments of “waters of the United States;” (3) relatively permanent tributaries of traditional navigable waters, the territorial seas, and impoundments; (4) wetlands adjacent (i.e., having a continuous surface connection) to traditional navigable waters, impoundments, and tributaries; and (5) lakes and ponds that are relatively permanent and have a continuous surface connection to a traditional navigable water, the territorial seas, or a tributary.”

The difference between the existing rule and proposed is that the existing rule includes an interstate waters category and the word “interstate” is in front of the lakes and ponds category. The agencies propose deleting both.

The agencies also recommend revising the existing exclusions from the Clean Water Act permitting process for waste treatment systems, prior converted cropland and ditches, and adding an exclusion for groundwater, as well as definitions for “continuous surface connection,” “ditch,” “prior converted cropland,” “relatively permanent,” “tributary,” “and waste treatment system.”

Carolina Wetlands Association Executive Director Rick Savage also has concerns about the flooding that could be unleashed on communities if these proposed changes go through, and the damage to water quality.

He said communities are going to see developers take wetlands without a permit.

“These wetlands are often buffers against flood waters. if they are developed then guess what happens? The flood waters just go inland to the community,” Savage said, adding that water quality could suffer as well, because of the potential for more pollution to pass into streams.”

North Carolina Sierra Club Deputy Director Erin Carey told Coastal Review that ultimately, “the American public should be very concerned that the federal agency tasked with ensuring clean water, clean air, and the protection of our natural environment seems determined to undermine that responsibility. With this proposed change, the EPA claims to seek clarity in regulation, but this rule would serve only to allow industry to profit from environmental destruction, and the ruination of our natural resources.”

Gold said that according to the fund’s analysis published September 2024 in Science that modeled different interpretations of the Sackett decision, the modeled scenario that best aligns with the proposed rule open for public comment now would result in 82 million acres, or 91%, of nontidal wetlands in the contiguous United States estimated to be without Clean Water Act protections. 

About WOTUS, Sackett decision

The Clean Water Act is the revised and restructured Federal Water Pollution Control Act, enacted in 1948 to protect waterways that are used for or could be used for commerce.

“The 1972 amendments to the Clean Water Act established federal jurisdiction over ‘navigable waters,’ defined in the Act as the ‘waters of the United States,’” according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But that’s as far as the definition goes, leaving the two agencies that jointly enforce the regulations to define the term under statute, and have had to determine what geographical features such as wetlands, streams and rivers fall under “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, and, therefore, under federal protection under the Clean Water Act.    

In the decades since, that definition has undergone several amendments, most recently in 2023 to conform to the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision.

The Sacketts are an Idaho couple who were fined by the EPA for backfilling wetlands on their property near Priest Lake. The Sacketts filed a lawsuit asserting that the wetlands were not directly connected to the lake, a navigable body of water protected by the Clean Water Act. Justices ruled in favor of the couple and put parameters on “waters of the United States.”

Justices state in the May 2023 majority opinion that the Clean Water Act’s use of “waters” only refers to geographical features described in everyday language streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes “and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”

The ruling narrowed the definition of “waters of the United States, stripping away protection under the Clean Water Act for isolated wetlands, or those without an obvious connection to navigable waters.

The two federal agencies, under the Biden administration at the time, had published a revised definition in January 2023 that was then amended that September to conform to Sackett.

Shortly after the second Trump administration took office, the agencies began a campaign to change the amended 2023 WOTUS that it called “overly broad” in a news release Monday and “failing to fully implement the Supreme Court’s decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency.”

Savage explained that the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, was based on relationships with navigable waters. Then in 1977, the Corps of Engineers came up with the wetlands definition manual, which set the process for how wetlands were defined, based on hydrology, hydrophilic vegetation and hydric soils.

“During that time, almost any wetland was protected because you could find some relationship to​ a navigable water, even if it’s over land, but now you know that’s all changing,” he said, and the reason it started changing was because the Supreme Court got involved.

“That was in 2006 and ever since then, it is going around and around and up and down and through. You know, nobody knows what the rules are half the time. I mean, there’s been a couple of times where half the states were under one set of rules and the other half are under another set of rules because of litigation,” Savage said.

On the state level

Savage said regarding the proposed rule change that there’s two ways to look at it: the federal level and the state level.

“Right now, as far as North Carolina is concerned, it’s not looking good, period,” he said, because of the Farm Bill that made state and federal regulations to protect wetlands the same.

During summer 2023, the General Assembly approved language in Senate Bill 582, often called the Farm Bill, to align the state’s definition of wetlands with the federal. The definition reads: “Wetlands are classified as waters of the State are restricted to waters of the United States as defined by” the Army Corps and EPA.

Savage said he’d heard that a few legislators were starting to reconsider the move, and he said part of it is because the state government is funneling millions of dollars to use nature-based solutions, like wetlands, to mitigate flooding issues. “However, what the heck is this about, not wanting to protect the very resources we need to use to protect our communities? And I think that might be having a little bit of an effect.”

Savage said they’re working with the Southern Environmental Law Center and other groups to make changes, but there’s not a lot that can be done at the state level in North Carolina because of Dillon’s rule, which means that local governments only have as much power as the state specifically allows.

“Anything a locality may want to do to protect wetlands, the state legislature can immediately overturn it” via legislation, Savage said. “So, it’s not a lot that can be done there.”

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath told Coastal Review in an earlier interview that, while this proposed rule reduces federal protections, states and tribes still have authority to protect waters, and can fill the void in protecting these resources that the federal government is leaving behind.

Sabath said in some situations, it’s not a possibility because of not having the resources, “and there are examples occasionally of states that do their best to try to fill that gap. But much more often, we see the opposite, like in North Carolina.”

Savage clarified his point in noting that, just because the wetland is not considered protected by the Clean Water Act, it is still a wetland.

“Some people think if it’s not jurisdiction​al, then it’s not a wetland. No, it’s just not a jurisdictional wetland. It’s still a wetland. It meets the Army Corps of Engineers’ definition of a wetland, which is heavily based on science,” Savage said. “I think it’s important to make that distinction. We have jurisdictional wetlands that are protected, and the definition of jurisdictional wetlands is getting tighter and tighter and tighter, so that most of our wetlands are no longer jurisdictional, right? Therefore, they’re not protected, but they’re still wetlands, right? And that’s why we still have to be concerned about them.”

The EPA and Corps committed in a Dec. 22 press release to consider the public input received in developing a final rule.

The two federal branches that enforce the Clean Water Act last month pitched changes to the “waters of the United States” definition, which establishes the types of waterbodies that are federally protected against pollution, and if these amendments pass as written, conservation groups fear millions of acres of nontidal wetlands will be left vulnerable.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers have for decades had the authority to regulate “navigable waters,” which means “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas,” as written in the 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act. Expanded in the 1970s, the measure is typically referred to as the Clean Water Act.

The EPA explains on its website that the Clean Water Act “establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters.”

One thing the Clean Water Act doesn’t do is clearly define “waters of the United States.” The EPA calls it a “threshold term in the Clean Water Act and establishes the geographic scope of federal jurisdiction under the Act.”

EPA and Army leadership announced Nov. 17 plans to update the definition, which has been the subject of lawsuits and years’ worth of arguments.

The “Updated Definition of ‘’Waters of the United States’’’ was published Nov. 20 in the Federal Register, launching a 45-day comment period on the proposed changes that closes Jan. 5.  A virtual public meeting is scheduled for 12:30 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, with a 2-2:30 p.m. break. Attendees must register online to speak by 5 p.m. Monday. To listen only, register by the start of the meeting.

This latest attempt, which would exclude isolated wetlands, is directly linked to the Supreme Court’s May 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision. The Sacketts are an Idaho couple fined in the late 2000s for backfilling a section of their property that the EPA considered wetlands.

Judges ruled in the final opinion on the case that the “(Clean Water Act)’s use of ‘waters’” only refers to geographical features described in everyday language “as ‘streams, oceans, rivers and lakes’ and to adjacent wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from those bodies of water due to a continuous surface connection.”

Earlier that year, the EPA had finalized a “Revised Definition of ‘Waters of the United States'” rule that took effect March 20, 2023, and which the Sackett case invalidated. In August 2023, the EPA and Army Corps issued an amendment to align the rule with the Sackett decision.

That final conforming rule is what the EPA and Army Corps leadership are proposing to amend.

The agencies argue that the change “would fully implement” the Supreme Court’s ruling “by ensuring federal jurisdiction is focused on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water—such as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes—and wetlands that are connected and indistinguishable from such waterbodies.”

With this proposed rule, the agencies explain in the docket, they “intend to provide greater regulatory certainty and increase Clean Water Act program predictability and consistency by clarifying the definition of ‘waters of the United States.’ This proposed rule is also intended to implement the overall objective of the Clean Water Act to restore and maintain the quality of the Nation’s waters while respecting State and Tribal authority over their own land and water resources.”

Environmental groups argued then, when the Sackett case was ruled, and still maintain that by removing protections from the millions of acres of nontidal wetlands, there will be consequences: Water quality will be jeopardized and flooding will increase, to name just two.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath said in an interview that for 50 years, the Clean Water Act has been the strongest and best federal protection for many of the waters and wetlands around the country.

The law does that “by saying you can’t pollute, you can’t fill, you can’t destroy certain features, certain waters, without a permit,” Sabath said, and the permitting process means that there are certain protections and controls you have to apply to minimize the amount of destruction.

Sabath added that a number of features of the Clean Water Act are dependent on the type of water, and, in addressing its critics, not every puddle in the country covered by the act.

“It’s only things that meet the definition of waters of the United States, and that isn’t defined in the statute itself,” Sabath continued. “Congress didn’t define it, so EPA and the Army Corps, in a series of rules over the years, have tried to define exactly what wetlands are and aren’t covered by the Clean Water Act.”

This proposed rule is the latest revision and it is “by far the most narrow, the most extreme definition,” Sabath continued. “It includes the fewest number of streams and wetlands and other waters of any interpretation of ‘waters the United States’ that we’ve seen.”

North Carolina Wildlife Federation Conservation Policy Vice President Manley Fuller told Coastal Review that with this proposed rule, the bottom line is a massive loss of protection of waters of the United States, which are vital habitats for fish and wildlife.

“This will also negatively affect hunting and fishing, which are a significant part of our natural resource-based economy,” he continued. “Wetlands are also buffers for the built environment and help reduce downstream flooding. Protecting clean waters and wetlands is extremely popular with the public for many reasons and we need to strengthen rather than weaken these programs.”

North Carolina Sierra Club Deputy Director Erin Carey told Coastal Review the rule will effectively remove federal protections from at least 80% of wetlands and over 5 million miles of streams across the country.

“This rule will open millions of acres of wetlands to the threat of development, leaving communities already vulnerable to flooding without the frontline protection afforded by these invaluable habitats. Wetlands act as filters for floodwaters and other runoff, making them critical not only to flood mitigation, but to the preservation of clean water resources,” Carey said.

Environmental Defense Fund Coasts and Watersheds Science Senior Manager Dr. Adam Gold pointed out as well that if the proposed rule is implemented as written, nearly all nontidal wetlands and intermittent streams could be without Clean Water Act protections in North Carolina and across the United States.

While there are many changes in the proposed rule, the most notable are to the definitions of “relative permanence” of waters and a “continuous surface connection” for wetlands, Gold said, adding that the proposed language introduces the concept of a “wet season.”

“Under the proposed rule, wetlands and waters would only receive Clean Water Act protections if they have surface water throughout the ‘wet season,’ described in the rule as ‘an extended period where there is continuous surface hydrology resulting from predictable seasonal precipitation patterns year after year,’” Gold said. “This proposed rule would make it easier to drain or develop wetlands that do not meet the ‘wet season’ surface water requirement, putting our wetlands and the benefits they provide at serious risk.”

In North Carolina, the impact of the proposed rule is 3.2 million acres, or about 88%, of nontidal wetlands estimated to be without Clean Water Act protections. “Importantly, this analysis relies on wetland ‘wetness’ during the growing season, but the proposed rule uses the ‘wet season,’” Gold said.

About the wet season, Gold continued, there are “fundamental issues with the proposed rule’s ‘wet season’ dataset.”

He said the classification of the “wet season” comes from the Army Corps of Engineers Antecedent Precipitation Tool, but the underlying data this tool relies on is modeled using the average monthly temperature and precipitation between 1950 and 1999. The modeled dataset was published in 2001 and does not use the best-available methods.

“The agencies proposed ‘wet season’ dataset classifies most of the year, and in some cases the entire year, as ‘wet’ for much of coastal North Carolina. So, under this proposed rule, wetlands or streams in Jacksonville would need to have surface water year-round (the whole year is classified as ‘wet’) to have Clean Water Act protections. For New Bern, the ‘wet season’ is 11 months, and for Wilmington or Brunswick County, the ‘wet season’ is 10 months.”

Gold said the proposed rule “which could essentially remove nontidal wetland and intermittent waters from the Clean Water Act, does not align with the goal of the Clean Water Act to ‘restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.’ Science shows us that all wetlands, regardless of how ‘wet’ they are, clean our water, provide critical wildlife habitat, and reduce downstream flooding impacts.”

The EPA and Corps also asserted the week the proposed changes were announced that the new rules would provide “the regulatory certainty needed to support our nation’s farmers who feed and fuel the world and advance EPA’s Powering the Great American Comeback initiative.”

Sabath noted that the idea that this will have huge benefits for farming and for farmers is a common refrain when they’re restricting the protections of the Clean Water Act, “but the Clean Water Act actually exempts most farming activities from coverage already, so you don’t need to get a permit for doing regular farming activities, even when they would affect a wetland or stream that would otherwise be covered.”

The idea that this is a huge benefit for farmers is a nicer story, “because they don’t want to say, well, this is a huge benefit for large industrial facilities, industrial polluters, developers,” Sabath said.

Carey sees the proposed rule as demonstrating “that the EPA has abdicated its mandated responsibility to protect the environment and the people who depend on it. Even worse, the agency appears eager to sacrifice our natural resources on the altar of corporate greed.”

The public should be “very concerned that the federal agency tasked with ensuring clean water, clean air, and the protection of our natural environment seems determined to undermine that responsibility. With this proposed change, the EPA claims to seek clarity in regulation, but this rule would serve only to allow industry to profit from environmental destruction, and the ruination of our natural resources,” she added.

White Oak Waterkeeper Riley Lewis said in a statement that the EPA’s new definition of Waters of the United States ignores decades of scientific understanding and generations of Indigenous knowledge.

“By redefining wetlands using ambiguous criteria seemingly designed to maximize developable land and reduce regulatory barriers, the agency is turning a blind eye to the very real, very predictable impacts on our communities,” Lewis said. “Water will continue to move beneath our feet through groundwater and across the landscape during storms, regardless of a federal definition or a construction permit. This rule sets Americans up for flooding, damaged infrastructure, and increased pollution in the waters we rely on for our drinking supply, our food, and our way of life.”

So, why does this actually matter to the public? Sabath said it does in a few ways.

In North Carolina, people who hunt, fish and paddle use wetlands directly and those might be impacted by being destroyed or polluted without a permit.

“Anyone who is in a community that floods during extreme weather, and we all know that that’s happening more and more now, or that’s at risk of flooding,” Sabath said. By losing those wetlands, you lose their ability to protect communities from flooding, and that comes more often now from extreme weather.

“It’s a double whammy. You’re losing the benefits that they provide, and you’re probably creating more problems,” and more potential pollution or channels of pollution at the same time by replacing wetlands, natural areas with pavement or developed areas, he said.

With wetlands being a “good natural sponge” that can absorb huge amounts of water, “if anything, we should be trying to expand wetland coverage rather than take it away, Sabath said.

“In short,” Carey with the Sierra Club continued, “communities will watch rivers and streams in their communities fall victim to unchecked pollution. Without federal protections, industry will discharge and develop at will, destroying habitats, water quality, and flood protection measures as they go. The wetlands and streams of this country belong to all people, not just those who seek to exploit them.”

BEAUFORT – Owners of vacant oceanfront lots being chewed by erosion at the eastern tip of Ocean Isle Beach have been permitted to install larger than typically allowed sandbag structures at the beach to protect their properties.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission unanimously agreed last week to grant permission to the owners of eight lots in The Pointe, a luxury gated neighborhood built east of the town’s terminal groin, to have sandbag structures that are 40 feet wide and 12 feet tall placed waterward of their land.

Current commission rules limit sandbag revetments to a 20-foot base width and a 6-foot height. The rules also stipulate sandbags may be placed only in areas where erosion scarp is within 20 feet from a structure.

The new, larger sandbag structures will connect to two revetments installed along developed lots this past summer, creating one, long contiguous sandbag wall along at the eastern tip of the Brunswick County barrier island at Shallotte Inlet.

Charles Baldwin IV, the Wilmington-based attorney representing the property owners, explained Wednesday during the meeting in Beaufort Hotel that his clients want to “simply connect the dots” and “try to avoid irreparable harm.”

“It needs to be a unified wall,” he said. “You can’t throw one person out and expect this project to go forward and work.”

Baldwin’s clients attribute the plight of their properties to the terminal groin the town had installed more than three years ago to stave off erosion that had battered Ocea Isle’s east end for decades.

“Obviously what we have is a unique situation here,” he said in his initial remarks to the commission. “We have these lots that are being affected negatively by the terminal groin.”

Terminal groins are wall-like structures built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas of high erosion.

Baldwin noted that both state law and the town’s permit to build the terminal groin “say that if the groin doesn’t perform, and it’s required to monitor, has adverse effects, it has to be modified or removed.”

“That’s because that’s the law,” he said.

Baldwin went on to argue that a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said the terminal groin might contribute to “some short-term erosion” east of the structure, “but that within year one it’s going to stabilize.”

“That has not happened,” Baldwin said. “Their lots are already being substantially diminished, but this structure out there is just simply failing.”

Ocean Isle Beach officials have refuted that claim.

In a letter Coastal Review published last month, Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith wrote that The Pointe’s developer went before the town’s planning board in June 2015. The developer purchased the property in September of that same year.

By that time, both a draft and final environmental impact statement on the terminal groin had been published, and a public workshop on the terminal groin had taken place, Smith wrote.

The town received a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit in November 2016 to build the structure.

But construction was pushed back years after the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the National Audubon Society, filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the project.

The lawsuit claimed that the Corps failed to objectively evaluate alternatives to the terminal groin, including those that would be less costly to Ocean Isle residents and less destructive to the coast, particularly what was then the undeveloped area on the island’s east end.

In March 2021, a panel of judges with the Fourth Circuit, affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives.

Construction of the $11 million terminal groin was complete in April the following year.

The final subdivision approval was granted to The Pointe’s developer in 2022, after which time construction began in the 44-lot neighborhood.

A series of offshore coastal storms that have skirted the East Coast the latter half of this year have further contributed to the threat to The Pointe’s oceanfront properties.

Erosion has swiped away chunks of the private road that rounds to lots at a cul-de-sac nearest the ocean entrance to the inlet. Piles of debris, including wood from an old bulkhead unearthed by the erosion, has been described as a scene akin to that of a war zone.

In a presentation to the commission Wednesday, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Assistant General Counsel Christy Goebel said that comparisons of the shoreline east of the terminal groin show that the line is moving landward.

The use of temporary sandbags “is to buy time” for existing, threatened structures while a longer-term solution can be figured out to protect those structures, she said.

Goebel noted that there have been no plans to relocate Shallotte Inlet, that the terminal groin already exists, “and the likelihood of success of beach nourishment placement so close to the inlet being dredged by the Corps’ shallow draft program and the associated available funding is uncertain.”

Baldwin rattled off a list of possible solutions, including reducing the profile of the terminal groin, removing rocks, using different size rocks to make the structure “more leaky,” modifying its location, or removing it altogether.

The commission’s motion approving the variances were made with a stipulation that the public area of the beach remain unimpeded by the sandbag wall.

Updated at 8 a.m. Thursday to include the link to the Federal Register, which published the proposed rules Thursday after the story posted, and public comment information.

The two federal agencies with jurisdiction over navigable waterways have published amendments to the existing “waters of the United States” rule that they say will “establish a clear, durable, common-sense definition” of the term, and a public comment period has opened.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army’s changes have heightened worry among conservation groups that federal protections for isolated wetlands might be weakened further than they were soon after the 2023 Supreme Court decision that found wetlands must be connected by surface water to a navigable body of water to fall under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers said in a release Monday that the newly proposed changes were to “fully implement the court’s direction by focusing on relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water—such as streams, oceans, rivers, and lakes—and wetlands that are connected and indistinguishable from such waterbodies.”

As part of the announcement, leadership posted the prepublication notice they planned to submit to the Federal Register, which was published Thursday, starting a 45-day public comment period.

Comments must be submitted by Jan. 5, 2026, and identified by Docket ID No. EPA–HQ– OW–2025–0322, through www.regulations.gov, by email to OW-Docket@epa.gov, or mail to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Water Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460.

Language in the Clean Water Act states that the “term ‘navigable waters’ means the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” However, the act doesn’t define what “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, actually are, leaving the EPA and Corps to determine the geographic scope of the rule.

Over the last five decades, pushback and litigation have forced the two agencies to revise the definition several times.

The current regulatory definition, according to the EPA, was put in place in September 2023 to align with the May 2023 Supreme Court ruling on the Sackett v EPA lawsuit.

The Sacketts filed the lawsuit after the agency ordered the Idaho couple to restore where they had begun backfilling with dirt the section of their property that the EPA considered to be wetlands of a nearby navigable waterbody. The judges sided with the Sacketts that federally protected wetlands must have an obvious connection to waterbodies like streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

To conform to the Sackett decision, the EPA and Army amended in September 2023 the latest final rule, which had been put in place that January.

EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Adam Telle shared with Washington, D.C., lawmakers Monday afternoon an overview of the proposed rules.

“I know that across the country, news of today’s proposal is going to be met with a lot of relief and happiness from farmers, ranchers, other landowners, governments that have been looking for a simple, prescriptive definition that the whole country can operate off of, and would allow individuals to know whether or not there’s a ‘water of the United States’ without having to go hire an attorney or a consultant, having to pay someone to Tell them,” Zeldin said Monday during the announcement livestreamed on the EPA’s YouTube.

The EPA secretary explained that the proposal “includes practical, common-sense revisions that will make a real difference,” and adds definitions for what he called “key terms” such as “’relatively permanent,’ ‘continuous surface connection’ and ‘tributary’ to appropriately limit the scope of what is consistent with” the Sackett case.

“We’re establishing that jurisdictional tributaries must connect to traditional navigable waters, either directly or through other features that provide predictable and consistent flow. We’re adding a new exclusion for groundwater and revising exclusions for certain ditches prior converted cropland and waste treatment systems,” Zeldin continued. “We’re incorporating locally familiar terminology such as wet season to help determine whether a water body qualifies as WOTUS. And we’re strengthening state and tribal decision-making authority by providing clear regulatory guidelines while recognizing their expertise in local land and water resources.”

He explained that the proposed rules were developed based on input from multiple sources, including preproposal recommendations, docket information from nine public listening sessions and consultation comments from states, tribes and local governments.

Telle addressed the audience after Zeldin.

“Since 1972 Americans have struggled to understand what Congress meant when it included the term ‘waters of the United States’ in the Clean Water Act. Did it apply to them? Did it not? The definition of that term has been often abused, sometimes stretched beyond recognition over time, and it’s left Americans uncertain about whether they were complying with the Clean Water Act or not,” he said Monday, adding that “under President Trump’s leadership, the EPA and army Civil Works, which oversees the Corps of Engineers, are kicking off the formal process that will give American certainty about their property once and for all.”

Several Republican officials thanked Zeldin from the podium for initiating the proposed amendments including West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey who said that “for too long there’s been great deal of uncertainty” about the WOTUS rule.

“Unfortunately, it left many people holding the bag. Farmers, contractors, small business owners guessing whether their ephemeral stream or a backyard ditch was going to be classified as a waters of the United States rule and potentially subject them to significant penalties,” he continued.

Alabama Congressman Gary Palmer said he was confident that the rule will prioritize clean water while protecting farmers, ranchers, landowners and businesses alike.

Conservation groups have been vocal about these revisions opening up isolated wetlands to development and degradation since the announcement was made.

“Wetlands are the lifeblood of our coast, and should be held to the highest standards of protection,” North Carolina Coastal Federation Coastal Advocate Kerri Allen explained. “The wetlands most impacted by these proposed rollbacks are the very wetlands that hold water during storms and help protect downstream waters. With the proposed changes, our coast will face irrevocable damage that impacts not only our wildlife and fisheries, but also our coastal economy and communities.” The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Mark Sabath said Monday in a statement that this proposed rule, if adopted, “could have catastrophic ramifications for communities already plagued by flooding, water quality concerns, and drinking water shortages. After critical, longstanding protections for clean water and wetlands were drastically narrowed by the Sackett decision, we need stronger protections, not weaker, to safeguard our communities and environment.”

League of Conservation Voters Healthy Communities Program Director Madeleine Foote had a similar reaction.

“The Trump administration’s Polluted Water Rule is another blatant giveaway to big corporate polluters that will jeopardize the waters that our families and communities rely on for drinking, recreation, and fueling our local economies,” Foote said.

“In 2023, the Supreme Court’s devastating Sackett decision stripped federal protections from millions of miles of streams and tens of millions of acres of wetlands, and now corporate polluters are pushing their friends in the administration to go even further in decimating our clean water safeguards. They won’t be happy until the Clean Water Act is nothing more than words on a page and they can pollute our waters with abandon,” Foote continued.

Environmental Defense Fund Associate Vice President Will McDow stated Monday that the new proposed WOTUS rule from the Trump administration that will redefine which wetlands and waters have Clean Water Act Protections. 

“We already spend billions annually responding to disasters that were created by building in risky areas. With today’s proposed WOTUS rule, commercial developers will be allowed to pave over wetlands to build unsafe housing that either floods or increases flooding to neighbors,” he continued. “This rule brings tremendous uncertainty and risk to our nation’s drinking water, flood protections and critical habitats. Based on our peer-reviewed analysis, new requirements for wetland protections could leave nearly all wetlands without Clean Water Act protections. Requirements in the new rule are not based in science, difficult to implement in practice and will create a dangerous lack of clarity.” 

WILMINGTON — Deepening the Wilmington Harbor would disperse PFAS now mingling in the riverbed’s sediment into marshes and onto public beaches, accelerate erosion, exacerbate flooding, destroy habitat, and is not economically justified, area residents said during a state-hosted public hearing.

Many who spoke at the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s hearing in downtown Wilmington Monday night argued that the federal draft environmental statement released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers earlier this fall fails to fully examine potential impacts associated with the proposed project.

The draft study examines different alternatives for the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s aim to accommodate larger container ships at the Wilmington port.

The preferred alternative selected in the study calls for deepening the harbor from 42 to 47 feet, widening the channel in multiple areas, and extending the ocean entrance to the river. These changes would accommodate vessels that can carry 14,000 20-by-8-foot shipping containers, ports officials say.

But several of the nearly 20 people who spoke argued that the proposed project would not benefit the local economy, and its environmental harms would drastically overwhelm any associated economic benefits. About 70 people attended the hearing.

“This project is a poor economic decision given the massive cost compared to the miniscule benefits,” said Jessica Hardee, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The cost of deepening the harbor and the channel is projected to be over $1 billion. However, the only noted benefit of this project are cost savings to international shipping companies who use the port, not North Carolina or local communities. This project provides little benefit to the Wilmington area and North Carolinians while also threatening significant damage to the coastal region.”

One striking absence from the study is how churning up and moving per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in the sediment of the lower Cape Fear River might affect the environment, animals that rely on that environment, and human health, some speakers said.

“Even though we all know that there’s PFAS in the sediment of the river, the Corps says we can’t consider that because it’s not a regulated chemical,” said Wilmington resident and geologist Roger Shew.

But PFAS, or similar chemical compounds of which there are more than 14,000 used to make a host of consumer goods from food containers to stain-resistant clothing and carpet, will be regulated by the time the channel would be deepened in the early to mid-2030s, he said.

“And since 15 million of the 35 million cubic yards of dredge material will be used as beneficial placement in marshes on our area beaches, we should know the content of that sediment and potential impacts with sediment placement,” Shew said. “A core function of an (environmental impact statement) is consideration of potential harm. Therefore, they should and must include PFAS in the study.”

A study published late last month found concentrations of 56 PFAS in blood samples obtained from 119 Wilmington residents between 2010 and 2016.

Two chemical compounds – TFA and PFMOAA – were the dominant PFAS in the samples, “despite their likely short half-lives in the human body,” according to the study.

TFA, or trifluoroacetic acid, and PFMOAA, or perfluoro-2-methoxyacetic acid, are ultrashort-chain PFAS, which are the smallest type of PFAS and hardest to remove from drinking water sources.

The blood samples examined in the study were obtained before the public was made aware in 2017 that an upstream industrial facility had been discharging PFAS directly into the Cape Fear River, the drinking water sources for tens of thousands, since the 1980s.

“While current TFA and PFMOAA levels have likely decreased substantially from those in the historical blood serum samples evaluated here as a result of mandated discharge controls at the upstream fluorochemical manufacturer, this study, along with other recent studies, highlights the importance ultrashort-chain PFAS can play in determining the overall human PFAS burden,” the study states.

Wilmington resident Kaiti Sheehan said the fact that PFAS is not considered in the draft environmental impact statement, or DEIS, “is a slap in the face to residents who are paying for a $42 million granulated active-carbon filtration system and still facing the health consequences that have come from 40 years of contamination from our upstream bad actor.”

“I do genuinely hope that you will look and you will see how much the community has come out tonight in recognition that this is bad for Wilmington and this is bad for North Carolina,” she said.

Others raised concerns about how deepening the harbor to allow for larger ships to travel the 28 miles upriver to the port would increase erosion on the string of bird islands that pepper the lower Cape Fear River and the riverbanks themselves.

The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers.

Audubon North Carolina’s Lindsay Addison, a coastal biologist, said she and her staff are on the Cape Fear River two to three days a week between March and August and at least once during each of the other months of the year.

“We have seen progressively the impacts of the larger and larger classes of ships coming up the river,” she said. “We saw larger, more severe wakes. The DEIS does not take this into account. The Corps, in its beneficial use plan, talks about maybe putting sediment on 2 miles of the shoreline.”

Birds nest on high-tide lines, Addison said. Waves created by a large ship’s wake push water “like a tsunami” over nests and sweep nests away.

“There is no model in the DEIS that accounts for this,” Addison said. “There is no data collection in the DEIS that accounts for this. In fact, there’s no new data collection in the DEIS. They’re relying on data that was already collected. They told us in the stakeholder meeting, flat out, that they’re not going to collected new data so impacts to the migratory birds in the DEIS are not taken into account.”

Officials with the Division of Coastal Management, which is under the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, announced Monday night that the public comment period on the draft study has been extended from Dec. 5 to Dec. 20.

Written comments may be mailed to Federal Consistency Coordinator, 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City, NC  28557, or emailed to Federalconsistencycomments@deq.nc.gov with “Federal Consistency: USACE Wilmington Harbor 403 Navigation Project” in the subject line.

More information on the proposed project is on the Corps’ website.

Carolina Beach’s federally authorized beach nourishment project is scheduled to begin this weekend.

Sand placement is expected to begin Saturday, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers release.

The project, which calls for placing about 800,000 cubic yards of sand on the town’s ocean shore, is expected to continue for about four to five weeks, depending on weather conditions.

To see which sections of the beach are closed or open during the coastal storm risk management project construction, residents may check the sand placement tracker.

The project contractor has staged equipment near the Freeman Park vehicular beach access and the North Pier parking lot. A pipe is being placed from Carolina Beach Inlet to the beach adjacent to the North Pier, where sand placement will begin and progress southward as pumping continues.

After the contractor has pumped sand from Carolina Beach Inlet, the dredge pipe will be moved to the offshore landing area, where sand will be pumped from an oceanside borrow source and placed along the remaining sections of the beach.

Residents are reminded to keep out of fenced construction areas and off the pipeline, only cross the pipeline at designated sand ramp crossings, maintain a safe distance from heavy equipment and the pipe discharge area, and follow all posted signage and contractor instructions.

The state agency that manages coastal resources will accept public comment until Dec. 5 on the draft environmental impact statement for a proposed project to deepen and widen portions of the Wilmington Harbor navigation channel.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District submitted to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management the draft document that “evaluates the potential environmental, social, and economic impacts of the proposed project and alternatives in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act,” or NEPA, for the proposed Wilmington Harbor 403 Navigation Project, officials said.

A more thorough description of the proposed federal actions is available online.

The state’s review of the submitted federal consistency determination request will determine if the proposed project in Brunswick and New Hanover counties is consistent with the enforceable policies of North Carolina’s Coastal Management Program, the division notes in a press release.

An in-person public hearing is scheduled for 5:30-7:30 p.m. Monday at Skyline Center, 929 N. Front St., Wilmington. Speaker registration opens onsite at 5 p.m. Speaker time may be limited depending on the number of registered speakers.

The division will accept written comments until 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 5. Comments should be mailed by 5 p.m. Dec. 5 to Federal Consistency Coordinator, 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City, NC 28557, or emailed to Federalconsistencycomments@deq.nc.gov.  Write “Federal Consistency: USACE Wilmington Harbor 403 Navigation Project” in the subject line.

Officials said all comments will be considered in developing the state’s consistency response.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking a permit to install a temporary groundwater well off Carolina Beach’s ocean shore for an upcoming beach nourishment project on Pleasure Island.

The request is available for public review and comment through Oct. 15. Related documents are online.

The water well would be installed by the project’s contractor and used to cool an inline booster pump to reduce the likelihood of a booster failure. The contractor is requesting to install the temporary well because there is not adequate water pressure from a local fire hydrant to cool the booster pumps.

The pump would be located along the pipeline route for the Carolina Beach and Kure Beach and vicinity coastal storm risk management project, according to a N.C. Division of Coastal Management release.

The pump would be used to move dredged material to southerly areas of the island.

The temporary well would be dug at a depth of 60 feet below existing grade and at a with of 8 inches in diameter, according to the Corps. The well would be installed behind the dune line at the Freeman Park public access behind the public restrooms.

The well would be removed from the point of entry on the beach once the project is complete.

Written comments on the proposed temporary well may be mailed to Federal Consistency Coordinator, 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City, NC 28577, or emailed to DCMcomments@deq.nc.gov with “Federal Consistency: USACE Carolina & Kure Beach CSRM” in the subject line.

A notice of the decision for this request will be provided upon request.

Two heavily shoaled channels used by state ferries to Ocracoke Island are expected to be dredged next year, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps’ Wilmington District announced Wednesday its award of a contract for maintenance dredging of Rollinson Channel, also known as the Hatteras Ferry Channel, and the Big Foot Slough portion of Silver Lake Harbor at the opposite end of the island.

Chesapeake, Virginia-based Cottrell Contracting Corp. was awarded the $11,778,000 contract to restore the channels to their authorized depths, “which is vital for the safety of mariners, navigation, and the local economy that relies on waterborne commerce and recreational boating,” according to a Corps release.

“This effort will help ensure the continued navigability of these important waterways and support the essential work of our stakeholders at the North Carolina Ferry Division,” the release states. “The Wilmington District is committed to working closely with the contractor and local stakeholders to minimize disruption and ensure a successful project completion.”

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — When the Army Corps of Engineers issued its final decision on the terminal groin project here more than eight years ago, the document conveyed a prescient warning.

A terminal groin “may increase erosion along the easternmost point of Ocean Isle Beach, down-drift of the structure.”

Today, the shoreline east of terminal groin is being gnawed away, vanishing beach in front of a neighborhood of grand, multimillion-dollar homes built shortly after the $11 million erosion-control structure was completed in spring 2022.

A wall of sandbags fends off waves from reaching some of the waterfront homes on the ocean side of the gated community that’s advertised as “luxurious coastal living.”

Several lots remain vacant because the properties no longer have enough beachfront necessary to meet the state’s ocean setback requirements.

“I would have never developed the property if I had known this was going to happen,” said Doc Dunlap, a developer with Pointe OIB, LLC. “It’s just devastating to tell you the truth. I even had plans myself to build there, have a summer home.”

The caveat written in the federal record of decision all those years ago, one that was a central argument in a lawsuit to try and stop the terminal groin from being built, was not explicitly pointed out to the developers of The Pointe, they say.

In an email responding to Coastal Review’s questions, the Division of Coastal Management said it, “is not aware of any specific notification to those property owners other than the standard (area of environmental concern) hazard notice.”

“We were just under the impression that all of this was going to be extremely positive and help protect this part of the beach,” said Jimmy Bell, who contributed to the planning and implementation of the community. “And then, once we started experiencing this massive erosion, I started researching groins more. We had engineers and other people that were helping, and we were informed and under the impression that it was going to all be good, and now it’s turning out to not be quite as good.”

Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith pushed back on those claims.

“My heart breaks for them, but the developers knew that that groin was going in,” she said. “They knew it was not designed to protect that area. It was not designed to harm it, but they also know that adjacent 2,000 feet west of them was a line of sandbags and most of them had been there for years.”

The developers are now seeking legal representation as they continue to try to figure out how to protect the oceanfront properties within the 44-lot neighborhood.

“Mr. Dunlap is extremely disappointed in the decisions made that resulted in the placement and construction of the terminal groin and the erosion damages it has caused,” John Hilton III, corporate counsel to Pointe OIB, stated in an email. “He is committed to holding those who made these decisions legally accountable and also seeking a remedy to correct the ongoing erosion.  We are working to obtain local legal counsel to explore and pursue all available options.”

Erosion-battered shore

The east end of the island at Shallotte Inlet historically accreted and eroded naturally as the inlet wagged back and forth between Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beach up until Hurricane Hazel hit in 1954.

When the powerful hurricane – likely a Category 4 storm using the Saffir-Simpson scale developed in 1971 – made landfall in October 1954 near the South Carolina border, it caused the inlet channel to move in a more easterly direction, accelerating erosion at the east end of the barrier island.

Erosion has remained persistent in that area since the 1970s, according to N.C. Division of Coastal Management records.

The worst of the erosion occurred along about a mile of oceanfront shore beginning near the inlet. An encroaching ocean claimed homes, damaged and destroyed public utilities, and prompted the N.C. Department of Transportation to abandon state-maintained streets.

In 2005, the town was permitted to install at the east a wall of sandbags to barricade private properties and infrastructure from ocean waves.

Sandbags revetments are, under state rules, to be used as a temporary measure to hold erosion at bay.

In 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a decades-old state law that prohibited permanent, hardened erosion-control structures from being built on North Carolina beaches.

Under the revised law, a handful of beach communities, including Ocean Isle Beach, get the option to pursue installing a terminal groin at an inlet area.

Terminal groins are wall-like structures built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas of high erosion like the east end of Ocean Isle Beach.

These structures are controversial because they capture sand that travels down the beach near shore, depleting the sand supply to the beach immediately downdrift of the structure, stripping land that is natural habitat for, among others, sea turtles and shorebirds.

Ocean Isle Beach Sea Turtle Protection Organization Island Coordinator Deb Allen said that beach conditions east of the terminal groin have hindered turtles from nesting there this season. Escarpment, sandbags and debris that Allen believes is coming from the development have impeded turtles from accessing the sandy areas they seek to lay their eggs.

As of early September, the organization had recorded four false crawls, which is when a female turtle crawls onto a beach only to return to the ocean without laying eggs, and three nests east of the terminal groin, Allen said.

The potential for that type of impact to wildlife was argued in a lawsuit the Southern Environmental Law Center filed on behalf of the National Audubon Society in August 2017 challenging the Corps’ approval of Ocean Isle Beach’s project.

The lawsuit claimed that the Corps failed to objectively evaluate alternatives to the terminal groin, including those that would be less costly to Ocean Isle residents and less destructive to the coast, particularly to what was then the undeveloped area on the island’s east end.

The lawsuit, which later included the town, came to an end in March 2021 after a panel of appellate court judges affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement, or EIS, examining the proposed project.

“As we went through and talked about the impacts of terminal groins in the EIS, this was the central argument – will the land east of the groin erode at a more rapid pace? And, everything we could point to, all of the science, said yes,” said Geoff Gisler, program director of SELC’s Chapel Hill office. “There’s only so much sand and the way that these structures operate is they keep more of it in one place and necessarily take it from somewhere else. That’s why we have seen over and over again that when you build a groin towards the end of an island, what happens is the island erodes at the end. That there is less sand going to the east end is not an accident.”

‘Righting this wrong’

Gisler said the SELC will be following how the town and the Corps respond to the erosion that is occurring east of the terminal groin.

“The town committed and the Corps committed to righting this wrong if it occurred and that’s what we’ll be looking at,” he said.

Under conditions in the town’s federal permit, the town is required to monitor the sand spit east of The Pointe as well as the town’s shoreline and that of neighboring Holden Beach to the west.

Should those shorelines erode past boundaries identified in 1999, “consideration will be given to modifying the structure to allow more sediment to move from west to east past the structure,” according to final EIS.

The town also has the option to nourish an eroded shoreline.

“In the event the negative impacts of the terminal groin cannot be mitigated with beach nourishment or possible modifications to the design of the terminal groin, the terminal groin would be removed,” the EIS states.

The Corps and the Division of Coastal Management are reviewing the monitoring report submitted by the engineering firm hired by the town, Coastal Protection Engineering of North Carolina.

That report indicates that erosion “has exceeded the 1999 shoreline threshold for the area immediately east of the groin.”

“However, the applicant is working on a modification request to alter this threshold as the shoreline had eroded landward of part of that threshold prior to construction of the groin,” according to the division.

A beach maintenance project scheduled for fall 2026 to inject sand west of the terminal groin is anticipated to increase the rate of sand that bypasses the terminal groin and “would serve to ‘feed’ the shoreline immediately east of the groin with additional material,” according to the town’s engineer.

But The Pointe’s developers and property owners say they can’t wait another year.

“There’s got to be an exception to the standard application restrictions (i.e., sandbag placement and height) the (Coastal Area Management Act/Coastal Resources Commission) process has today to protect near term east of the groin due to emergency status and a path longer term that can get us to a point of evaluating what we can do for the groin from a redesign standpoint that would protect all both west and east of the groin,” property owner Brendan Flynn said. “What we’re dealing with now in my view is we need to have another review of what could be done to enhance the groin’s performance to benefit and protect the other part of this island.”

Smith said that the terminal groin is doing what it was designed to do.

“It is building up right adjacent to the groin,” she said. “It just has not built anything far enough down to protect this new development. I wish Mother Nature would reserve herself and build it up right now instead of taking it away. I wish I had some magic bullet for them too, but I don’t today. It’s really up to them to take some action.”

Kerri Allen, director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s southeast office in Wrightsville Beach, called the situation “heartbreaking,” but not surprising. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“When you alter the natural movement of sand with a hardened structure like the terminal groin, you might protect one stretch of beach, but you inevitably put other areas at greater risk,” she said. “And, unfortunately, the erosion we’re seeing east of the groin is exactly what experts warn could happen.  That being said, the purpose of this groin was to protect existing infrastructure that was already at risk. Instead, new homes were built in an area that’s incredibly vulnerable and these homeowners are now facing devastating losses. Moving forward, we need to focus on solutions that don’t just shift the problem from one place to another and ensure that public resources aren’t used to subsidize these risky, short-term development decisions.”

“I think this is a pivotal moment for Ocean Isle and for other coastal towns,” she continued. “We have an opportunity to step back, look at the science, and commit to managing our coast in a way that protects both our communities and the natural systems that sustain them. That means resisting the temptation to build our way out of these challenges because, ultimately, the ocean always wins.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District has opened a public comment period on its draft environmental impact statement of the Wilmington Harbor project.

Public comments on the multi-million project to deepen the main channel from a depth of 42 feet to 47 feet will be accepted through Nov. 3.

The Corps’ draft letter report and DEIS are available online.

District officials are scheduled to host an open house from 3-7 p.m. Oct. 8 in downtown Wilmington, where participants will get the opportunity to speak with Corps officials, learn about the conditionally authorized project, ask questions, and provide comments.

The open house will take place in Cape Fear Community College’s Union Station Building, Daniels Hall, 502 N. Front St.

Public comments may be submitted by email to WilmingtonHarbor403@usace.army.mil, by mail to ATTN: Wilmington Harbor 403, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, N.C. 28403, or by comment card at the public meeting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Unexpected Flood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mister Go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District has awarded a multimillion-dollar dredge contract to clear shoaling from sections of the Wilmington Harbor.

The Corps last week signed off a $17.12 million contract with Norfolk Dredging Co. to maintain the authorized depth of the harbor’s anchorage basin and mid-river area. The work, which is anticipated to begin sometime later this year, is part of the Corps’ routine harbor maintenance.

“This dredging project will ensure safe and efficient passage for commercial vessels, supporting jobs and commerce throughout the Cape Fear region and beyond,” according to a release. “Regular dredging is essential to remove accumulated sediment, which can impede vessel traffic and limit cargo capacity, thus impacting the Port of Wilmington’s operations and its critical role in the supply chain.”

Norfolk Dredging has been contracted to clear more than 1.8 million cubic yards from the harbor, including 1.15 million cubic yards from the anchorage basin and 730,000 cubic yards from the mid-river reaches, said Jed Cayton, the district’s public affairs specialist, in an email.

The dredged material, most of which is not beach-compatible, will be placed offshore at a permitted disposal site, he said.

Norfolk Dredging is also expected to remove an estimated 1.3 million cubic yards of material from the harbor’s inner ocean bar later this year. The material through this area of the harbor is deemed beach-compatible and is to be placed on Oak Island and Caswell Beach’s ocean shorelines. The project must be completed between mid-November and April 30, 2026.

Later this month, the Corps will open bids for dredging in the harbor’s outer ocean bar, where an estimated 1 million cubic yards of material is expected to be removed between Dec. 1 and April 15, 2026.

The two federal agencies that are to reviewing the definition of “waters of the United States,” often called WOTUS and a distinguishing characteristic under the Clean Water Act, have scheduled the first round of listening sessions for next week.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army, which oversees the Army Corps of Engineers, are holding the public input meetings both virtually and at the EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced March 12 plans to revise the definition of WOTUS to align with the Supreme Court’s May 2023 decision in the Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency “while eliminating red tape, cutting compliance costs, and reducing the cost of living,” according to the agency. “To achieve this vision, the agencies will develop a proposed rule to revise the 2023 definition of WOTUS.”

Related: EPA targets remaining federal isolated wetlands protections

Participation in the session set for 9:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday, April 29, is limited to state government agencies and member organizations. The listening session for Tribes will be virtually held 1-3:30 p.m. April 30.

From 9:30 p.m. to noon Thursday, May 1, the input session is for industry and agricultural stakeholders and the 1 p.m. that is to follow is for environmental and conservation stakeholders. Registration is required and can be done on the EPA website.

EPA officials said that listening sessions for local governments and the public will be announced.

“The agencies are committed to obtaining targeted input from a full spectrum of co-regulators and stakeholders on key topic areas related to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ in light of Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, regarding ‘continuous surface connection,’ ‘relatively permanent,’ and jurisdictional versus non-jurisdictional ditches,” according to the EPA.

EPA’s Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water Peggy Brown and Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds Division Director Stacey Jensen will be joined by Milton Boyd, assistant counsel with the Corps for the sessions.

WILMINGTON — A study of possible environmental impacts associated with the proposed Wilmington harbor-deepening project is expected to be released in the fall.

The draft environmental impact study examines different alternatives for the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s plan to make room for larger container ships to get to and from the Wilmington port.

The study’s projected release was the latest update U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District officials shared at a public meeting Thursday night.

Fewer than 10 people turned out for the meeting, which follows a series of meetings the Corps hosted last year that touched on topics ranging from how material dredged from the channel might be used to how the project might affect cultural resources along the Cape Fear River.

The ports authority wants to deepen the harbor from 42 to 47 feet, widen the channel in multiple areas and extend the ocean entrance to the river.

Authority officials say the changes are needed to accommodate larger container ships coming from Asia, which would keep the Wilmington port competitive with other East Coast ports.

The changes would accommodate large vessels that can carry 14,000, 20-by-8-foot shipping containers that have been traveling through the Panama Canal since its expansion in 2016.

But a host of concerns have been raised about the proposed project, with environmental experts and advocates arguing that deepening the channel could exacerbate saltwater intrusion through to the Northeast Cape Fear River and adjoining creeks, eradicate fish habitat, harm cultural resources, and disproportionately affect minority communities along the river.

The environmental study is exploring three possible alternatives, including dredging to a depth of 47 feet, which the ports authority prefers, dredging to a depth of 46 feet, or maintaining the current depth and width of the channel.

Once the draft study is published, the Corps will open a 45-day public comment period as part of the required process in creating the final document.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District will be providing an update this month about the conditionally authorized project to deepen the Wilmington harbor.

The public engagements scheduled for Feb. 13 in Wilmington will be similar to one the Corps of Engineers hosted last summer, when the public got an opportunity to meet staff and discuss the North Carolina Ports Authority’s proposal to deepen the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet. The plan also calls for widening the channel in multiple areas and extending the ocean entrance to the Cape Fear River.

The changes are needed to keep the Wilmington port, which is more than 25 miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, competitive with other East Coast ports by making room for larger container ships coming from Asia, ports authority officials say.

The changes would accommodate large vessels that can carry 14,000, 20-by-8-foot shipping containers that have been traveling through the Panama Canal since its expansion in 2016.

A public comment period on the project closed last July.

Residents of New Hanover and Brunswick counties and environmental groups have raised several concerns about the project’s potential impacts to fish habitat, cultural resources, minority communities along the river, and saltwater intrusion through to the Northeast Cape Fear River.

Once a draft environmental impact statement on the proposed project is released, the Corps will open a 45-day public comment period on that study.

The public review and comment period is expected to open late this year, with a final environmental impact statement projected to be released fall 2026.

The meeting will be held 7-8 p.m. Feb. 13 at the Boys and Girls Club of Southeastern North Carolina – Brigade Campus, 2759 Vance St., Wilmington.

Additional information about the project may be found online.

HATTERAS ISLAND — With ongoing removal of petroleum-contaminated soil from Buxton Beach, along with a considerable amount of remnant building debris trucked away since September, a community meeting hosted Monday evening by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representatives revealed notably less frustration and even a hint of a friendly partnership vibe.

“I expect them to do the very best they can,” said Jeff Dawson, a member of the Buxton Civic Association, speaking after the meeting at the Fessenden Center in Buxton in reference to the Corps’ current response.

That’s a big difference from the alarm bells the newly formed group of village residents had been ringing about the petroleum pollution and old building debris first exposed on the eroding beach by a series of storms about a year and a half earlier.

“It’s like ‘Yay!’” Dawson added. “But why did they take so long?”

Brief updates of the cleanup project were provided, but the main impetus for the meeting was to present an overview about creating a Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB in government-speak.

In a slide presentation, Alexandra Jangrell-Tackett, program manager with Dawson, the Corps’ public outreach contractor, explained that a RAB would provide an option for the community to share information about work at what is officially known as Buxton Naval Facility, a Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, as a way to keep residents updated on the actions taking place at the Buxton Naval Facility.

The 50-acre site is entirely located within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

While a RAB allows for “concerns, needs or values” of a community to be conveyed, similar to a public meeting, it is more formal, with two co-chairs who conduct regular meetings that have agendas and minutes. It serves as a liaison between the Corps and the affected community.

“It’s important to note that a RAB is not a decision-making body,” Jangrell-Tackett said. “However, it’s that avenue for communication exchange.”

RABs are established with “sustained and sufficient” interest from communities where active environmental restoration projects are being done at Department of Defense sites, Jangrell-Tackett said during her presentation.

But a community also has the option of just holding public meetings concerning the cleanup work, she said.

While a RAB allows for “concerns, needs or values” of a community to be conveyed similar to a public meeting, Jangrell-Tackett explained, it is more formal, with two co-chairs — one from the community, one from the defense department — who conduct regular meetings that are structured with agendas, a mission statement, operational procedures and minutes.

Each RAB could have up to 30 members, each with two-year terms in the role of liaisons.

A survey on the community’s interest in a RAB was provided by the Corps, which will evaluate it after the deadline in 30 days.

Brian Harris, a member of the Buxton Civic Association, said after the presentation that he was very pleased with the Corps’ latest cleanup efforts and willingness to communicate with the community.

“Everything’s great — we love it,” he said. “Obviously, we want the RAB.”

Harris added that either a member or the overall association would be willing to serve as the RAB community member, but they’ll know more after the results of the survey are completed and further discussion is held with the Corps.

Since the Corps’ FUDS office took responsibility in 1991 for environmental restoration at the former Naval base near today’s Buxton Beach, it had removed 50 storage tanks and 4,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil. It has also conducted groundwater remediation and continued monitoring.

After a series of summer storms in 2023 exposed huge chunks of concrete that was once bits of buried Navy buildings, surfers and other locals started noticing strong diesel odors at the beach and a sheen in the ocean.

FUDS investigators responded, but over the months they had had difficulty determining the source of the intermittent petroleum stench.

Then, in September, more storms left an even stronger petroleum odor on the beach, resulting in the current, more visibly aggressive FUDS response.

“It was really that event that was a catalyst to get us out to that site,” said Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, while speaking with reporters after the meeting.

Sturgeon noted that severe erosion had complicated detection of the petroleum.

“There was 15 more feet of beach there … That Building 19, the major source of the infrastructure, was 2 to 300 meters away from the ocean,” he said. “Now it’s in the ocean.”

After being back and forth doing testing at the site for more than a year, the Corps finally saw the evidence before their eyes in September, and responded.

Related: Work gets underway to pinpoint Buxton pollution source

“The release of the petroleum out of the site was a shock,” he said. “My team really pulled together and got a contractor to the site in record time. It was under two weeks … for this type of thing, it’s actually really fast.

“And once we started digging up some of the soil, removed some of the infrastructure and started to take those readings, yeah, there was a lot of (petroleum) contamination there that we weren’t tracking.”

Sturgeon said that the contractor had removed a large amount of infrastructure in order to test and access the petroleum contaminated-soil underneath, but the Corps does not have the authority to remove any additional remnant infrastructure unless it is hampering the petroleum contamination removal.

The contractors also removed about 18,000 gallons of water from the site, which was put in a machine to sort out whatever contaminants it may contain, he said.

Excavations began Oct. 2, according to the Corps, and were expected to be completed in 60 days. To date, 505 cubic yards and 11,000 gallons of petroleum-impacted soil and water, as well as approximately 82,400 pounds of concrete, 1,133 feet of pipes and 1,030 feet of metal cables and wires have been removed, the Corps said.

A contract for comprehensive sampling is expected to be awarded by Nov. 15, Sturgeon said. The sampling will delineate the nature and extent of any petroleum contamination remaining at the FUDS property.

The cleanup will be considered completed after it falls within the state Department of Environmental Quality standards. The Corps is also working closely with the National Park Service.

“We have focused in on immediate action that was required in specific zones,” Sturgeon said. “We will continue to sample within the FUDS boundary.”

But, Sturgeon said, the source of the petroleum is still unknown.

“If I knew that, I tell you what, we’d solve the problem already,” he said, adding the mystery is why the Corps is doing further work. “We have plans to sample the entire site.”

The Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday that it is set to host a presentation next week to update the public on the ongoing response to petroleum pollution on the beach in Buxton.

The presentation set for 7-9 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4, at the Fessenden Center, 46830 N.C. Highway 12 in Buxton will also include information regarding a restoration advisory board related to the cleanup at the Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS property near the original location of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

The presentation will be followed by an open house session.

The Navy formerly used the as a submarine monitoring station, and then the Coast Guard subsequently used the property until it was returned to the National Park Service.

The Corps is working to remove visible petroleum-contaminated soil and collect soil samples in areas along the beach and dunes where odors and sheen have been observed.

The Corps said subsequent actions will include comprehensive soil and groundwater sampling in the area to delineate the nature and extent of petroleum contamination.

For more information, visit the Army’s Buxton Naval Facility project website
or email Cesas-FUDS@usace.army.mil.

A meeting is planned for early November for the public to learn more about the ongoing excavation of petroleum soil and other infrastructure at a former military site in Buxton.

Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District representatives scheduled the meeting to begin at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4, at the Fessenden Center in Buxton. The meeting will include remarks, an overview presentation, and a chance for visitors can speak to subject matter experts until 9 p.m.

The Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites property is at the Buxton Beach Access within Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The access has been closed since Sept. 1, 2023, because of “petroleum contamination that has been entering the ocean on a recurring basis and the remnants of unsafe military infrastructure,” according to Dare County.

Since the last Corps’ last news release dated Oct. 9, excavation work has continued at the site, and some remnant infrastructure was removed from the beach so the contractors could access and excavate any underlying contaminated soil, according to a news release from the Corps Friday.

“As a reminder, the area is an active construction site,” Terry Brooks, Army Corps of Engineers mechanical engineer and on-site manager, said in a statement. “For safety reasons, it is off-limits to anyone other than those working there or the National Park Service personnel, and the public should remain outside of the roped off area.”

Removed so far from the site are 37,000 pounds of concrete, 400 feet of pipes, 50 feet of cable/wire, 75 feet of listening cable that was used to detect enemy warships off the coast, and 45.5 cubic yards of petroleum-soil, Corps officials said. Once all excavations are completed, the contractor will replace any removed sand and restore the beach.

The Coast Guard completed a site inspection report of the former facility, identifying lead in the soil and groundwater near the former small arms range, which belonged to the Navy. The Buxton property does not have any open projects that address the small arms range.

“In anticipation of creating a new environmental restoration project and to prepare a Project Eligibility Recommendation, the Army Corps of Engineers is gathering information, to include the Coast Guard’s (site inspection) Report, about the small arms range. Project approval is required for environmental restoration activities to occur. The timeline is currently undetermined,” officials said.

SURF CITY – If everything goes accordingly, Surf City’s ocean shore may begin getting massive sand injections by the end of next year.

The town’s federal coastal storm risk management project — more than 20 years in the making — will put a total of 21.8 million cubic yards of sand on the beach over the course of a half-century.

“That’s a lot of sand,” said Kent Tranter, project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington district.

Tranter kicked off a public meeting in the town Tuesday night in a presentation of the Corps’ draft general reevaluation report and environmental assessment released last month on the project.

“I will caution you, this is the draft report. Things will change,” he said in front of an audience of more than 40 people.

The draft report is an update on a proposed project that originally included a portion of neighboring North Topsail Beach’s shore.

At the time, the two Topsail Island towns agreed to team up and commit to a cost-share agreement with the Corps to see the project through.

Under the original partnership agreement, Surf City, North Topsail and the state were to split 35% of the cost of the project’s initial construction. The Corps would pay 65%.

But the Corps would not get the funding to cover its portion until 2019, nine years after Wilmington district officials completed its feasibility study of the project.

During that time, the project’s cost more than doubled.

North Topsail Beach would have had to finance more than $26 million to pay its share of the project, which would have covered nearly 4 miles of beachfront. The remaining more than 7 miles of oceanfront is within a federally designated zone that omits it from receiving federal funding.

In July 2021, North Topsail Beach notified the Corps that the town would not be able to meet its deadline to commit to signing a project partnership agreement with the agency and Surf City.

North Topsail’s withdrawal meant the Corps had to reexamine the project and determine whether it remained economically justified, technically feasible and environmentally acceptable, Tranter said.

The updated project includes all 6 miles of oceanfront beach and will extend about 1,000 linear feet into the northernmost portion of North Topsail Beach. That extension across town lines will round out the project footprint for all of Surf City’s shore, Corps officials explained.

A whopping 8 million cubic yards of material will be pumped from several Corps-designated offshore borrow sites and onto the beach during initial construction.

The beach would be renourished about every six years, depending on sand erosion rates and coastal storms.

The price tag for initial construction, which is expected to begin in December 2025 if approved, is $187 million.

Construction is expected to take 16 months, during which time property owners may expect round-the-clock work.

Construction zones between 1,000-1,500 feet wide will be cordoned off, leaving a small portion of the beach closed at one time.

The public will be able to access a map on the Corps’ website that will include information about when and where construction zones will be located.

Wilmington District Commander Col. Brad Morgan thanked the town Tuesday night for sticking with the Corps through the long wait.

“I know this has been somewhat of a journey to get to this point,” he said. “We’re committed to delivering this project. We’ve got a lot of hoops to jump through, most of which are dictated by law. This is kind of the last hurdle. The team if fully committed to working with the town of Surf City to deliver this.”

Under the current schedule, construction would end in 2027. That would be the year the 50-year project begins. If that is the case, the project would end in 2076.

Corps officials will release further details about the project, including which area of the beach will be the first to receive sand, after the agency receives the contractor’s work plan.

The Corps is accepting public comments on the draft report through Oct. 4. All comments submitted will be address in the final report, which is expected to be presented in January 2025.

Questions and comments may be emailed to surfcitygrr@usace.army.mil or eric.k.gasch@usace.army.mil.

BUXTON — As storm-roiled ocean surf continued to unbury noxious reminders of an old submarine surveillance base, aggressive action is finally being taken this week to address the ongoing blight of a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach.

Contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are scheduled to start work Friday near Old Lighthouse Beach in an intensified effort to locate the source of intermittent fuel odors and oily soil clumps first exposed more than a year ago by storm erosion.

“The overall objective of the response action is to remove visible petroleum-impacted soils from the beach and dunes,” said Cheri Pritchard, media operations chief at the Corps’ Savannah office, in a Sept. 18 email response to questions from Coastal Review. The specific amount of material that will be removed, Pritchard said in the email, was “yet to be determined.”

The Corps in 1991 designated the former Naval facility as a Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS property. The Corps has since taken responsibility for cleanup of petroleum infrastructure and spills and leaks in surrounding soil at the 50-acre site. But during numerous visits over recent months to the site, the FUDS teams said that the current source of the petroleum had been difficult to pinpoint due to increased erosion, ever-changing conditions and the passage of time.

Bay West, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based environmental services company, was recently awarded a contract by the Corps to remove contaminated soils at the site.

According the information the FUDS team provided to Pritchard in the email, the contractors will work in up to four quadrants of various sizes along the beach and dunes, likely using heavy equipment such as excavators and roll-off containers.

“The contractor will excavate and containerize the petroleum-impacted soils from these areas and then properly transport and dispose of the material at an offsite waste management facility,” according to the email.

Depths of excavations of oily soil will vary, but generally would be expected to go down to the water table.

After fielding numerous questions and concerns from the community during the Sept. 3 Dare County Board of Commissioners meeting, Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, traveled down to Buxton with other Corps officials.

About a week later, the Corps announced that it would send a district-level team in response to the fuel sheen and odors to monitor the site. According to the FUDS email, the team, which will stay until the contractors are onsite, has performed test pits on the beach and west of the dunes to identify petroleum-impacted soils.

 “We are committed to the safety of the community. Together with our federal, state and local partners, we’re going to find the contamination, and we’re going to remove it,” Lt. Gen. Scott A. Spellmon, Corps of Engineers commanding general, said in a Sept. 9 press statement.

In September 2023, the National Park Service closed three-tenths of a mile of Buxton Beach after reports of oily peat clumps on the beach, a strong odor of diesel, and an oily sheen in the nearshore ocean.

In addition to the fuel issues, the beach was littered with remnants of Naval base infrastructure, including large chunks of concrete and rusted rebar and wiring.

In the year since, the debris has been covered or partially covered by sand, then reexposed, depending on storms, tides and winds. And the fuel smells and sheen have also come and gone, although their appearance is more mysterious. But as the ocean eats away at the shoreline, each exposure seems worse than the time before.

Related: ‘Strong petroleum smells’ lead to expanded beach closure

With strong northeast winds on Sept. 5 carrying powerful petroleum odors along the beach near the FUDS location, as well as exposing more debris, Cape Hatteras National Seashore announced in a press release that it was expanding the size of an already-closed beach area.

“The precautionary expansion, implemented in consultation with the Dare County Department of Health and Human Services, closes the beach from the southern end of the location of beachfront homes in the village of Buxton, located at the end of Old Lighthouse Road, to approximately 0.25 miles south of the old lighthouse jetties,” according to the statement.

“We are working with the Coast Guard Sector N.C. and the EPA’s Regional Response team to see if there is some way the saturated sections of petroleum soil that are being uncovered can be removed to mitigate the releases into the ocean,” Dave Hallac, the superintendent of National Parks of Eastern North Carolina, said in a Sept. 5 email.  “We are also asking if something can be done to prevent the sheens that are coming out of the sand/water interface from washing into the ocean.”

Hallac was unavailable to be interviewed for this report.

Although the Buxton Naval Facility, decommissioned in 1982, qualified as a FUDS property — a status for sites transferred outside Department of Defense control prior to Oct. 1986 — the Savannah district says it does not have the authority to remove the remnant infrastructure from the property.

Still, in the process of removing petroleum-impacted soil, if it is found under remaining infrastructure, the Corps will respond.

“The response action will include excavating, with the possible removal, of petroleum-impact soil beneath some of the remnant infrastructure which may require removal of limited amounts of infrastructure that is incidental to accessing the impacted soil,” the FUDS team said in the email.

The site cleanup is made more complicated by the fact that the Coast Guard most recently used the property as a base until 2010, and left behind its own hazards, which are currently being reviewed by the Coast Guard.

According to a portion of its special use permit issued in 1956 to the Navy that the Cape Hatteras National Seashore cited on its website, it appears that the Navy may have slipped out of town before meeting its part of the deal.

Condition 11 of the permit states that “The permittee shall remove all structures, foundations, and pavements, and clean up and restore the site prior to or immediately following termination of use.”

“The Navy concluded operations at NAVFAC Cape Hatteras in June 1982;” the park service website said, “however, all buildings and infrastructure remained at the site.”

But with the Navy long gone and the Corps saying it lacks authority to get rid of the growing amount of debris, all eyes are now focused on getting rid of the petroleum pollution that is washing into the Atlantic and coating the beach.

The debris cleanup will be for another day.

The Corps of Engineers is hosting a public information meeting next week on Surf City’s long-awaited federal beach nourishment project.

Corps officials will discuss findings of the draft General Reevaluation Report and Environmental Assessment for the town’s coastal storm risk management project, one that entails significantly injecting the amount on the town’s ocean shoreline by constructing a new wider and taller dune.

The project will be the largest beach nourishment project to have been accomplished on the East Coast, according to the town’s website. Initial construction is expected to take 16 months, during which time an estimated 7.9 million cubic yards of sand is anticipated to be injected onto the town’s nearly 6-mile beach.

The draft report was released about two years after North Topsail Beach, the town just north of Surf City on Topsail Island, withdrew from what had been a dune and beach nourishment partnership in July 2021.

North Topsail Beach officials at the time said they pulled out of the partnership because of rising project costs.

The public meeting is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, in the Surf City Municipal Complex, 214 W. Florence Way, Hampstead.

Corps personnel will be available to answer questions and receive comments at the meeting.

The report and assessment are available online. A 30-day public comment period on those documents closes Oct. 4.

Once the comment period ends, the Corps will include the public comments into a final report. The goal of the Corps is to complete the study process with a Chief of Engineers Report being signed off in May 2025, according to a release.

DUCK — For a few days this summer, three split-hull barges chugged south from Norfolk, Virginia, to deposit 6,500 cubic yards of olivine sand mined in Norway at a nearshore area of this small oceanfront town on the northern Outer Banks.

But with completion of the barge’s work in July, there’s no visible evidence that the trademarked Coastal Carbon Capture pilot research project is underway. The Vesta company project is to test whether olivine sand could permanently remove tons of carbon from the atmosphere and the ocean.

“So, I think ultimately, at the end of the day, it was a successful deployment in the sense that we’re set up for monitoring this project and getting the scientific results out of it,” Zach Cockrum, vice president of policy and partnerships with Vesta, told Coastal Review this week.

As the company’s website tells it, it’s taken decades of collaborative research to get to the point where data can be collected to support Vesta’s belief that plentiful and natural olivine could, if not outright save the planet, at least mitigate the problem.

“We could reverse climate change,” the company says on its website.

Vesta, which is permitted under the federal Clean Water Act and the state Coastal Area Management Act, has contracted with Hourglass Climate, a U.S-based nonprofit research organization, to monitor the site for two to three years. The site is a 300-foot-by-2,200-foot corridor situated 1,500 feet offshore of Duck’s beach in 25 feet of water.

Olivine, which has a light green tint, is a common magnesium silicate mineral similar to the quartz in Outer Banks sand. When it dissolves in seawater, it has the unique ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and reduce acidity in the ocean.

Although olivine is not uncommon — there’s plenty in western North Carolina, for instance — Vesta’s coastal research is novel, including its two earlier projects testing olivine as part of shoreline replenishment and in a small area of marsh.

“But these pilot projects, using olivine in these coastal settings like this, is something that Vesta alone is doing, as far as we know, in the world,” Cockrum said.

According to company estimates, the Coastal Carbon Capture pilot project could remove at least 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the ocean and atmosphere. 

Eventually, the goal is that olivine, milled down to compatible grain size, could be integrated into beach nourishment projects, making the projects more affordable while helping to reduce carbon pollution. The olivine does lose its carbon removal ability over time, but further research is needed to determine how often it may need to be replenished.

As an alkaline material, olivine reacts with the carbonic acid, which contains carbon dioxide, as it weathers in the seawater. In the process, the acid is converted to bicarbonate, which provides long-term carbon storage.

Hourglass has a service agreement with the nearby Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center Field Research Facility, known locally as the Duck Pier, to use their equipment, vessels and amphibious vehicles at the site, Cockrum said.

“And then the researchers at the Army Corps are also looking at the sediment transport, how the olivine is moving in that ecosystem,” he added. “And that’s something that they’re interested in, outside of the carbon removal aspect of it, because olivine is a traceable mineral, so it’s helping them understand the dynamics of that coastal system.”

Hourglass is using “benthic flux chambers” that are placed on top of the sand for about a week to take consistent measurements of water over the sediment, Cockrum explained. There will also be sampling to look at benthic organisms in and around the olivine, as well as the surrounding ecosystem, and the carbon removal will be measured.

Since olivine is a natural mineral found on numerous locations, the issue is not its inherent safety; it’s what its impact would be to an ecosystem, as well as its carbon-removal ability, where it is not naturally occurring — hence, the testing at Duck. But not all olivine deposits react the same.

For instance, Papakolea Beach in Hawaii is notably green from its high olivine content. But it’s a different scenario, scientifically.

“I think the data on the naturally occurring beaches is complicated because of differences in grain size,” Cockrum said. “Like this gets way into the weeds of finer grain olivine dissolves more quickly, and therefore releases or captures carbon more efficiently. So, there are differences between the sort of existing beaches that are out there and what we’re hoping to do in these different settings. This is another thing that we’re looking at paying close attention to when I talk about how efficient is carbon removal.”

Part of the funding for research has been provided from the Coastal Carbon Capture Development Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. The project monitoring is also being supported by University of North Carolina Greensboro, UNC Wilmington, and the Coastal Studies Institute at East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus. 

Vesta is promising to share monitoring results publicly, including with regulatory agencies, and will be published in peer-reviewed journals.

Vesta’s monitoring partners are already starting to get some data back, Cockrum said.

“We’re in the process of basically analyzing that data and figuring out the best way to share it,” he said.

One of the most important goals of the pilot project is for data to establish how much carbon is being removed, and how quickly. And if it’s as the researchers are hoping to see, olivine could be elevated from its modest mineral status to a savior of the planet. Or at least a natural helper. 

“So, we go from here to really honing in on what is the coastal protection benefit,” he said. “Just in general, the coastal protection industry, whether it’s the Corps or any number of communities, they’re all looking for different sediment sources. And so, our hope is that we can be an affordable source of sand for any number of coastal protection projects.”

Because of “strong petroleum smells” noted early Thursday, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore staff has temporarily expanded the boundaries of a previously closed section of Buxton beach adjacent to a former military site.

About 0.2 miles of beachfront where the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard had bases from 1956 until 2010 have remained closed since Sept. 1, 2023, “after naturally occurring barrier island erosion uncovered potentially hazardous infrastructure associated with the Navy and Coast Guard bases and visitors reported a strong smell of petroleum.” Since then, the park staff has been working with other agencies to mitigate the issue.

Staff said that over the past 24 to 36 hours, several feet of sand had washed away, exposing the soil and groundwater. The erosion uncovered a significant amount of hazardous remnant Navy and Coast Guard infrastructure, such as concrete, rebar, wires, PVC and metal pipes, metal fragments, and cables that have been left in the ground.

Around 8:30 a.m. Thursday, staff reminded visitors that the 0.3-mile-long section of beach was closed at what is now the Buxton Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, because the “soil and groundwater that is apparently contaminated with petroleum from historic military use of the site is now exposed to the beachfront during low tide, and wave action during high tide.”

About an hour later and after consulting Dare County Department of Health and Human services, staff said the closure had been expanded 0.25 miles south of the old lighthouse jetties. The closure includes the beach in front of the southern groin and the Old Lighthouse Beach parking areas.

“The odors were impacting the area due to the strong northeast winds and erosion which is apparently exposing historic petroleum contamination at the FUDS,” according to the 9:30 a.m. Thursday update.

Seashore staff reported the observed petroleum exposure to the National Response Center, operated by the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers and other state agencies that assist with pollution response. Staff also asked the interagency Regional Response Team, which coordinates response and provide technical advice during oil spills or pollution events, for help.

The closure may change over the coming days based on ongoing field observations and will update the public as information comes available, staff said.

Historical information about the former military site is at http://go.nps.gov/buxtonbeach. Recent and historical photos of the site are in the Buxton Beach Access photo album. 

North Carolina environmental organizations are celebrating a recent decision in a coastal North Carolina man’s challenge to remaining federal wetland protections under the Clean Water Act.

The case is ongoing.

Robert White of Pasquotank County, who operates various businesses in area, brought the case in March, challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings and seeking “to restore his own right to make use of his own land.” White seeks to operate a sand mine adjacent to Big Flatty Creek and near the Pasquotank River.

The Southern Environmental Law Center intervened in the case on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. Those nonprofit groups say White seeks to virtually eliminate federal protection of wetlands, after the U.S. Supreme Court nearly gutted existing protections last year in its Sackett v. EPA decision.

In January 2023, the EPA brought a civil enforcement action against White after he allegedly discharged pollutants into jurisdictional waters without a permit when he built and filled bulkheads in open water and wetlands, both marsh and forested, at his parcels on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. This enforcement action is ongoing. Last fall, White asked the court to stay an enforcement action pending against him. When that failed, White turned from defense to offense, as Boyle noted in his ruling.

White in April asked the court to preliminary enjoin federal agencies from enforcing Clean Water Act regulations as they pertain to him and his properties.

Related: Wildlife groups seek to intervene in Pasquotank man’s case

But Judge Terrence W. Boyle on June 17 issued a scathing decision for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina denying White’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

“White has failed to show that he is likely to succeed on the merits of either of his claims,” Boyle ruled.

“We are disappointed with the court’s ruling,” said Paige Gilliard, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing White in the case . “The Supreme Court was clear in Sackett that federal jurisdiction over wetlands requires both a continuous surface connection and indistinguishability from jurisdictional waters. The CWA regulates navigable waters, not land, so indistinguishability is a critical part of the Sackett test. The Amended Rule’s lip service to continuous surface connection is not enough under Sackett.”

The Pacific Legal Foundation represents challengers to environmental laws free of charge and “defends Americans’ liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse,” according to its website.

White had alleged that the “adjacent” wetlands provision in the new federal rule is inconsistent with the Sackett test for jurisdiction over wetlands. He asked the court to find the new rule unlawful and set it aside as “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion.” White contended for those same reasons that the new regulations exceeded the agencies’ statutory authority and must be set aside.

Boyle ruled that White failed to show that he was likely to suffer irreparable harm without a preliminary injunction, “that the balance of the equities tip in his favor; and that an injunction would be in the public interest. Boyle called that failure “fatal to his motion.”

Boyle ruled that “White’s challenge to the waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule that resulted from the Sackett decision, “smacks up against the Rule’s fidelity to ‘waters of the United States’ and Sackett’s test to determine when an adjacent wetland meets that definition.”

White faltered, Boyle ruled, by isolating a phrase in the Sackett decision “from its logical connection to the remainder of the opinion.” Boyle referenced the words of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., applying his “familiar admonition to a different context: White is thinking words not things. The thing that makes a wetland practically indistinguishable from an adjacent ‘water of the United States’ is the presence of a continuous surface connection. Thus, the Amended Rule faithfully conforms to the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ as interpreted by Sackett.”

Michael and Chantell Sackett, the people behind the case name, had purchased property in Idaho and began backfilling their lot so they could build a house. The EPA informed the Sacketts that their property included wetlands and they needed a permit because they were discharging pollutants into “waters of the United States.” The Sacketts sued, and after nearly 15 years their case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they prevailed.

In its 5-4 decision, the nation’s highest court ruled that “waters of the United States,” pertains to only wetlands that have “continuous surface connection.”

Advocates said the revised rule leaves water quality in North Carolina unprotected and increases the chance of flooding.

The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters said in May that White’s case “could finish killing off federal rules protecting wetlands.”

The Army Corps of Engineers is hosting a public meeting June 24 to discuss a proposed shoreline-stabilization project on federal lands along Snows Cut.

The Army Corps’ Wilmington District is preparing an environmental assessment of the anticipated effects associated with the planned project to stabilize areas of the erosion-battered shoreline.

Snows Cut is a man-made canal the Corps completed in the early 1930s as part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Severe erosion prompted New Hanover County to permanently close Snows Cut Park in 2021.

The hybrid meeting, which means it is being offered in-person and virtually, will part of the Corps’ scoping period for the project in which the public is requested to submit comments identifying substantial resources in the area, stakeholders who should be engaged in the project, and concerns associated with the proposed project area.

The assessment will cover all federal lands not previously stabilized, with the focus on more immediate construction in four areas west of Snows Cut Bridge.

The Corps said it is investigating multiple alternatives for shoreline stabilization and protection from erosion, as well as the no-action alternative.

The meeting Monday will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. in-person at the Carolina Beach State Park visitor center, 1010 State Park Road, and virtually by either attending online or by calling 844-800-7212 and dialing access code 199 645 0583. 

Comments will be received through July 8 to Justin Bashaw at justin.p.bashaw@usace.army.mil.

WILMINGTON – The dates may have changed, but the host of concerns raised over the past few years have not as the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s plan to deepen and widen Wilmington Harbor is cast back into the public spotlight.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District hosted Thursday its first public meeting since publishing a notice of intent that the agency is preparing an environmental study of the ports authority’s proposal to make room for larger container ships to get to and from the Wilmington port.

The Corps’ notice kickstarts the process in which the public can provide comments, be they questions, suggestions or concerns, on the proposed project.

“We wanted to get this feedback before we invested a lot in our analysis,” said Bret Walters, Wilmington District Planning and Environmental Branch chief. “This is the opportunity to weigh-in very early in the process.”

Walters was among several Army Corps officials on hand at the meeting last week in Sunset Park Elementary School in Wilmington to answer questions and discuss the project with members of the public.

The Corps hosted a series of virtual meetings the first week of this month, each day focusing on specific topics ranging from how material dredged from the channel might be used to how the project might affect cultural resources along the river.

Five years have passed since the ports authority announced its proposal to deepen the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet, widen the channel in multiple areas, and extend the ocean entrance to the Cape Fear River.

The ports authority maintains that the changes are needed to keep the Wilmington port, which is more than 25 miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, competitive with other East Coast ports by making room for larger container ships coming from Asia.

The changes would accommodate large vessels that can carry 14,000, 20-by-8-foot shipping containers that have been traveling through the Panama Canal since its expansion in 2016.

A plethora of concerns have been discussed about the proposed project over the past few years.

Environmental experts and advocates argue that deepening the channel could exacerbate saltwater intrusion through to the Northeast Cape Fear River and adjoining creeks, eradicate fish habitat, harm cultural resources, and disproportionately affect minority communities along the river.

During the virtual meetings held earlier this month, members of the public again posed those concerns to Army Corps officials, offering a new line of questioning about how disturbing the sediment in a river contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, could further affect its quality.

Carolina Beach resident Anne Terry called the proposed project “very frightening.”

“The fish habitat would be ruined,” she said. “There’ll be erosion. Economically it just isn’t going to make any sense. And, it’s never going to be deep enough. I just don’t run into anybody that thinks this makes sense.”

But the ports authority predicts more cargo will be shipped to the Wilmington port, regardless of the size of the vessels transporting that cargo.

“That cargo is going to come here anyway,” Walter said in one of the virtual meetings hosted at the beginning of June.

That means, if the channel is not deepened, there will be a rise in the frequency of ships traveling to and from the port.

In 2019, then-Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works R.D. James rejected the ports authority’s initial draft study, saying it needed significant revisions before he would pass along his recommendation to Congress for approval.

James approved an updated study the following year, and the proposed project was later conditionally authorized by Congress.

If the Corps’ recommends the conditionally authorized plan to dredge to 47 feet, then that plan will not have to go back to Congress for approval.

Other alternatives to be studied include either no action, which means the current depth and width of the channel would not be changed, or dredging to a depth of 46 feet.

If the Corps recommends an alternative aside from the conditionally authorized plan, then that recommendation will have to go to Congress for approval.

It would be several years before dredging would begin after — or if — the Corps recommends the project.

The public has through July 22 to submit comments to the Corps, which has provided a list of considerations people consider in their comments, including suggestions related to the evaluation of impacts to resources, concerns for themselves and their communities, resources that should be evaluated in the draft environmental impact statement, potential project opportunities, suggestions to alternatives being evaluated in the study, data, studies or reports that would support the analysis in the study, and any information missing in the study.

Once a draft environmental impact statement is released, the Corps will open a 45-day public comment period on that study. The public review and comment period is expected to open in late 2025.

A final environmental impact statement is projected to be released fall 2026.

Public comments may be submitted via any one of the following ways:

• Online.
• Email WilmingtonHarbor403@usace.army.mil.
• Mail to: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington Harbor 403, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC  28403.

If North Carolina beaches are going to keep up their tug-of-war with the sea to maintain robust ocean shores, they’re going to need sand and a lot of it.

But, in an era when mining sand and pumping it onto beaches has become a go-to means of fortifying shores against erosion and storms, finding that just-right type of sand and enough of it for the foreseeable future might prove to be quite the challenge for many of the state’s coastal communities.

The dilemma is that beneath the surface of the vast Atlantic Ocean stretching from our shores, the amount of prized “beach-quality” sand needed to replenish them is finite.

There are, “critical sand shortages” across regions off North Carolina’s coast, according to a 2020 study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM.

Federal agencies are being asked to look elsewhere and explore potential untapped sand sources beyond the boundaries of state waters, miles and miles out to the outer continental shelf.

In return, those agencies are relaying a message to coastal communities throughout the country – it’s time to stop thinking about individual project needs and focus on a more regional approach if you want to keep putting sand on your beaches.

“We’re seeing this challenge through the South Atlantic region, call it ‘sand wars’ or ‘competing uses of the same resource,’” said Doug Piatkowski, a physical scientist with BOEM’s Office of Strategic Resources. “There’s a real need to start thinking about what we do know about offshore resource availability and then how we maximize use in a more holistic way, systems’ say, so that we can optimize what little resource we have.”

A century of coastal engineering

Little more than a century has passed since the first U.S. beach got sand from offshore to replump its eroded shoreline.

Since 1923, when Coney Island, New York, officially became the birthplace of the engineered beach, more than 1.5 billion cubic yards of sand has been dredged and injected onto the shores of some 475 communities in the country.

More than 3,200 sand projects have been completed on beaches from California to Florida to New York over the course of the last 100 years. Many of the communities that account for that number have renourished their beaches multiple times, according to the South Atlantic Coastal Study.

North Carolina is one of six coastal states that has placed a large portion of that total sand volume — more than 80% — on its shores, according to a beach nourishment study published in January 2021.

Carolina Beach has the distinction of being the first to have a federal beach erosion-control project completed in 1964.

Since then, the Army Corps has authorized dozens of federal projects, which entail routine sand nourishment throughout a period of 50 years.

Between 2010 and 2020, a total of 37 million cubic yards of sand was placed on U.S. beaches each year, according to the South Atlantic Coastal Study.

In the South Atlantic region, more than 1.3 billion cubic yards of sand is required to support the region’s 50-year sand needs. More than 1.56 million cubic yards of sand resources have been identified to fill those needs.

An evolving theme ‘many aren’t talking about’

That sand surplus isn’t expected to last.

“While regional sand resources are greater than documented sand needs as of today, economically viable long-term sources are limited in many areas across the region,” according to the study.

The South Atlantic study, also referred to as Sand Availability and Needs Determination, or SAND, was the first in which the Corps was given funding to do a regional assessment of sand needs.

It found that sand shortages were documented in every state within the Corps’ South Atlantic Division and identified “critical sand shortages” in regions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi.

“If we were to continue at the rate that we’re going … we have a lot of work to do to figure out kind of this supply-and-demand assessment, realizing with climate change and increased storm frequency and this continued demand for sand that we’ve got to do a better job at assessing where this resource availability is, what conflicts may exist in their use and then, over this next 50-year horizon, really have a more realistic understanding of availability and what we can do in terms of meeting the resilience plans to address the need,” Piatkowski said.

Now, more than ever, it is important to recognize these regions are all within one system, he said.

It’s an “evolving theme that many aren’t talking about,” Piatkowski said.

But that isn’t to say that all beach communities are behind the regional-thinking curve.

Carteret County, for example, is considered a leader in its long-term management of available sand options to meet the needs for all of Bogue Banks. The 25-mile-long barrier island is home to Atlantic Beach, Indian Beach, Pine Knoll Shores, Salter Path and Emerald Isle.

And Dare County is starting to think longer-term and look more broadly at its potential sediment availability options, Piatkowski said.

“This is something that BOEM’s trying to kind of message to the coastal stakeholder communities that, ‘Look, it’s beginning to be a scenario where you’ve got multiple interests and multiple needs all within one system and we need to be smarter about figuring out the dynamics of what is the underlying geology for the sediment that we do have. Why is it there? What are the transport processes in the location that we’re dredging it from?’ And then, where we’re placing it because, at the end of the day, if two beaches are connected, that sediment is ultimately moving in that system,” Piatkowski said.

Sand-challenged Long Bay

To understand the complexities faced by beach communities that face critical shortages in sand nourishment sources look no further than Brunswick County.

According to the South Atlantic study, Brunswick County has a sand deficit of nearly 30 million cubic yards.

That’s because Long Bay is essentially a sand-starved area, one where there are vulnerable coastlines in need of hardy sand borrow sources.

“Due to the nature and location of the beaches, it’s more likely to find rock or clay material rather than beach-quality sand,” said Jed Cayton, public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District, in an email response to Coastal Review.

Frying Pan Shoals, an area off the seaward southeastern side of Bald Head Island with millions and millions of yards of sediment sand, is federally recognized as essential fish habitat. That designation has kept it from being tapped as a sand borrow source.

That has made Jay Bird Shoals, which is near the mouth of the Cape Fear River, a dredging hotspot for Brunswick beaches and, in recent years, the subject of growing contention between towns vying for sand security.

The town of Oak Island earlier this year received pushback from neighboring beach towns for including the inner ocean bar at the mouth of the river as a secondary sand source in its application for a beach nourishment project. The Brunswick beach town hopes to kick off the project this winter.

Oak Island is requesting to place up to 3 million cubic yards of sand along its 9-mile-long beach from a primary source some 18 miles offshore.

Oak Island’s project is estimated to cost $40 million. The town is awaiting a decision on the permit application.

The secondary source identified in Oak Island’s initial application is between Caswell Beach and Bald Head Island, which each argue that sand is crucial to their nourishment efforts.

In a board of commissioners meeting earlier this year, Caswell Beach Town Manager Joseph Pierce told board members, “If they pull that much sand from that area, our concern is that erosion is going to affect our east end, as well as Bald Head Island. There is a huge hole down there now where sand will continue to fall in, and it will affect both beaches,” The State Port Pilot reported.

Oak Island amended its Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit last month and removed its request to use the inner ocean bar as a secondary source.

The Corps and BOEM are currently studying a longer-term coastal storm risk management project for Oak Island. That study is projected to be completed in the fall of 2027.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers next month is hosting a series of public meetings about the Wilmington Harbor deepening project.

Officials with the Corps’ Wilmington District will present information about the conditionally authorized project to deepen the harbor channel to a depth of 47 feet through four virtual public meetings, followed by an in-person meeting.

The meetings are being hosted to educate participants on “when and how to engage, the type of input that will be helpful, and have adequate project information,” according to a Corps release.

The Corps and North Carolina State Ports Authority have partnered to conduct an evaluation of technical and policy concerns raised in a May 2020 review of the port authority’s February 2020 Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, feasibility study. That study resulted in conditional authorization in Section 403 of WRDA.

The evaluation, referred to as a letter report, and environmental impact statement are estimated to cost $85 million and take about four years to complete.

Virtual public meetings will be held between 1-3 p.m. and include specific topics on the following dates:

• June 4: Plan formulation, National Environmental Policy Act, cultural resources, social effects, and economics.
• June 5: Ecological resources.
• June 6: Physical resources.
• June 7: Beneficial use of dredged material.

An in-person meeting will be hosted 3-7 p.m. June 13 at Sunset Park Elementary School, 613 Alabama Ave., Wilmington.

Virtual meeting links, information about the project and how to submit comments can be found on the Wilmington District’s website.

HATTERAS ISLAND – The Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday it had finished removing a pipe at the former Navy base here, but officials are still awaiting results from soil sampling to determine their next steps in the cleanup.

The Corps’ Savannah District announced that contractors at the Buxton Naval Facility Formerly Used Defense Sites property completed their work Friday after removing 70 to 80 feet of pipe and liquids it contained as well as those in surrounding soil.

Results from the soil sampling, once processed, are to be shared with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality for coordination on how to proceed.

The Corps said it was also performing an internal review of its investigations to date through the Environmental and Munitions Center of Expertise. 

“The Savannah District is committed to keeping the community informed about the status of our investigative work at the Buxton FUDS project,” said Col. Ron Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander. “Once we receive the results and determine the next steps, we will provide an update through a news release and the project’s webpage.”

A Hatteras Island resident in September alerted Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials about strong diesel fumes and a sheen on the water near the old Navy base after Hurricane Idalia. Superintendent Dave Hallac reached out to the Savannah District to report organic material with a petroleum odor had washed up on the beach during this time.

The Corps sent teams in September, October, November, December and February to collect soil samples, perform borings, dig test pits, and take air samples, to identify the source. 

The Corps said that it had discovered a pipe in February after further beach erosion that it identified as a potential source. The Corps awarded a contract earlier this month to remove the pipe and sample the surrounding soil.

There’s a webpage for the former Buxton Naval Facility FUDS property at Buxton FUDS with access to a contact email for questions about the site, frequently asked questions, the September 2023-February 2024 Final Summary Report of Findings as well as facts related to the site and other Savannah District’s FUDS properties and projects.

BUXTON  — Two Army Corps of Engineers officials who oversee environmental pollution cleanup at a former Navy base at Cape Hatteras met Tuesday evening with area residents to address their frustration about intermittent petroleum odors and exposed infrastructure debris on the eroded beach near the site.

“Sometimes you see things there, and a day later they’re covered up,” Col. Ronald Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander, told attendees at Dare County’s Fessenden Center. “It is certainly a complex site, a very unique situation down here.”   

As part of Sturgeon’s duties with the Corps, he is in charge of the Savannah District’s Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, program in the Southeast that has previously removed storage tanks and 4,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated soil at the former submarine survey operation in Buxton, as well as groundwater remediation and continued monitoring. The Corps was designated in 1991 to take responsibility for environmental restoration of the site.

Although the area is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore — the landowner — the debris and apparent contamination are remnants of two military bases that operated from 1956 to 2010, first by the Navy and then the Coast Guard. Increasingly severe coastal erosion has unburied remains of base structures, including septic systems and pipes sticking out of dunes where there’s been escarpment.

Since a series of late summer storms, there have been periodic reports from the public of a strong diesel smell at Buxton Beach, as well as evidence of petroleum-contaminated soil, an oily sheen on the nearshore ocean waters, and expanding amounts of concrete, rebar and pipes exposed on the shoreline. In September, the National Park Service closed 0.3 miles of beach near the end of Old Lighthouse Road.

Sturgeon said a FUDS team has come to the site repeatedly since September. Most recently on Monday, May 13, when contractors removed a suspect pipe from the beach and collected samples from surrounding soil. Results were expected within 10 days.

If the sampling shows contamination, he said, additional funds will be requested.

Glenn Marks, chief of reimbursable programs and project management at the Corps’ Savannah District, said about 70 to 80 feet of pipe was removed as part of the $525,000 project.

When asked by an attendee about who “the onus falls on” to remove from the beach the chunks of foundation and other remains of the Navy base, Sturgeon said that the FUDS regulation does not provide the authority or funding.

“If there is not environmental hazards out there, how are we as a collective group going to take care of this?” he responded. “The U.S. Corps of Engineers has never received direct funding for that. The (Corps) would have a hand in that if funding was provided by the landowners.”

According to the National Park Service, its permit issued to the Navy in 1956 required that all structures, including foundations, be removed and that the 50-acre site would be cleaned up when the Navy ceased operations in 1982. In addition, its 1991 agreement with the Coast Guard, the agency said, obligated the Coast Guard to remove structures, restore the landscape, conduct a hazardous materials survey and take responsibility for any necessary mitigation and/or cleanup. Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras was operating in Buxton from 1984 through 2010, when the base relocated to Fort Macon.

But as far as current cleanup obligations and responsibilities, details about who, what and when have become a bureaucratic muddle. There are also the complications created by the remove of decades and quickly changing conditions from rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion.  

The Coast Guard and the Corps, however, have worked closely with Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials to resolve the issues and determine appropriate funding and authorization options, said Superintendent David Hallac.

“We are looking forward to a complete remediation of this site,” he told the community members. “I am proud we have good partners.”

Even though all three parties are part of the federal government, each bumps up against the other’s rigid regulatory strictures, tight budgets and staff shortages, and legal fuzziness. The old Navy base, for instance, is no longer part of the Navy, but its cleanup is still managed under the Department of Defense, and it is now the Corps’ FUDS baby.

The Coast Guard, however, while military-adjacent, is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Defense Department. And the National Park Service is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, a huge federal agency with management concerns centered on conservation of natural resources and recreational areas, such as Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

To complicate matters further, Hallac said some Coast Guard structures are actually on top of Navy building foundations.

“I think the most important thing is we’re not going to stop working till we get all this debris off the beach,” he said. “The take-home message is there’s a lot of debris under the sand and it all has to be removed.”

Related: Park Service urges public to avoid debris on Rodanthe beach

The Coast Guard had completed an environmental site assessment in 2008 and a soil assessment for the onsite wastewater facility in 2010, according to the National Park Service.

Although polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, metals, pesticides and other contaminants above acceptable Environmental Protection Agency standards were found in the soil, remediation through the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation, and Liabilities Act, or CERCLA, process was not done at the two affected drain fields, according to the Park Service said.

In 2021, Hallac reached out to the Coast Guard, which restarted the survey work, taking numerous water and soil samples across 32 acres at the site, said Joseph Lambert, an environmental engineer with the Coast Guard’s Cleveland Engineering Unit, during a brief interview after the meeting. A report on the findings is currently being reviewed and is expected to be finalized this summer.

Coast Guard Sector North Carolina Capt. Timothy List, who also participated in Tuesday’s information session, said that the scope of contamination is not yet clearly defined, but that the Coast Guard intends to do its part, while also working with its partners, to clean up the site.

“We’re here to continue for the long haul,” he told attendees.

It remains unclear why the cleanup and removal work required under the Navy and Coast Guard permits was not completed.

Marks said that his understanding is that the Navy permit is expired, although he didn’t explain what effect that would have on the conditions that had been stipulated.

“I cannot speak for what the Navy signed up for or did not sign up for,” he said.

Julie Youngman, senior attorney with Southern Environmental Law Center, noted during the public comment portion of the meeting that any similar pollution or debris sullying a more prominent national park such as Yellowstone “wouldn’t be there a week.”

Referring to a provision in the Department of Defense manual, “Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) Management,” Youngman asked the Corps’ representatives whether they had asked their bosses about trying to qualify the unique Cape Hatteras situation for special consideration.

According to the “Petition for Eligibility” on page 18 of the manual, “… in exceptional cases, a DoD Component may petition the … Environmental Management Directorate … for clarification or approval to consider a specific activity as an eligible environmental restoration activity.”

Responded Marks: “I’ll commit to looking into it and having me and the lawyers look into it and see if that holds water.”

In an April 30 letter from Kyle Lewis, an environmental attorney for the Corps’ Savannah District, answering an inquiry from Youngman and North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said that the Corps’ authority to remove the “remnant” and unsafe structures is limited to what existed at the time the Navy left the site. 

“The infrastructure that is currently being exposed by erosion was sound when transferred out of DoD control in 1982; therefore such structures are not eligible to be addressed under the FUDS Program,” Lewis wrote.

The state Department of Environmental Quality and Dare County Department of Health and Human Services also have been working with the agency partners to urge action on the cleanup and to keep the public informed.

Meanwhile, as residents reminded the officials, whether because of regulatory or funding constraints, the public beach in their community — a favorite spot to surf and swim and stroll at Cape Hatteras National Seashore — is still littered with ugly and dangerous chunks of concrete and rebar and stinks of diesel, and it’s all because of the infrastructure and contaminants that the Navy and the Coast Guard left behind.

One man named Michael who owns a vacation house near the closed beach lamented that his rental income is now “nonexistent.”

“So we can’t rent the house, we can’t sell the house, we can’t live in the house,” he said.

Trip Forman, co-founder of REAL Watersports in Waves on Hatteras Island, said during the public comment period that the negative message about the situation has become a blight on tourism.

“Something needs to be done to resolve this,” Forman said “There’s a lot of cancellations. There’s a lot of negative press. It’s spinning out of control.”

The Corps will establish a restoration advisory board, a public forum for sharing information with the community, for the Buxton site within a year, Marks, with the Corps, said. 

Dare County officials also promised to stay involved and keep the public informed about the situation.

“We’re committed to see this through,” said Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard.

CHAPEL HILL — Environmental organizations are seeking to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by a North Carolina commercial seafood business operator that they contend seeks to virtually eliminate remaining federal wetlands protections that were dramatically scaled back last year.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said Wednesday it had filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina a motion to intervene and memorandum in the case, which it says could strip provisions that protect waterways that support fishing, hunting and outdoor recreation and undermine their related economies. The law center is representing the National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation.

The case was brought in March by Robert White of Pasquotank County. White is challenging what he contends are illegal provisions in Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers rulings “to restore his own right to make use of his own land,” according to his attorneys, and to ensure both agencies comply with — and courts apply — the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that dramatically narrowed Clean Water Act protections.

Pacific Legal Foundation, which specializes in property rights cases, is representing White, who plans to operate a sand mine on river-adjacent land he owns. Pacific Legal said the Supreme Court’s decision requires that wetlands must be indistinguishable from navigable waters to be regulated. “Land such as Robert’s, which does not bear this connection to the two waterways — cannot be subject to federal regulation under the Clean Water Act.”

The nonprofit law firm known for property rights advocacy contends that the high court’s 5-4 majority opinion in Sackett v. EPA held that the Clean Water Act extends to only wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are “waters of the United States.” Pacific Legal lawyers had successfully represented Chantell and Mike Sackett in their dispute with the EPA.

“Last term in Sackett the Supreme Court made clear that the Clean Water Act forbids the type of wetlands regulation at issue in Mr. White’s case,” Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Charles Yates said in a statement in response to Coastal Review’s query. “That the Clean Water Act only authorizes the regulation of wetlands that are ‘indistinguishable’ from covered waters, is beyond dispute. Yet rather than adhering to Sackett’s rule, the Agencies have doubled down and are transparently seeking to evade the judgment of the highest court in the land. All Mr. White seeks is a declaration that, per Sackett, the Agencies may no longer regulate his property. The interveners in this case are unsatisfied with the statute Congress actually passed and the Supreme Court’s ruling insisting that it means what it says; the proper audience for their complaints is the legislative branch.”

Pacific Legal said that White owns “low-lying,” flood-prone land on Big Flatty Creek and the Pasquotank River. Seeking to make improvements to minimize flooding and for business endeavors including agriculture and sand mining, White became engaged in permitting disputes with the EPA and the Corps regarding the “navigable waters” provision in the Clean Water Act.

He faces “crushing civil enforcement action,” according to Pacific Legal.

The Southern Environmental Law Center said the relief the plaintiff seeks would effectively write most wetlands out of the Clean Water Act.

“A ruling adopting this extreme view could have devastating effects on waters in North Carolina and throughout the nation,” said Mark Sabath, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “Wetlands are vital to help protect drinking water supplies, wildlife and fisheries, and our communities from flooding. If the wetlands along our coastal waters like the Albemarle Sound are developed and destroyed, communities will be wrecked by job loss, wildlife loss, and flooding.”

The National Wildlife Federation and the North Carolina Wildlife Federation say that the ruling stands to have large economic repercussions. They say healthy fish and wildlife depend on clean water, and that valuable waterways threatened by the lawsuit support fishing, hunting, and outdoor recreation, as well as the jobs these activities sustain. They contend that the clean water that hunters, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts expect is a pillar in a $788 billion outdoor recreation industry.

“We care about the water quality and wetlands of North Carolina for both people and wildlife,” said Tim Gestwicki, CEO of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. “We cannot protect fisheries if the wetlands and streams flowing into estuaries are polluted or destroyed. We cannot ensure that critical wildlife habitat is preserved for fishing, hunting, birdwatching, and outdoor recreation if wetland protections are weakened.”

The groups say nearly all of the commercial catch and over half of the recreational harvest in the Southeast are fish and shellfish that depend on wetlands, and wetlands provide important flood protection for communities.

“What the plaintiff in this case is seeking could make it more difficult to protect wetlands and other waters that are critical to fish, waterfowl, shellfish, and other wildlife, and allow widespread destruction and degradation of those critically important waters along with pollution and flooding downstream,” said Jim Murphy, senior director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. “Strong Clean Water Act protections safeguard critical wetlands and other waters that sustain our nation’s wildlife and people.” 

White is currently facing a separate federal enforcement action for building and filling a bulkhead on wetlands without a permit on his property on the Pasquotank River and Big Flatty Creek. His attorney did not respond to questions pertaining to that case.

BUXTON — The Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday that it is taking action related to intermittent evidence of petroleum odors and sheen at a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach.

In a press release from the Savanah District Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, program, the Corps said it will remove a pipe and sample surrounding soil to determine if it is the potential source of the petroleum.

After months of on-and-off reports from the public of strong diesel fuel odors and sheen present on the beach and in the ocean, the National Park Service told the FUDS office that a suspect pipe was observed on an eroded section of beach, the release said.

The Corps is working in partnership with the park service as part of an ongoing cleanup and investigation of pollutants related to former bases at the site that had been used by the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard.

A contract to remove the pipe and test the soil is expected to be awarded by September, with work likely beginning by late 2024 or early 2025, the FUDS release said.

About a third of a mile of Buxton Beach has been closed for months because of the petroleum contamination concern and increasing amounts of debris exposed after a series of storms. Huge slabs of concrete, wires and other infrastructure remains now litter the national seashore where the old Navy base had once stood.

The FUDS program does not provide the authority or the funding under the Department of Defense law covering the debris removal, the Corps said. The program has previously removed petroleum pollutants from the former Navy site.

“All FUDS Program remediation efforts are authorized by Congress and are restricted to cleaning up properties formerly owned by, leased to, or otherwise possessed by the United States and transferred outside DoD control prior to Oct. 17, 1986,” according to the release.

“The FUDS Program may only address restoration activities which are determined to be the result of DoD activities,” the statement said. “However, the remnant infrastructures, exposed on the beach after storm erosion, are not eligible for removal under the FUDS Program, as those structures were not in an unsafe condition at the time the site was transferred out of DoD control.”

As part of the pipe removal contract, the Corps will establish a Restoration Advisory Board, which “serves as a forum for discussion and exchange of information between agencies and affected communities,” the statement said.

Also, a summary report that is currently under review will be posted to the Savannah District website when completed.

“The Army Corps of Engineers is committed to advancing remediation efforts authorized under the FUDS program to protect the health and well-being of communities and the environment,” the release said.

 Questions for the FUDS Program team members can be addressed to cesas-FUDS@usace.army.mil, with ‘Buxton FUDS’ in the subject line. To learn more about the project, visit Buxton FUDS.

New Hanover County beaches could again mine sand from nearby inlets to nourish their oceanfront shores under a proposed law recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill would exempt a handful of federal coastal storm risk management projects on the East Coast from a rule that prohibits local governments from tapping sand sources they have historically used within the Coastal Barrier Resources System.

The proposed law would apply only to projects that have been pumping sand from borrow sources within the federally protected system for more than 15 years. Those include Masonboro Island at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach Inlet at Carolina Beach, an inlet in South Carolina and one in New Jersey.

H.R. 524, introduced by Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., in January 2023, would also return the use of federal funds for projects that use sand within a Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, unit to nourish adjacent beaches outside of the system.

“This legislation allows these beaches to continue to use their historic borrow sites for protection from storm damage, maintain their natural ecosystems, and protect our local economy,” Rouzer stated in a press release following the House’s April 11 passage of the bill.

The bill is now with the Senate environment and public works committee.

Proponents of the bill argue that allowing projects that had for years used sand within the system to nourish nearby beaches reduces costs and ecological impacts.

“It’s an opportunity to recycle sand. It’s an opportunity to reduce potential environmental impacts. And, it’s an opportunity to reduce federal and local expenditures,” said New Hanover County Shore Protection Coordinator Layton Bedsole. “I think Wilmington had been in compliance 20 years before CBRA was written and we haven’t encouraged development in sensitive coastal locations like inlet shoulders. That’s a major tenant in CBRA.”

Congress passed CBRA, pronounced “cobra,” in 1982 to discourage building on relatively undeveloped, storm-prone barrier islands by cutting off federal funding and financial assistance, including federal flood insurance. The act was also established to minimize damage to fish, wildlife and other resources associated with coastal barrier islands.

Last May, Matthew Strickler, deputy assistant secretary for the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Parks, expressed the current administration’s objections to H.R. 524 in his testimony before the House natural resources committee.

Using federal funds to move sand dredged within the system to an area outside of it “is considered counter to CBRA’s purposes,” he said referring to the Coastal Barrier Resource System, or CBRS.

“While some of the sand taken from CBRS units for beach renourishment activities may return to the unit over time, the overall impacts of dredging in these areas protected by CBRA are detrimental to coastal species and their habitats,” Strickler said.

But proponents of the bill argue that years of monitoring these inlets prove otherwise.

“We’re in a situation where Mother Nature brings sand down our beach into an engineered borrow site and then we recycle it back up on the beach in the next three or four years. That’s ideal. We’re recycling rather than mining. We’ve got consistency that works for us that we can work with,” Bedsole said.

December 2023: Sand nourishment to begin in Wrightsville Beach

Wrightsville Beach was using the rich, beach-quality sand routinely pumped from Banks Channel and placing that material on its ocean shore for roughly two decades before CBRA was enacted.

In the mid-1990s, the Army Corps of Engineers permanently allowed the town to use Masonboro Inlet as a sand borrow source, shielding the town from ongoing debates over the interpretation of the law as it pertains to whether sand within a CBRS unit may be dredged and placed onto a beach outside of a CBRA zone.

By 2019, then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt determined that federal funds could be used to pay for dredging sand with CBRS units and placing that sand on beaches outside of those zones for shoreline-stabilization projects.

A year later, the National Audubon Society challenged Bernhardt’s interpretation in a lawsuit filed against the former secretary, the interior department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The organization argued the interpretation “vastly expands potential sand mining projects” within areas protected in the system.

The Biden administration overturned the rule in 2021 and Audubon agreed to drop its lawsuit.

The new interpretation forced beach towns that had historically used sand from CBRA zones to look offshore.

Facing exponentially higher costs and an offshore borrow site scattered with old tires broken free from an artificial reef, the town was given an emergency exception by the Corps to get sand from the inlet. That project, which pumped roughly 1.04 million cubic yards of sand onto Wrightsville’s beach, wrapped in mid-March.

The cost to use sand dredged from the inlets is substantially lower than pumping sand from an offshore borrow site.

The last time Carolina Beach tapped the inlet borrow site for sand to place on its ocean shoreline the bid tab was $5 a yard.

“The current project came from the offshore borrow area, as it has, was $11 and some change a yard,” Bedsole said. “It just costs more to go offshore.”

Bids are expected to go out this spring for Carolina and Kure beaches’ nourishment projects, which as of now will use sand from an offshore borrow site.

How that sand might affect the channel Carolina Beach used for years as a sand source has raised concerns among beach town officials.

“We have pulled sand out of that inlet for pretty much my entire life,” said Carolina Beach Mayor Lynn Barbee. “We know what the environmental impacts are. They’re very minimal. We haven’t seen any sort of erosion because of taking that out of there. We haven’t seen any impacts to wildlife, ever, so it’s hard to see what the harm is. What we’ve been doing in the inlet is the borrow pit fills up and we pump that sand out every three years onto the beach and then it drifts back in and fills up and we pump it back out. That seems intuitively better than going out offshore and basically running a sand mine underwater and disturbing what was natural out there.”

Another issue, he said, is how sand pumped onto the beach from the offshore site may affect the inlet, one heavily used by boaters and offers the fastest route for first responders to get into the water.

Barbee said the town has seen “unprecedented” shoaling in Carolina Beach Inlet since it began using the offshore borrow site.

“We have really struggled to keep that open,” he said. “We’ve seen the cost to keep the inlet open go up. If in fact our theory is correct, where else would that sand have come from if it wasn’t introduced from the offshore borrow pit. You’re introducing a new sand source into the traditional system. Certainly, anecdotally, we didn’t have this problem, we do something different, now we do have the problem. It doesn’t seem like it’s a huge leap.”

Barbee said the hope is that the bill will become law before the next project begins.

“If not, we have three more years of these elevated costs, and then we’re just putting more and more sand in the system, and the worry is that when does it become too much?” he said.

BUXTON — Surfers catching waves off a Hatteras Island beach last week had reported a sheen on the water, burning in their eyes and a noxious coating on their wetsuits. Numerous people noticed a powerful stench of diesel on the shoreline by the popular surfing spot in Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Although a similar strong odor was evident after an October storm at the same beach in washed-up clumps of peat, the source of the pollutant is still a mystery.

“We cannot address contamination if we don’t know where the contamination is,” Carl Dokter, program manager of the Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District’s Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, told Coastal Review on Thursday. “And every attempt we’ve made to drill some holes and find it reveals no peat, no organic layers, no diesel — just clean samples.”

Back in the fall, Dokter said in an interview, that since there had been fuel spills at the nearby former Buxton Naval Base that FUDS has remediated, in addition to removing tanks and contaminated soil in the early 2000s, the office had agreed in recent months to remove any remaining petroleum contamination. But with the ever-changing conditions at the beach, and the intermittent recurrence of the diesel odor, its origin has so far evaded detection by the team’s instruments.

In fact, Dokter said, when his team had gone to Buxton to investigate, the only place that tested positive for petroleum was washed-up sediment on the beach.

“Then our geologists looked for the peat layer,” he recounted in the interview last week. “And they explained to me that the beach has eroded about 30 feet vertically and 150 feet horizontally over the decades. So the peat layer, which you can see at the base of the dunes, has long since eroded away.”

During a visit on Wednesday at the Buxton beach, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac noted that the diesel odor was clearly most powerful in the vicinity of a slab of concrete debris exposed in the surf zone. Even with breezy conditions that day at the oceanfront, the smell was potent and offensive.

Pointing to a pipe protruding from a nearby eroded dune, Hallac said that the odor was also discernible from whatever had been in the pipe. He later added that results received on Friday from an independent laboratory indicate evidence of the fuel. The test, commissioned by the park, detected TPH (total petroleum hydrocarbons) and DRO (diesel range organics) above “state action” levels, Hallac said.

Soil samples the Coast Guard took in Buxton in September revealed weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and nonpetroleum contamination, according to a press release.

Looking back: Navy base’s wretched reminders not just petroleum in soils

Before the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was relocated from the surf in 1999, the nation’s tallest brick tower had stood guard since 1870 from the same beach. From 1956 to 1982, just to the north, the Navy had operated a secret submarine surveillance base, which the Coast Guard acquired in 1986. When Group Cape Hatteras relocated in 2005 to Fort Macon in Carteret County, the Coast Guard was required to remove infrastructure on the base before returning the property to the National Park Service.

As has become more apparent as erosion increases and unpleasant surprises are unburied, lots of stuff was left behind: building debris, toxins from dumped pesticides, and contaminants from spilled and leaking fuel containers.

The Coast Guard was still in the process of responding to questions from Coastal Review about its current and past responsibilities and activities in Buxton, according to an email Thursday from Jonathan Lally, with Coast Guard 5th District public affairs.

Chunks of concrete with wires sticking through, various sizes of pipes and portions of concrete foundation from what was once the Driftwood Club, where sailors gathered to drink and socialize, and Building 19, the terminal “T” building where the listening cable was believed to be, now litter the beach. Just off the sand in the nearshore, surfers have to evade metal parts of several deteriorating jetties the Navy built that stick up in the water. And the Coast Guard and FUDS are still monitoring groundwater, conducting tests and/or working to remove contaminated soils related to operations at the bases.

“Every time there’s a storm, more stuff gets exposed,” said Russell Blackwood, a surfer and free diver who has lived by what is known locally as Lighthouse Beach for 50 years. “Then in a day or two or three after a storm, it covers it right back up.”

Blackwood also worked at the Navy base in the 1970s. He theorized in a recent interview that the military had redundant diesel tanks under the T building, and the fuel is pushed up during storms.

“It only comes out of the tanks when there’s ocean water over them,” he said. “You’d go there when there’s no swell, at low tide, and you’d barely smell it.”

But around Feb. 7, after heavy weather, in addition to the seawater-fuel mix looking “milky-gray” and the sheen on top of the water, he said, “you couldn’t even breathe.”

Despite beach nourishment projects in 2017 and 2022, Blackwood said, severe erosion in the last 18 months has undone much of it, especially by Lighthouse Beach.

“It’s gone,” he said. “There is no dune.”

According to the Corps’ December 2023 Buxton Naval Facility report and proposed soil survey map, seven above-ground storage tanks, 27 underground storage tanks, an oil change ramp, a pipeline between a building and a tank, and soil in several areas were removed in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition, groundwater had been sampled repeatedly and monitoring wells were installed.

The Corps’ FUDS offices are responsible for environmental liabilities at sites that were owned, operated or controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense before Oct. 17, 1986.

Dokter, with FUDS, said that his office is continuing to work with the National Park Service and the state Department of Environmental Quality on how to tackle the problem. A team went to the site last week, and a field report on the December work is due within weeks.

“We’re trying to look into every possible source for where this is coming from,” Dokter said. “But the dilemma I’m facing the most is, I can’t remove something I can’t find. And that’s where our big frustration lies right now.”

The Corps team is even considering whether the fuel is coming from prior spills offshore. If the problem continues, he added, “at that point, I have to sit down with my with my technical team and probably reach out to our center of expertise and discuss options.”

But Dokter said the pipe to which Hallac is referring is an unlikely source because it wouldn’t account for the volume of fuel that has been reported.

Hallac also said that the National Seashore is asking the Corps to follow through on the cleanup that was supposed to have been wrapped up years ago.

“And so the concern is that the project was not completed and we continue to request that the Army Corps of Engineers remove the building foundations consistent with the plans that were provided to us in 1985 and 1986,” he said.

Dokter, however, said his “hands are tied,” at least for now.

“Because our program and policy states that we address things that were a hazard at the time, hazards that arise after it was transferred out of Department of Defense control are not eligible for FUDS funding,” Dokter said. “And so each erosion creating that hazard over time, since it was transferred out of DOD control, I’m just legally not allowed to pay to fix that.”

Despite the challenges, Hallac said that he is confident that the situation will be addressed, preferably sooner rather than later.

No matter, as Blackwood sees it, the fuel will just keep coming back to remind everyone that nothing is being done.

“I guarantee you, next time we get a north swell, it’ll be back,” Blackwood said. “When the surf gets to 6 feet, that’s when they need to come here. They need to camp here.”

Cape Lookout National Seashore Superintendent Jeff West has been watching for weeks as a Louisiana-based company gets ready at the seashore’s visitor center on Harkers Island to begin maintenance dredging in the nearby waterways.

Next Generation Logistics, the company contracted for the work, will not only make the channels to the federally protected barrier islands safter and more accessible, but the suitable sand that’s dredged during the project will be used for beach nourishment to protect Cape Lookout Lighthouse and nearby historic structures from continual, soundside erosion.

Army Corps of Engineers Public Affairs Specialist Emily Winget said Wednesday that the company, which was awarded the contract in November for $6.9 million, plans to mobilize two cutter-suction pipeline dredges to work on this contract and had planned to begin work by the end of January.

But because of issues, like weather impacts to mobilization, the contract has not started dredging, she said. “We anticipate that dredging will start next week,” referring to the week of Feb. 5.

The Department of Defense Operation and Maintenance Funds, National Park Service, state and Carteret County are “all project stakeholders helping to cover the cost of this project. In addition to providing navigation access through Lookout Bight this maintenance dredging will help ensure access to Cape Lookout National Seashore. Dredging the channel is critical for safe and consistent access to frequently visited areas at Cape Lookout National Seashore. Once dredging is complete, the channel will be open to commercial boats and deep draft vessels,” Winget wrote in an email response.

The suitable material dredged during the course of the project will be placed on the interior beach next to National Park Service structures, including the lighthouse. The remaining material will be added to an open water placement island, being called Sandbag Island, to contain the dredge material and provide habitat for nesting shore birds.

“The preservation of our coast is of paramount importance to us in Carteret County,” County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jimmy Farrington said in November when the contract was announced. “This project not only ensures the safety and accessibility of our waterways but also reaffirms our commitment to the environment. We are proud to partner with the National Park Service and the State of North Carolina to undertake this project, ensuring that the Cape Lookout National Seashore remains a natural treasure for generations to come.”

Winget said the estimated cost to dredge 165,000 cubic yards in the federal fixed channel in Back Sound is around $3.2 million and another 30,000 cubic yards will be dredged through the inlet for $585,00.

To dredge the 8,000 cubic yards in the channel used to approach the passenger ferry dock where the lighthouse is located is expected to come in at $156,000. Sandbag Island is expected to cost about $910,000 to create.

Other costs include the $1.8 million to set up for the project and then demobilize after.

The route used by the passenger ferry between Harkers Island visitor center and the lighthouse has the most amount of sand, West explained in a recent interview, and that will be pumped over the Bird Island. They’ll use geotextile tubes, much like elongated sandbags, to hold the sand in place.

Getting the project off the ground has taken six or seven years, West said, with the COVID-19 pandemic being one of the delays.

He said that the National Park Service worked with the Army Corps of Engineers, state and county to work together to manage the funds for the property.

Once the funding was in place, the first thing they had to do was get through the environmental assessment process, which took about a year. The environmental assessment was put out for public comment in April 2023 to give state and federal agencies, organizations and the public a chance to weigh in and address those comments. The finding of no significant impact was then released September 2023, and the contract announced in November.

He said the sense of urgency comes from the fact that the channels are filling in, and it’s been getting worse over the years. That’s a main public access to Cape Lookout from the Park Service visitor center on Harkers Island. It’s also an important channel for a lot of private and commercial users.

He expounded that the sand dredged will be placed at the beach by the lighthouse complex, which is where the passenger ferry docks. Between the lighthouse and the shoreline are the Keepers Quarters and the summer kitchen. The summer kitchen right now is right at the high-tide line and the Keepers Quarters is about 30 to 35 feet from the high-tide line.

“It will take “roughly 34,000 to 38,000 cubic yards” and will stretch from 150 to 200 yards north of the lighthouse complex to 200 yards 250 yards south, West said. “Depends on how much sand is compatible with the beach there and then it will be graded out to match the current profile.”

The next phase, if the funds are available sometime in the near future, will be to put in a living shoreline or another type of device to try to hold that sand in place this time. “As opposed to how we did in 2006,” he said, referring to a beach nourishment project, “people really weren’t thinking about using living shorelines at the time.”

Right now, the deadline to finish the work is April 1, because of marine wildlife protections, but they could apply for an extension. Once they start dredging operations are supposed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  

West added that they’re allowing the contractors to stage at the visitor center to help with logistics and the company has secured housing on Harkers Island.

The company anticipates having about 5,000 feet of pipe out at any given time, he said. They have a 10-inch pipe and 18-inch pipe and depending on the volume, they’re moving, they’ll use whatever is appropriate.

When it’s completed and opened back up the channel it will be a 7- to 9-foot-deep channel and will be 100 feet wide. “I mean, it’ll be the cat’s meow as far as getting back and forth,” between Harkers Island and the lighthouse, West said.

Coastal Review is featuring the work of North Carolina historian David Cecelski, who shares on his website essays and lectures about the state’s coast. He brings readers along on his search for the lost stories of our coastal past in the museums, libraries and archives where he visits in the U.S. and across the globe. 

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I have recently been absorbed by a photograph album that the staff at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Office of History discovered in their historical collections a few years ago.

The name of the photographer who took the photographs in the album is unknown, but they are a treasure.

Dating from 1930 to 1932, the album’s photographs make up a rare, up-close portrait of Army Corps of Engineers’ dredging crews and dredge boats engaged in maintaining and improving navigation on the hundreds of miles of coastal waterways between Norfolk, Virginia, and Beaufort.

That 200-mile stretch of coastline composed the Army Corps’ “Norfolk District,” headquartered in Norfolk.

The whole album is fascinating. However, my favorite scenes are probably a series of photographs from the Scuppernong River in the spring of 1931. They chronicle the crew of one of the Army Corps’ derrick barges clearing snags, dynamiting obstructions, and straightening the banks along the narrow, upper reaches of the river.

Dredging on a small, remote, out-of-the-way blackwater river such as the Scuppernong was a bread and butter job for Army Corps in those early years of the Great Depression. However, I can’t remember ever seeing that kind of work captured so fully in photographs.

Overall, the photographs are quite varied. The album even includes, for instance, a half-dozen photographs of Army Corps’ big pipeline dredge Currituck barreling through Beaufort Inlet on its way to build a new section of the Intracoastal Waterway.

In my experience, those of us who study maritime history rarely give much attention to dredging crews and their watercraft.

Working on a dredge boat was hard, dirty work. A bit like being a sailor, a bit like being a miner, a bit like being a heavy equipment operator, and a bit like being a pipe fitter and a mechanic, too.

The crews often lived on their boats for months at a time. They were not getting rich, and they moved from work site to work site, getting home, if they had a home, when they could.

Throughout the 20th century, many dredging crews all over the East Coast came from villages on the North Carolina coast.

They came from some coastal communities more than others. At Ocracoke Island, on the Outer Banks, for instance, or in Otway, in the Down East part of Carteret County, you would have been hard pressed to find a single family that did not have a father or a son who had not worked on a dredge boat at one time or another.

The Army Corps’ Norfolk District Photo Album, 1931-32 includes 99 photographs in all. You can now find them all online at Army Corps’ Digital Library.

I have picked out a selection of the photographs to highlight here. You will find them below, along with my annotations about the places, people, and activities depicted in them.

I have also included an especially striking photograph taken on the deck of the dredge Currituck that I found at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia.

It is an up-close view of the Currituck’s cutterhead, the mammoth dredging tool that her crew used to dig much of the Intracoastal Waterway along the North Carolina coast.

The Mariners Museum, by the way, has copies of the Army Crops photographs in its library. You can access them online.

I don’t think this is the time to discuss the overall historical impact of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the North Carolina coast, either for the good or the bad.

However, I think that I should note that few entities of any kind have shaped either the geography or economy of the North Carolina coast more over the last 150 years.

Resting in the hands of the Army Corps’ dredging crews and those of its private contractors has been the very shape of our coastline and the character of much of maritime life and work.

That has included the depths and commercial viability of our harbors; the fate of our seaports; how far our rivers can be navigated; which inlets are navigable and which are not; where ferries can run, and where they cannot; where boats can find refuge; how vulnerable, or not, coastal towns are to hurricanes; and where, if at all, our commercial fishing fleets can get to sea, among much else.

In those same hands, again for better and for worse, has been the fates of whole coastal ecosystems.

Yet in all my years of studying the history of the North Carolina coast, I have never seen a book, a museum exhibit, or a historical marker about that part of our maritime heritage.

Many a time I have looked out onto a harbor or an inlet and watched a dredging crew at work and wondered what their lives were like, and how they do what they do, and what it is like to endeavor to shape and bend the sea and shore against nature’s will.

Of course, the photographs in the Army Corps’ Norfolk District Photo Album, 1931-32 are far from the full story.

They only show us a brief moment in history, and just a few waterways. But to me they are still invaluable. At the very least, they give us a glimpse of this usually unseen part of our maritime history and leave us with a yearning to know more.

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The following is a selection of the album’s photographs and a little background on what is happening.

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WILMINGTON — North Carolina’s largest river basin faces more than its fair share of threats, advocates say.

The Cape Fear River watershed is the most industrialized in the state. Swine and poultry factory farms, paper and wood pellet mills, chemical plants, yet-to-be cleaned coal ash ponds, countless small dams and several large dams, feed and textile mills, explosive commercial and residential development, and climate change endanger this river basin of about 9,000 square miles and home to about 2 million people.

Environmentalists and river advocates are taking aim at what they consider to be the latest threat to the lower Cape Fear River — the proposed deepening and widening of the Wilmington Harbor.

Attendees at Cape Fear River Watch’s second annual State of the River forum Thursday were urged to consider the potential impacts to the river’s habitat, the species that rely on that habitat and the communities and cultural resources that line the river’s banks.

The N.C. State Ports Authority’s plan to make room for larger container ships to travel 26 miles from the river’s mouth at the Atlantic Ocean to the Wilmington port would likely change the water, sand and riverside communities, said Hannah Nelson, an associate attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office.

“Now is really the perfect time to start thinking through the tough questions on this project,” Nelson said to an audience of dozens gathered at the forum held in Cape Fear Community College’s Union Station building in downtown Wilmington.

The ports authority announced four years ago a proposal to deepen the harbor from 42 feet to 47 feet, widen it in areas by 100 feet up to 300 feet, and extend the ocean entrance to the river from 44 feet to 77 feet.

Those new depths and widths would allow the Wilmington port to remain competitive with other East Coast ports by making room for larger container ships coming from Asia, according to the state ports authority.

The changes would accommodate large vessels that can carry 14,000, 20-by-8-foot shipping containers that have been traveling through the Panama Canal since its expansion in 2016.

Related: Open house on Wilmington Harbor project set for June 13

But making room for larger ships could exacerbate saltwater intrusion, a phenomenon already occurring with sea level rise, through to the Northeast Cape Fear River, Sturgeon Creek and Town Creek, Nelson said.

“We expect to see this increased salinity throughout the river system,” she said.

Increased salinity is worrisome, Nelson said, because saltwater encroachment will force species to either migrate or altogether cease to exist in the river, kill off freshwater plants and habitat and destroy wetlands, which are nature’s storm buffers.

The proposed project is also expected to change the river’s tidal range and increase the mean high water level throughout the channel because the project would reduce the speed at which the water flows, she said.

Millions of cubic yards of sand will have to be removed, destroying nearly 1,000 acres of soft-bottom habitat and converting that habitat into deepwater habitat. Many of those acres make up primary nursing area for juvenile fish, Nelson said.

“If we dig all of that up, it can no longer be suitable for those young fish,” she said.

Sea turtles, including endangered loggerheads, rest and forage on the floor of the harbor. Bigger ships could increase erosion rates on the river banks, threatening recreational use of the river, shorebird habitat, communities, including environmental justice communities, and cultural resources.

There’s also concern that the sand that would be moved during construction of the proposed project could be laden with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are human-made chemicals that have contaminated the river, the raw drinking water source for tens of thousands of people in the region, for decades.

Other possible impacts to communities on both sides of the harbor are increased vehicle traffic transporting containers, noise and land development.

“We’ve seen this play out in our neighboring states,” Nelson said.

Land in both Georgia and South Carolina on either side of the Savannah Harbor has experience a building boom of industrial warehouses since that harbor’s expansion project wrapped last year.

Nelson said that between 2019 and 2022, 77 warehouses of various sizes were built in the area around the expansion.

“These are just a couple of the environmental impacts that could happen with this project,” she said. “We don’t have to continue down the path of deepening and deepening and deepening because that’s what we’ve already done.”

The project received authorization under the Water Resources Development Act in late 2020.

Nonfederal-sponsored projects, such as those led by states or state agencies like the ports authority, have to get federal authorization before moving forward. In order to receive federal funds, projects must undergo an environmental assessment known as the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA process, which is headed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps is partnering with the ports authority to develop the Wilmington Harbor Clean Water Action Section 403 letter report and environmental impact statement, or EIS, which are estimated to cost $8.5 million and be completed in four years.

The public will have an opportunity to speak with Corps representatives submit comments at an open house next week hosted by the Corps’ Wilmington District. Public comments will be accepted through June 30.

The open house is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. June 13 in the Union Station building, 502 N. Front St.

For more information about the project and to submit comments visit https://wilmington-harbor-usace-saw.hub.arcgis.com/

A proposed project to widen and deepen the Wilmington Harbor will be presented by the Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District at an open house next month.

During the June 13 open house, the public may speak with Corps staff who will be at different stations to talk about the project.

The open house will be held at Cape Fear Community College’s Union Station Building, 502 N. Front St., Wilmington.

The North Carolina State Ports Authority wants to deepen the main shipping channel in the Cape Fear River from 42 feet to 47 feet and the ocean entrance to the river from 44 feet to 47 feet. It also seeks to widen the channel in multiple areas.

The proposed project is to make room for larger container ships coming to the East Coast from Asia, which would allow the Wilmington port to remain competitive with other East Coast ports, according to the ports authority.

The open house will begin at 4 p.m. with an introduction video following by two, back-to-back 30-minute presentations about the proposed project. The first presentation will be held from 4:30 p.m.-5 p.m. with a repeat representation to follow from 6 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.

The Corps is partnering with the ports authority to develop the Wilmington Harbor Clean Water Act Section 403 letter report and environmental impact statement, or EIS, which are estimated to cost $8.5 million and be completed in four years.

Various groups, including the Brunswick County Branch of the NAACP, have raised concerns about the proposed project’s potential impacts to the environment, the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, and environmental justice communities.

The Corps is accepting public comments at the open house and through June 30.

For more information about the project and to submit comments visit https://wilmington-harbor-usace-saw.hub.arcgis.com/

A proposed management plan for New River Inlet in Onslow County calls for building a terminal groin at the erosion-battled north end of Topsail Island.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District earlier this week published a notice of intent to prepare an environmental study for North Topsail Beach’s proposal to protect its shoreline.

The New River Inlet Master Management Plan for the north end of town includes building the hardened erosion control structure on the southwest shoulder of the inlet and placing fill material along the ocean shoreline.

This proposal comes years after North Topsail Beach attempted to curb chronic shoreline erosion at the north end by realigning the inlet channel and periodically renourishing the beach.

The realignment proved futile, the erosion rates at the north end only increased and the sand injection onto the beach rapidly washed away.

In 2014, the town applied for an emergency permit to build a sandbag revetment in front of homes, condominiums and infrastructure threated by the encroaching ocean. The town early that following year built about a 2,000 linear foot-long revetment, one that has been extended today to upwards of 3,600 linear feet.

Public comments will be taken after the draft environmental impact statement is released at a future date.

More information is available at https://saw-reg.usace.army.mil/PN/2023/SAW-2016-02091-PN.pdf

HATTERAS — As it turns out, long-sought flexibility in maintenance of essential Hatteras Inlet navigation channels didn’t take an act of Congress. It boiled down to a much simpler concept: go-with-the-flow realignment.

But with the finalized expanded authorization to dredge Rollinson Channel, it may seem like a Christmas miracle for islanders now relieved of navigating a labyrinth of regulatory hurdles to address shoaled channels.

For Steve “Creature” Coulter, a Hatteras charter boat captain and chair of the Dare County Waterways Commission, the new realignment, which he said Dec. 2 was a “done deal,” is delayed validation of his initial assessment.

In 2013, as Coulter recalled in a recent interview with Coastal Review, when the waterway’s “short route” between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands was deemed too dangerously shoaled to dredge, he called the office of the late 3^rd District Rep. Walter Jones and suggested, essentially, that the law allowed channel dredging to follow best water.

But at the time, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency charged with maintenance of Rollinson Channel, said that an act of Congress would be required to change the channel’s authorized metes and bounds.

“If we could do just what we wanted to do, I’d have had it done nine years ago,” Coulter said, recounting what he half-jokingly told Josh Bowlen, who had served as Jones’ legislative director, and later, chief of staff.

After Jones’ death in 2019, Bowlen has served as legislative assistant for Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who will retire in January.

Although it’s not clear when the Corps adopted its different stance, its authority to follow the deepest natural water, or best water, in the Rollinson Channel Navigation Project was explained in the environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact, or FONSI, that was signed Nov. 30 by Robert M. Burnham, acting district commander for Corps’ Wilmington District.

The realignment of a portion of the project’s Hatteras to Hatteras Inlet Channel that follows deep water, the document said, was “due to the changes in shoaling patterns” caused by the dynamic inlet conditions.

“The project’s authorization does not specify the precise location of the Hatteras to Hatteras Inlet Channel, and therefore the location may be altered if found to be justified,” the document said, citing a regulation that allowed modifications.

The channel was originally authorized in 1962 under the River and Harbor Acts and included a 100-foot-wide, 12-foot-deep fixed channel extending through Rollinson Channel from Hatteras Harbor to Pamlico Sound, and a 100-foot-wide, 10-foot-deep channel from Rollinson Channel to the Hatteras Inlet gorge, with part of the channel being fixed and part following best water.

Somehow, what Coulter and other mariners considered common sense broke through to the surface.

“Having a channel that follows natural deep water to the extent practicable,” according to the environmental assessment, “given the natural dynamic nature of sediment movement, will allow for a safer, more reliable channel, reduced dredging effort, and an associated reduction in maintenance dredging costs, as well as having the least impact to the environment.”

Of the three actions proposed, the preferred alternative that was approved chose to abandon the “historic direct route” to the inlet gorge and to reroute the channel to follow best water along what is known as the “horseshoe route.”

“This is the only way for (the Corps) to economically maintain access to the gorge at Hatteras Inlet and will allow transportation of passengers, goods, and services to continue from the mainland, as well as allowing safe access to open ocean waters,” according to the document.

Not only will the dredging be able to be more flexible and timelier, the realignment also frees up use of federal funds for work within the project.

Work in the horseshoe will be allowed between Oct. 1 and March 31. Also, Sloop Channel North and Hatteras Connector Channel can now be maintained any time of the year.

Decades before the short route became impassable and impossible to dredge, the inlet was stable and rarely had navigational difficulties. After 1993, when the inlet was 0.35 miles wide, the southwest end of Hatteras Island began eroding, likely spurred by the effects that year of the “Storm of the Century” and Hurricane Emily.

As detailed in the environmental assessment, sand from the eroding land over the years, as well as what drifted through the widening opening to the ocean, resulted in more shoaling. By 2019, about 315 acres from the tip of Hatteras was gone, and the inlet had widened to 1.7 miles. At the same time, about 130 miles of shoreline was lost from the eastern end of Ocracoke Island. Today, the inlet is over 2 miles wide.

As navigation through Hatteras Inlet became more difficult, and the ferry route between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands switched to the longer horseshoe route, the commercial and charter fishing fleet, recreational boaters and fishers and the Coast Guard, also had to adapt their routes to reach Ocracoke and the ocean, depending on shoaling.

It soon became evident that dredging would be needed beyond the authorized Rollinson project the Corps had been maintaining. Problems developed in a confusing number of channels, or portions of them, some with evolving names. The South Ferry Channel — for a time a “no-man’s land” that no one had permission to maintain — became too shoaled to dredge and was replaced by the nearby Connector Channel.

But the piecemeal of jurisdictions, funding pots and government administrators — local, state, federal — involved in addressing problematic areas often resulted in time-consuming permit applications and costly delays.

Agreements had to be made among the county, the state and the Corps for certain work to be done, also not a quick process. Often, certain dredges were needed for certain conditions, but they weren’t available. Sometimes dredges were called away for a more pressing need, or broke down mid-project. A shared funding pot would be depleted by a more urgent project, such as the ferry route, leaving little or nothing for another needy channel. More than once, dredging projects would be undone by storms not long after they were completed.

For the last five or so years, members of the Waterways Commission were often left frustrated by numerous twists of fate and bureaucratic complications. Confronted repeatedly by the Corps inability to clear bits of shoaled channel outside the rigid authorized Rollinson parameters, the commissioners’ running theme through the years was the need for flexibility.

With the new flexibility, a Corps dredge on its way elsewhere would be able to do a little clean up where needed in Hatteras Inlet.

“If there’s money in the budget for Rollinson Channel, they can just stop by and do the work,” Coulter said.

Finally, in a big way, the realignment, while not a panacea, fills in gaps and removes one of the more persistent blockades to addressing the unpredictable nature of shoaling, while offering responsive dredging that can save time and money.

That means the Connector Channel, Crossover Channel, Sloop Channel, Hatteras Ferry Connecting Channel and Barney Slough, all of which may have had different names or versions that were maintained in different ways, will now be part of the expanded Rollinson project, explained Dare County Grants and Waterways Administrator Barton Grover.

It also puts Hatteras Inlet on par with Oregon Inlet in funding projects. For instance, the Corps just did $400,000 worth of work in the last three months in Oregon Inlet, and it cost Dare County “not one cent,” he said.

“In a nutshell, it’s a positive,” Grover said about the Hatteras realignment. “We now have access to federal dollars for the entire inlet.”

Also, there will be an additional area provided to dispose of dredged material, an important requirement for every dredge project.

Last year, he said, Dare dedicated $250,000 for Hatteras Inlet dredging, with a 75% match in state dollars, paid out of the state Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund.

Dare also budgeted $800,000 for its new hopper dredge, the Miss Katie, which will often be used to supplement Corps work. In addition, the Corps received $1.43 million for Rollinson Channel from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and $580,000 remained as of mid-November.

Since so much of the dredging situation has changed, Grover said, it will take time to gauge the impact on the maintenance and emergency work and the budgets. The reality, he added, is that even though the Corps now has the authority to dredge much more of Hatteras Inlet, it doesn’t mean it will have the funding or the available equipment.

If push comes to shove, he said, the county and state may have to supplement the cost of projects.

“I believe we’ll have a better sense in September of what it costs to maintain the ferry channel,” Grover said. “It’s a brand-new thing, not only with the federal channel, but also with us having Miss Katie.”

The Hatteras Ferry Channel realignment has been approved on the federal level and maintenance dredging of the horseshoe-shaped route is expected to begin this week.

Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District announced Wednesday that the Hatteras to Hatteras Inlet, or Rollinson Channel, navigation project is officially the new route and the original location will no longer be maintained.

The environmental analysis for the project, signed Nov. 30, determined a new route would be a more efficient path in regards to improved navigational safety and reliability for the channel. The analysis also found that “it is in the federal interest” to implement the proposed alternative allowing dredging in Sloop Channel North and Hatteras Connector Channel without seasonal restrictions.

The dredging scheduled to begin Thursday is required to maintain safe and reliable navigability for North Carolina Department of Transportation ferry services, the US Coast Guard, and both commercial and recreational fishing vessels.

“This plan will reduce concerns related to ferry delays during peak tourist season and will provide safe access to offshore fishing areas for those who rely on ocean access for their livelihood. Realignment will increase dredging efficiency, improve navigability and safety, while also reducing costs to taxpayers for maintenance of these important shallow draft channels,” Corps officials said.

The Corps committed to aerial monitoring of submerged aquatic vegetation within the project area before and after each dredging event and maintain a buffer.

Because of the current alignment of the Rollinson, or Hatteras Ferry, Channel, the Corps can only dredge the southern tip of Hatteras Island using federal funding. State and local funds must be used to dredge the South Ferry Channel in order to successfully get boats to Hatteras Gorge and out into the Atlantic Ocean, according to Dare County documents.

The section of waterway “has been the source of considerable frustration for several years as everyone from commercial and recreational fishermen to members of the U.S. Coast Guard who are trying to perform life-saving missions have struggled to get through the inlet and into the open ocean,” the county said. “Dare County fully supports the realignment of the Rollinson Channel in order to make it possible for federal dollars and federal dredges to be tasked with tackling shoaling in the entire waterway, which would have an enormous and positive impact on area watermen and the community as a whole.”

Harbors at North Carolina’s state ports cannot be dredged year-round, a U.S. District judge ruled earlier this fall.

The Army Corps of Engineers reinstated the seasonal dredging window for hopper dredging of the harbors at the ports in Morehead City and Wilmington after the judge’s Sept. 26 ruling.

“That made clear that the Corps was working to ensure that hopper dredging would not happen during the summer, this upcoming summer and until further notice, which is good news for coastal wildlife,” said Ramona McGee, the Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney who represented the environmental groups that challenged the Corps’ move to lift the environmental window on hopper dredging.

“It’s an exciting decision confirming that the Corps failed to grapple with the facts before it and violated the law and how it went about its inadequate environmental review,” she said.

Officials in the Corps’ Wilmington District declined to comment citing potential future litigation.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not reply to requests for comment.

Federal agencies have 60 days to file an appeal to a court’s judgement, which means that the Corps’ has until later this month to decide its next move.

The Corps in 2021 entered an agreement with the state to drop the hopper dredging window, which is Dec. 1 to April 15, citing the need for more flexibility to maintain the deep-draft channels and save millions of dollars.

The Corps is able to lower costs for its harbor maintenance projects by obtaining regional contracts, which gives the agency a better shot at securing hopper dredges to work in harbors across a region rather than one state.

There are only 13 hopper dredges for the East Coast from Maine to Florida and across the Gulf Coast to Texas.

The Wilmington District is under the Corps’ Regional Harbor Dredge Contract, or RHDC, which includes the agency’s districts in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia.

Under an agreement with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management signed off in early 2021, the Corps was allowed to clear the outer portions of the channels at the ports using a hopper dredge and bed leveling, where plow-like equipment is used to level out ridges and trenches created during dredging, any time of the year through Dec. 31, 2023.

The Corps agreed to monitor and report dredging and bed-leveling impacts on various species and their environment within the channels.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife, filed a lawsuit Aug. 4, 2021, with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina that argued the Corps failed to conduct a full and accurate environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

“Even the Army Corps of Engineers implemented this decades-old policy of restricting dredging to the winter months based on the agency’s science and observations at that time,” McGee said.

Several fish species are present in the project areas between the months of April and June. Those include Atlantic sturgeon, American Atlantic sturgeon, American shad, river herring, shad, white shrimp, blue cap, gag grouper and summer flounder.

Protections for federally listed species, including Atlantic sturgeon, are included in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s South Atlantic Regional Biological Opinion, or SARBO, for dredging and material placement.

U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan did not direct the Corps to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement, but remanded any decision by the Corps to conduct such a study “for further consideration.”

“We haven’t heard whether or not the agency will do an EIS or an EA,” McGee said. “Fundamentally, the court’s order does mean the Army Corps of Engineers is required to go back to the drawing board with their NEPA analysis and fix the flaws that the court identified.”

Hopper dredges are preferable to maintain portions of harbors leading to the state’s ports because they are more efficient, safer and economical compared to other types of dredges, according to an assessment by the Corps. The dredges vacuum material from the channel floor and hold that material onboard the vessel.

OCRACOKE – The Army Corps of Engineers plans to start this weekend work using a contracted dredge to clear critical shoaling in Bigfoot Slough just outside the N.C. Ferry Division’s Ocracoke-Silver Lake Terminal, the North Carolina Department of Transportation announced Tuesday.

DOT said there were no planned changes to the state ferry schedules, but people planning a trip should check with the ferry terminals for any updates.

The dredging operation is expected to begin sometime this weekend and take about 50 days, depending on weather and sea conditions.  

“We’re very thankful to partner with the Corps of Engineers,” said Ferry Deputy Division Director for Operations Jed Dixon in a statement. “Shoaling continues to be a serious issue on the coast. The Corps has always responded quickly when we’ve had urgent requests.”

DOT said the project will result in a deeper, wider channel that will enable the Ferry Division to return to service next year its larger, sound-class ferries on the system’s two longest routes, Ocracoke-Cedar Island and Ocracoke-Swan Quarter.

WILMINGTON – Sand and other material from dredging projects funded by marinas, local governments and private property owners will remain forbidden from placement at federally managed disposal sites.

Five years have passed since the Army Corps of Engineers stopped allowing dredged material from nonfederal projects to be placed on the disposal sites it maintains, a policy that will remain effective “for the foreseeable future,” according to Jed Cayton, a public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District.

“Federal placement sites will not be available to non-federal projects based on need,” Cayton said in an email responding to questions. “Currently, (the Corps) is unable to dredge several locations within the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway as a direct result of the federal placement sites being full and unable to hold additional dredged material.”

The move, which is nationwide, has had local and state government officials scrambling to find alternative disposal sites, which has largely equated to higher project costs because those sites are farther from the areas where dredging occurs.

Thus is the case at Wrightsville Beach Marina, where an average of about 7,500 cubic yards of sand is dredged every three years to maintain a suitable water depth for boats and yachts.

For years, the marina placed material pumped from the area around the property to privately owned spoil islands whose owners granted easements to the Corps.

“We were able to find an area just outside of the easement we’ve been able to use, which is at incredible financial hardship,” said Wrightsville Beach Marina General Manager Sam Clary.

The marina had to build dikes and a spillway to make the land suitable to hold disposed material, which cost a hefty $100,000.

“In addition to that it’s almost a mile away from us so it costs about 50% more to dredge and pump so far away,” Clary said.

The extra expense falls on the backs of the marina’s customers.

“It’s still in high demand here just because it’s limited space, but it’s coming at a premium and I don’t know how sustainable it is,” Clary said. “We hope that over time that the regulations will be eased. We’re moving beach quality sand. It’s not much. I just think it should be on a case-by-case basis instead of a national mandate.”

Wilmington District officials recently submitted to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality a final report identifying and assessing existing nonfederal dredged material disposal placement sites along the Intracoastal Waterway within the state.

The report wraps up the first of two studies co-funded by the state to determine how many nonfederal disposal sites exist, where those sites are, which of those will accept material, generate a 20-year forecast of how much space will be needed in each of the 13 counties along the waterway, and identify the counties with the greatest need and greatest shortfalls.

DEQ Coastal Infrastructure Grant Coordinator Kevin Hart explained to the state Coastal Resources Commission last month that the Corps had identified 26 nonfederal placement sites in seven of the 13 counties. Those counties include Brunswick, Carteret, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pender and Tyrell.

Twelve of the sites are state-owned, 13 are privately owned and one is a federally owned facility.

Of the 26, 20 are restricted-use sites, generally meaning that either the property owners of those areas said they will not accept material from other dredge projects or only beach-compatible sand is allowed.

There are 227 different waterfront facilities along the waterway, Hart said.

Carteret and New Hanover counties account for 62% of those marinas.

The Corps identified four nonfederal disposal sites, including two owned by the State Ports Authority in Carteret County. Three of those are restricted-use sites.

Nine sites have been identified in New Hanover County. Two of those are restricted-use sites.

In all, 206 marinas have agreed to provide to the Corps details on how often they dredge and their anticipated needs over the next 20 years.

“At this time, it is unknown whether the current sites can meet the demand,” Hart said in an email a few weeks after the Coastal Resources Commission’s Sept. 15 meeting.

The state is finalizing a cost-share agreement with the Corps for the second phase of the study, which is to examine the dredging needs of marinas that have more than 10 boat slips. The agreement will have to be signed off by the DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser before the Corps initiates the study.

“Approximately 70 to 75 non-active placement sites adjacent to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway will be identified, which may also be available for placement of dredged material by local communities, marinas, or other waterfront facilities,” Cayton said. “Lastly, the report will outline general environmental requirements or concerns associated with constructing new, or redeveloping existing, dredged material placement sites.”

This phase of the study may take up to a year after a cost-share agreement has been signed, Hart said.

Time may only drive up costs of nonfederal projects forced to truck material to inland disposal sites.

“There’s always a way, it’s just how much money you can afford to spend on it,” Clary said. “You can always put it bucket-to-barge. It may cost a million dollars, we just don’t know. We hope that over time that the regulation will be eased.”

Surf City may get to go it alone on a federal beach nourishment project the town has been trying to secure for more than two decades.

Town officials recently announced that the Army Corps of Engineers is in the process of reevaluating a 50-year project for Surf City after neighboring North Topsail Beach backed out what was originally proposed to be a joint venture among both towns and the Corps.

The Corps is now working on a general reevaluation report, which must be authorized before the Surf City and the Corps can sign a project partnership agreement, obtain easements and ultimately begin construction.

The project is estimated to be complete in 2024, according to a town news release.

Looking back: North Topsail to Join Sand Project Agreement

Surf City Mayor Doug Medlin in a statement thanked Corps officials as well as Senate and congressional representatives for their work and support of the project for the town.

“After a hard-fought battle, we are finally one step closer to seeing our project begin,” Medlin said. “We are also thankful to North Topsail Beach for working along with us as they were seeking deauthorization which allows us to move forward. Since they declined the project, we can now move on with our part.”

North Topsail Beach’s notified the Corps in July 2021 that the town would not meet the deadline to commit to signing a partnership agreement.

Mayor Joann McDermon explained then that North Topsail Beach aldermen had made the decision for a few reasons, including that the estimated cost of the project had more than doubled since its initial proposal.

North Topsail Beach would have to finance more than $26 million, she said.

The hefty price tag would put too much of a pinch on the town as it was also in the process of funding a Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, project along the same stretch of beach last fall.

A joint project would also limit funding needed to replace a fire station and pay for beach nourishment along North Topsail’s remaining 7 miles of beachfront, which is within a federally designated area omitted from receiving federal funding.

Surf City is looking at paying an estimated $24 million over the course of the 50-year project. That estimate may change once the reevaluation is complete.

“We are pleased that we have identified a clear path to move forward together on this project,” Col. Benjamin Bennett, the Corps’ Wilmington District commander, said in a release. “Construction of this beach is one of our top priorities and we look forward to seeing it through to protect lives and property in the area from coastal storms.”

Some 300,000 tires that have broken free from a decades-old artificial reef are scattered along an area of seafloor tapped as the new sand borrow source for Wrightsville Beach.

The tire debris field is not halting plans to pump material from the offshore site next spring onto the town’s ocean shoreline, which is already behind schedule in receiving a sand injection.

“The good news is that now that we know they’re there we can plan and mitigate for them,” said Dave Connolly, Army Corps of Engineers public affairs chief for the Wilmington district. “We’re going to be able to work and plan with the contractor to have more robust plans, which are being developed now for screening, and everything we can to mitigate the fact that we know there’s some potential to have tires out there.”

Whether its shipwrecks or other foreign debris, rocks or fine soil that’s not suitable to be pumped onto a beach, there’s always a risk of running across material along the seabed that dredges need to avoid.

Coming across the occasional scrap tire on the ocean floor is not uncommon, Connolly said, but it is “unusual that there are so many.”

Scrap tire reefs

The tires are suspected to have drifted from Artificial Reef 370, also referred to as Meares Harriss Reef, one of 43 man-made ocean reefs managed by the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

Over time, coastal storms have caused the tires to break free from where they were once tethered together, resting on the ocean floor among sunken tugboats, barges and concrete pipes used to create the reef off Wrightsville Beach.

It is unclear just how many scrap tires were placed in the reef.

“The problem is we don’t know the exact number of tires that were deployed,” said Patricia Smith, public information officer for the Division of Marine Fisheries.

Documents that state fisheries officials have on file vary: An estimated 56,500 tires were placed in 1973 and another 318,708 tires were added to the reef between 1973 and 1984. There’s documentation that 167,500 tires were placed at 370 and Artificial Reef 378, which is off the coast of Carolina Beach.

“We really cannot verify any of those numbers,” Smith said. “We can say we believe it exceeds 600,000 statewide.”

State fisheries began taking over artificial reefs off the state’s coast in the early 1970s.

Prior to that, offshore artificial reefs were built by different fishing clubs to produce fish habitat and bolster attractive fishing grounds.

The practice of using scrap vehicle tires to build up ocean artificial reefs began back in the late 1950s or early 1960s, according to the “2020 Guidelines for Marine Artificial Reef Materials,” a publication of the Atlantic and Gulf State Marine Fisheries Commissions.

Using old tires to build artificial reefs was an acceptable low-cost alternative disposal option for millions of stockpiled tires through to the early 1980s. North Carolina stopped using scrap tires to build ocean artificial reefs around that time.

Today, most states have banned the use of scrap tires for artificial reefs.

The emergence of new markets for scrap tires in the early 1990s have provided alternatives for reducing, reusing, recycling old tires.

But millions of tires remain in artificial reefs along the nation’s coasts.

In Mississippi, scrap tires were fastened together with cables and placed in the hulls of ships being deployed as artificial reefs.

An estimated 1 million to 2 million tires were deployed as an artificial reef near Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Off the coast of Virginia Beach, Tower Reef, Virginia’s primary tire reef, was built in the 1970s using 400,000 scrap tires.

From ocean floor to shore

In 1994, tires from that reef began washing up on Corolla’s ocean shoreline after storm events.

About 100,000 tires have been removed from North Carolina beaches since 1989 at a cost of more than $1 million, according to the commission’s 2020 report.

The state does not plan to retrieve tires from the ocean because it’s not cost-effective, Smith said.

In 2001, volunteer divers retrieved 1,600 tires from the reef off the Coast of Fort Lauderdale. The tires were removed and recycled at a cost of $20 per tire.

At that rate, removing all tires from the reef “may run into tens of millions of dollars,” according to the 2020 Guidelines for Marine Artificial Reef Materials.

“We do have a plan in place to get these tires off the beach when they wash up,” Smith said. “Sometimes we go and collect them. Sometimes, if it’s just a few, the town will go and pick it up.”

The state has occasionally used prison labor to pick up tires that have washed ashore on Bogue Banks in Carteret County.

“Those are usually for when there are really large amounts that come ashore,” Smith said.

New Hanover County Shoreline Protection Coordinator Layton Bedsole said he can’t recall officials in the county’s beach towns “being unusually upset about tires on the beach.”

“I know they’re out there,” he said.

New site, new headaches?

The cutter dredge used to pump sand onto the ocean shorelines of Carolina Beach and Kure Beach earlier this year sucked up a handful of tires during operation.

“They had to stop production, get it unclogged, and get it back to work,” Bedsole said. “It slowed down production.”

The Meares Harriss Reef is a little more than 2.5 miles from Masonboro Inlet, an area of which was Wrightsville Beach’s sand borrow source for decades before a legal interpretation forced the Corps to find an offshore site.

Wrightsville Beach had for years been getting beach quality sand from an area of the inlet that lies within Coastal Barrier Resources System Unit L09.

This is an area designated as part of the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, a law Congress passed in 1982 to discourage building on relatively undeveloped, storm-prone barrier islands by cutting off federal funding and financial assistance, including federal flood insurance.

CBRA, pronounced “cobra,” was also established to minimize damage to fish, wildlife and other resources associated with coastal barrier islands.

The interpretation of the law as it pertains to whether sand that is within a CBRA zone may be dredged and pumped onto a beach outside of a CBRA zone has been kicked back-and-forth between federal regulatory agencies for years.

Last year, the Biden administration overturned a 2019 decision by then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, who determined that federal funds could be used to pay for dredging sand within CBRA units and for placing that sand on beaches outside of those units for shoreline-stabilization projects.

The new interpretation of the law ultimately pushed Wrightsville Beach’s project off track to get sand this year. Meanwhile Costal Storm Risk Management, or CSRM, projects moved ahead this year at Carolina Beach and Kure Beach because the Corps already had offshore sand borrow sites for those towns.

New Hanover County’s beach towns are some of the Corp’s earliest CSRM projects.

When asked what his biggest concern is about the pending project in Wrightsville Beach, Bedsole said, “That we’re not using the inlet borrow site that we’ve used for 50 years and we’re taking a site that’s documented to have a tire debris field associated with it. We should be using the inlet borrow site.”

Once the Corps develops a plan for the project the agency will publish a public notice to allow for public comment, Connolly said.

It is unclear whether the project’s cost will increase.

“That’s all being determined with the project delivery team,” Connolly said. “Obviously it’s going to be factored in for sure.”

He said the goal is start pumping sand on the beach around March of next year.

Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District said Friday that vessels were unable to navigate a portion of Oregon Inlet along the Marc Basnight Bridge.

The Corps surveyed the condition of the federal channel at Oregon Inlet Wednesday in response to the weather system that hit the coast during the week of May 8.

A portion of the marked federal channel between buoys 17 and 21 was completely shoaled in, with depths of 2-3 feet at mean lower low water and unnavigable for most vessels. MLLW is the 19-year average lowest of the two daily low tides.

Depths are too shallow for the Corps to use shallow draft-dredges to clear the channel.

The Coast Guard is expected to publish a notice to mariners concerning channel conditions and advising that the current channel markers will be removed in the coming days, officials said.

The Coast Guard and Corps were working together to investigate other potential areas where a marked channel can be established to provide access to and from Oregon Inlet.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District is asking for feedback and is offering an online public information meeting May 10 on proposed ways to address frequent and severe flooding within the Neuse River Basin.

The Corps prepared the Draft Integrated Feasibility Report and Environmental Assessment for the Neuse River Basin Flood Risk Management Feasibility Study.

Neuse River Basin headwaters begin northwest of Durham, flow southeast about 250 miles to the New Bern-Havelock area, then empties into the Pamlico Sound. The basin covers about 6,200 square miles and is in all or part of 18 counties.

The draft report reviews alternatives designed to reduce ongoing flood risks throughout the Neuse River Basin such as a no-action plan as well as various combinations of structural and nonstructural measures, the document states.

The virtual public information meeting will take place 6 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 10. The meeting will be available online. Meeting access number is 2762 442 7922. Organizers recommend for the best audio connection calling 844-800-2712.

Questions about the May 10 virtual meeting or formal comments on the study can be emailed to nrbfrm@usace.army.mil by May 25.

The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking public comment on Timbermill Wind’s plans to fill in ditches and wetlands for a proposed 45-turbine 1,933-acre wind energy facility near Edenton.

Much of the project area is in what was formerly known as Bear Swamp, which has been historically ditched and drained to convert forested wetlands to agricultural use.

The Corps’ Wilmington District announced Monday that the company seeks authorization to temporarily impact 187.68 acres of wetlands, 0.15 acres of streams and 5.16 acres of jurisdictional tributaries or ditches for the construction.

The project would permanently impact 27.03 acres of wetlands, 0.03 acres of stream and 0.54 acres of ditches. The project area is part of a roughly 6,300-acre site about 2 miles north of Edenton in Chowan County.

The project would also include 6.1 miles of transmission line to interconnect the facility to Virginia-based Dominion Energy’s existing Winfall to Mackeys transmission line in North Carolina.

The Corps said its general practice is not to make a final permit decision until the North Carolina Department of Division of Water Resources issues, denies or waives state certification as required by Section 401 of the Clean Water Act.

Also, the Corps said it was aware of the presence of species listed as threatened or endangered or designated critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act and would make a final determination on the effects of the proposed project after additional review and completion of any necessary biological assessment or consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or National Marine Fisheries Service.

Written comments pertinent to the proposed work are being accepted until 5 p.m. May 28. Comments should be submitted to Mr. Anthony D. Scarbraugh, Washington Regulatory Field Office, 2407 West Fifth St., Washington, NC 27889 or email to anthony.d.scarbraugh@usace.army.mil.

Leaders of an organization focused on protecting waterways in the White Oak River Basin say the information in the permitting public notice for Martin Marietta’s proposed 100-acre expansion plan for its limestone aggregate quarry in Maysville raises questions and may not convey the full extent of the environmental damage that could result.

Coastal Carolina Riverwatch announced Tuesday that it had submitted comments to the Army Corps of Engineers in response to the public notice issued in February for the proposed Belgrade Quarry expansion. Martin Marietta Materials Inc. seeks Army authorization to discharge fill material into 8.96 acres of wetlands and 899 feet of stream as part of the project. Plans include an approximately 8-acre expansion site north of the existing mine pit and a roughly 92-acre area south of the existing mine pit referred to as the “Bender Pit.”

The period for public comment on the proposed expansion ended March 26.

“Our overall goal is to protect the biological integrity of the watershed and to protect our waters as they exist naturally,” Coastal Carolina Riverwatch Executive Director Lisa Rider said earlier this week.

Rider and Waterkeeper Rebecca Drohan told Coastal Review that the information in the Corps’ public notice was vague, raising questions of sufficiency. They said more information is needed about how the expansion, including a new area referred to in the application as the Bender Pit and the associated construction of a new road and road crossings, would affect the surrounding hydrology and wetlands.

The organization said the proposed Bender Pit would be a new pit, not an expansion of the existing mine pit farther north. The Bender Pit expansion site is surrounded by jurisdictional wetlands, the organization said in its submitted comments. Those wetlands provide important function such as flood control, pollution filtration, erosion control and wildlife habitat.

“Our coastal environment is one that can be resilient, but it’s very fragile, as well,” Drohan said. “Anytime that there’s proposed changes that may affect those functions, we’re definitely concerned.”

Martin Marietta East Division President in the company’s Raleigh office did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The quarry first opened off U.S. 17 and Belgrade-Swansboro Road in 1938 as Superior Stone, a Martin Marietta predecessor, and has been active as currently configured since 1988. The company said it needs to expand the operation from its current 1,605 acres “to cost-effectively mine construction grade aggregate reserves at the existing Belgrade Quarry facility.”

How do locks and dams control the flow of the Cape Fear River?

Dana Matics, assistant operations project manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will explain the ins and outs at 7 p.m. April 19 during the Third Tuesday Lecture “Cape Fear River Locks and Dams: Past, Present, and Future,” presented by the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Southport.

The program, like all lectures in the series, will take place at the Southport Community Building, 223 E Bay St., downtown Southport. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.

The museum has explored the Cape Fear River with Matics before. Museum Curator of Education Katy Menne rode through lock and dam No. 1 for Episode 26 of “Captain Meanies Maritime Curiosity,” which aired on the museum’s YouTube channel and Facebook page in December.

“Riding along with Dana was such a pleasure, and she has such a wealth of information and knowledge,” Menne said. “We couldn’t wait to have her in to discuss the history of the locks and dams in greater detail.”

That greater detail includes historic images Matics provided as background for the video project but did not make the episode and additional information Matics has acquired over her 20 years working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“I love how Katy’s use of digital education offerings like Captain Meanies Maritime Curiosity makes the museum accessible to patrons near and far,” Museum Manager Lori Sanderlin said. “Knowing that Dana is willing to share more historical background for our Third Tuesday is a behind-the-scenes treat.”

Seating is limited for the Third Tuesday program. Call 910-477-5151 or email at Katy.Menne@ncdcr.gov to reserve a spot. Registration can also be filled out online at ncmaritimemuseumsouthport.com/events.

Masks are optional to attend this lecture, and continued wear is encouraged for vulnerable populations. Disposable masks will be available.

The North Carolina Maritime Museum system is comprised of the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras, the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Beaufort and the North Carolina Maritime Museum at Southport. All three museums are part of the Division of State History Museums in the NC Department of Cultural Resources. 

Sand placement is expected to begin Friday at Carolina Beach near the Halmet Street beach access, the Army Corps of Engineers announced Thursday.

This work is part of the coastal storm risk management project that officials said would provide protection from erosion and other effects from coastal storms.

Sand placement in the Carolina Beach portion of the project is anticipated to take four to five weeks to complete but could change due to weather, mechanical issues or other unforeseen complications. Progress can be followed using the Corps’ online sand placement tracker, which shows the section of beach closed for construction.

As of Thursday, the contractor for the beach fill has staged equipment beachside on and around the beach access at Hamlet Street. Multiple trucks are expected to bring large sections of pipe and heavy equipment onto Pleasure Island to the Hamlet Street beach access area.

The contractor is to place pipe from the ocean to the beach adjacent to Sandpiper Street beach access, Corps officials said. The process is to end just north of the Carolina Beach Fishing Pier.

Following this step, the contractor is to move the pipe back to the offshore pipe landing and repeat the process in the southern direction, eventually into the Kure Beach section of the project.

Officials ask the public not to enter construction areas, which will be fenced-in with orange fencing and signs, keep a safe distance from all heavy equipment and from the discharging end of the pipe, and read and follow signs and instructions given by contractor personnel. Only cross over a pipe where the sand has been piled up over pipe to create a safe crossing ramp. Do not stand or sit on the pipe.

The Corps awarded on Jan. 18 the $20 million Coastal Storm Risk Management at Carolina Beach and Kure Beach contract to Texas-based Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. LLC. The Corps shifted available funds in fall 2021 to Carolina and Kure Beach projects after expected federal funding did not come through.

Related: Scramble On For New Hanover Sand Money

Related: Nourishment funds now secured for 2 New Hanover towns

The Army Corps of Engineers on Thursday issued a public notice on a proposed expansion of Belgrade Quarry in Jones County, work that would include moving a previously modified stream, adding two new road crossings, expanding an existing road crossing and mining within wetlands.

Located in Maysville, the 1,605-acre Belgrade Quarry is within the White Oak River Basin. The quarry first opened in 1938 under the name of Superior Stone, a predecessor to Martin Marietta.

The quarry operation has been active as currently configured since 1988 after a bridge was built over the White Oak River. The area of the proposed mine expansion is an around 8-acre site north of the existing mine pit and an approximately 92-acre area south of the existing mine pit.

The proposed North Pit site is cleared and was previously agricultural land.

The proposed Bender Pit is south of the existing pit on the east side of the White Oak River and is separated from the current pit and plant area by wetlands that encircle the proposed pit. The Bender Pit area is currently farm fields and mixed pine forestland with some hardwoods.

Martin Marietta proposes to mitigate for impacts to 8.96 acres of wetland at a 11.6:1 ratio by preserving about 94 acres of wetland and 10 acres of nonwetland floodplain within the 104-acre property the company owns adjacent to the Croatan National Forest. That site is riverine swamp forest wetland and is in the floodplain of the White Oak River, just downstream of the proposed Bender Pit.

The Corps is accepting written comments pertinent to the proposed work until 5 p.m, March 26. Comments should be submitted to Emily Thompson, Washington Regulatory Field Office, 2407 W. Fifth St., Washington, NC 27889, or via email to emily.b.thompson@usace.army.mil.

This is a developing story.

The Army Corps of Engineers, citing a recent court decision in California throwing out Trump-era regulatory changes affecting water quality certifications under section 401 of the Clean Water Act, has put a hold on permitting decisions under its nationwide permit program.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Oct. 21 remanded and vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 401 Water Quality Certification rule that became effective Sept. 11, 2020. Judge William Alsup’s decision applies nationwide.

The Corps has not formally announced the suspension of its nationwide permit program that provides more expedited Clean Water Act Section 401 approval for a wide range of projects including stormwater management projects, renewable energy, pipelines and other infrastructure as well as residential and commercial development and agriculture projects.  But while it doesn’t appear that the Corps has issued a formal public notice, a blurb under the “Latest News” heading on the Corps’ Sacramento District’s website noted Nov. 4 that final permit decisions that rely on a Section 401 water quality certification or waiver under the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2020 rule would not be made “at this time.”

“The Corps is working to provide more refined guidance that provides a way forward that allows us to finalize permit decisions,” according to the post.

The EPA notes on its website that the order requires a temporary return to a 1971 rule until the agency can finalize a new certification rule. The agency said its own review of the 2020 rule “identified substantial concerns with a number of provisions that relate to cooperative federalism principles and CWA section 401’s goal of ensuring that states and Tribes are empowered to protect water resources that are essential to public health, ecosystems, and economic opportunity. The agency has already begun working on a regulatory effort to address those concerns.”

According to a Nov. 5 blog post published by the law firm Troutman Pepper, which represents developers, landowners and permit applicants, had received an email notification last week saying that the Corps would not be processing their requests for coverage under a variety of Clean Water Act Section 404 Nationwide Permits. These are general permits for activities that “will cause only minimal adverse environmental effects when performed separately, and will have only minimal cumulative adverse effects on the environment,” the blog’s authors noted, citing the Clean Water Act’s Section 404.

The post notes that the notification on the Sacramento District’s website was on the day that the Senate confirmed Michael Connor as the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, but adds that It was unclear whether Connor ordered the halt in permitting.

North Carolina Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis, asked Wednesday during the Coastal Resources Commission meeting in Atlantic Beach what the action could mean for projects in the state’s coastal counties, responded that state officials had the same question.

A three-year study is underway in Holden Beach that could set the tone for how future beach projects may be funded.

The town has signed an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to launch a coastal storm risk management feasibility study, one that will determine whether it’s in the federal government’s interest to take part in planning coastal storm risk plans for the town for up to 50 years.

An Aug. 27 signing ceremony between the Corps and Holden Beach officially kicked off the study, which is budgeted to cost up to $3 million, according to Emily Winget, a public affairs specialist in the Corps’ Wilmington District.

Funding for the study is being split 50-50.

Winget said in an email responding to questions that $500,000 was initially allocated for the study in the Corps’ Fiscal 2021 Work Plan. More funding has been requested for future budget cycles, she said.

“The Holden Beach, N.C. Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) Project General Reevaluation Study will scope and analyze alternatives for Federal participation in cost shared coastal storm risk management measures over a project life up to 50 years,” Winget wrote in the email. “We will be looking at all possible alternatives that provide a benefit (reduced risk) to Holden Beach.”

Such alternatives will include routine beach nourishment, dune enhancement and repair, as well as public education, resilient town building codes and other “non-structural measures.”

“The study will analyze an array of alternatives (list to be determined), trying to find a project that maximizes benefits as compared to overall cost,” Winget said. “Specifically, the study will be determining if we can identify a project with ‘Federal Interest’ that reduces the risk to coastal storms at Holden Beach.”

The Brunswick County town’s entire 8-mile-long ocean shoreline will be included in the study.

In 2018, Holden Beach commissioners withdrew the town’s permit application to build a terminal groin at the east end of the barrier island, citing that the costs of the proposed hardened erosion mitigation structure outweighed the benefits to the town.

The board’s decision followed several years and more than $600,000 on studies examining various ways to mitigate severe erosion at the Lockwood Folly Inlet.

A coastal engineering firmed hired by the town to explore ways to reduce erosion at the inlet determined Holden Beach’s best alternative was to build a 1,000-foot-long terminal groin, the estimated long-term costs of which exceeded $34 million. Terminal groins are wall-like structures built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas of high erosion, like that of beaches at inlets.

About a year before commissioners voted to withdraw the terminal groin permit application, the town completed the first phase of its Central Reach project, a multimillion-dollar sand nourishment project that pumped about 1.3 million cubic yards of sand along about a 4-mile stretch of oceanfront in the middle of the barrier island.

In March, North Carolina and the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved allocating nearly $15.5 million to help the town restore sand and vegetation along the Central Reach area damaged by Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

FEMA’s portion of the project cost included about $11.6 million for the project. The state’s share was about $3.8 million.

Those funds include restoring 555,000 cubic yards of sand and stabilizing 80,000 square yards of dune vegetation.

Town officials are currently discussing an east end project, one that would put at least 100,000 cubic yards of sand along that end of the island, according to information on the town’s website.

Holden Beach Town Manager David Hewett did not return calls seeking comment.

Oak Island, which is immediately east of Holden Beach, has submitted to the Corps a letter of intent asking to be considered for a Coastal Storm Risk Management feasibility study, Winget said.

“We have expressed that capability up the line, and will need funding (Federal and the non-Federal match) to be allocated to start that study,” she said.

No other beach towns in the state are scheduled to sign a feasibility cost share agreement with the Corps this year.

A federal judge has thrown out the Trump administration’s rule that gutted water quality protections put in place during the Obama administration.

The Trump administration replaced a 2015 rule revising language defining “waters of the United States” that established federal authority under the Clean Water Act. The Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule was replaced in 2020 by the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, which removed protections for ephemeral bodies of water, such as creeks or streams that dry up during certain times of the year.

Judge Rosemary Márquez of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona on Monday vacated Trump’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule saying the rule contained “fundamental, substantive flaws that cannot be cured without revising or replacing the NWPR’s definition of ‘waters of the United States.’”

The ruling comes as the Biden administration moves forward with plans to create a “durable definition” of WOTUS based on rules in place prior to the Obama administration’s rule, which was fiercely opposed by agricultural interests. In July, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans for community engagement meetings to inform efforts to revise the WOTUS definition.

“We are committed to crafting an enduring definition of WOTUS by listening to all sides so that we can build on an inclusive foundation,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Uncertainty over the definition of WOTUS has harmed our waters and the stakeholders and communities that rely on them. I look forward to engaging all parties as we move forward to provide the certainty that’s needed to protect our precious natural water resources.”

The challenge of the Trump rule was brought by six Native American tribes, who were represented by Earthjustice.

“The court recognized that the serious legal and scientific errors of the Dirty Water Rule were causing irreparable damage to our nation’s waters and would continue to do so unless that Rule was vacated,” said Janette Brimmer, Earthjustice attorney. “This sensible ruling allows the Clean Water Act to continue to protect all of our waters while the Biden administration develops a replacement rule.”

Earthjustice represented the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Tohono O’odham Nation, Quinault Indian Nation, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in the lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers.

A lawsuit filed last week challenges the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to allow hopper dredging year-round in the harbors at the state ports in Wilmington and Morehead City.

For decades, maintenance dredging using a hopper dredge was only performed during the winter months, when endangered marine life was less abundant in state waters.

Despite opposition from environmental groups, the Corps during the past year has eliminated the hopper dredging window, a seasonal environmental moratorium most recently in place between April 1 and Dec. 15.

Last week, the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, the North Carolina Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife, filed the challenge against the Corps’ “unlawful decision to eliminate highly successful seasonal limitations on hopper dredging projects that have protected sea turtles, fish species and other marine life for decades.”

The law center states in its challenge that this year, the Corps intended to complete maintenance hopper dredging in Wilmington and Morehead City as well as Brunswick and Savannah Harbors in Georgia between May and July. In May a federal judge in the Georgia put a stop to the Corps’ plans and required the Corps to adhere to the traditional hopper dredging window for the Harbor. The Corps conducted maintenance dredging with a hopper dredge in Morehead City Harbor in late May and in Wilmington Harbor in late June.

“Based on information and belief, during the course of dredging Morehead City Harbor, the Corps recorded three fatal sea turtle takes. In addition, three more turtles were captured and relocated during dredging operations,” according to court documents.

‘Maximum flexibility’

The Corps states in its final Deep Draft Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact released in February that the ability to dredge any time of year is necessary to maintain the outer reaches of the Wilmington and Morehead City harbors to full project depths and widths at reasonable costs.

“Eliminating the dredging window would provide maximum flexibility to obtain contract dredges when maintenance dredging is most needed and allow minimizing of risk to listed species as outlined in the 2020 SARBO,” according to the document. SARBO is the 2020 South Atlantic Regional Biological Opinion for Dredging and Material Placement Activities in the Southeast United States.

“Removing window restrictions would also allow dredges to continue working until project completion, rather than having to stop and return at a later date to complete the work,” according to the Corps. “Additionally, elimination of the historic hopper dredging window would alleviate the need to limit the scope of dredging to the bare minimum needed to keep channels open since work could be performed any time of year. This would allow the USACE to perform maintenance dredging to full authorized project dimensions. “

The lawsuit filed Aug. 4 with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina asserts that the Corps did not properly explain its reversal in agency practice under the Administrative Procedure Act and failed to conduct a full and accurate environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

‘Dire consequences’

“The Corps’ unjustified about-face will have dire consequences for coastal wildlife,” said Ramona McGee, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, in a statement. “These historic seasonal restrictions on dredging have been in place for decades and supported by numerous scientific entities precisely because they work.”

The SELC warns in the lawsuit that hopper dredging in the spring and summer months is especially harmful to sea turtles, “because more sea turtles overall are present when the water temperature is higher, and nesting females in particular are present during these months as they approach beaches to nest. Nesting female sea turtles have to swim past the hopper dredges to reach the beaches and return to open water, placing them at risk of entrainment or other sub-lethal impacts.”

Five different species of Endangered Species Act-listed sea turtles — hawksbill, leatherback, loggerhead, green, and Kemp’s ridley — breed and nest on the North Carolina coast.

“Biologists have recognized the dangers of hopper dredging to sea turtles since at least 1980, when more than 70 turtles were killed or injured by hopper dredges between July and November in Canaveral Channel, Florida. For the next decade, hundreds of sea turtle deaths occurred as a result of hopper dredging throughout Southeast channels,” according to the SELC.

The hopper dredge window has been in place since several loggerhead sea turtle deaths occurred at Morehead City in the late 1990s. the Wilmington District implemented a self-imposed hopper dredging window Jan. 1 to March 31, in coordination with the National Marine Fisheries Service Habitat Conservation Division with state agencies through the Federal Coastal Zone Management Act process, according to the Corps. The action is covered under Section 7(a)(1) of the Endangered Species Act.

“The Corps has historically been willing and able to dredge in the winter to avoid the biologically-active spring and summer months,” said Kemp Burdette, Riverkeeper for Cape Fear River Watch in a release. “Switching course doesn’t make sense and would pose an enormous threat to fish stocks and at-risk sea turtles at a time when their population numbers are already declining.”

During the spring and summer months, endangered Atlantic and shortnose sturgeon are often present in Wilmington and Morehead City harbors. These fish are at risk of being trapped in the hopper dredge because the fish swim through and near the project area to travel between the estuaries and open water. The lower Cape Fear River, within the Wilmington Harbor project area, is designated as critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act for Atlantic sturgeon, the SELC states.

Hopper dredging also poses significant risks to commercially and recreationally important fish species and fish habitat. Smaller species of fish are crushed by dredging operations, making the species hard to identify. Hopper dredging increases sedimentation in the water and reduces dissolved oxygen levels, which can disrupt spawning, breeding and growth activities, according to the SELC.

“The Corps is needlessly killing some of North Carolina’s most iconic coastal species with this reckless reversal,” said Heather Clarkson, Southeast outreach representative at Defenders of Wildlife in a statement. “We demand the Corps reinstate these tried-and-true wildlife-saving protocols immediately.”

Environmental review

The Corps in early April 2020 sent out by email a scoping letter, and a meeting was held virtually later that month regarding the proposal to eliminate the hopper dredge window. A draft environmental assessment was made available to local, state and federal regulatory agencies and the public July 27, 2020, for a 30-day review and comment period. The comment period was then extended 15 days, per the Corps.

The Corps included in the final environmental assessment released in February comments about the proposed action from the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, state Division of Environmental Quality, North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, Southern Environmental Law Center, N.C. Ports Authority, Audubon North Carolina, Bald Head Island, Oak Island and Kure Beach and the Corps’ response.

Many of the comments provided to the Corps last fall took issue with the draft environmental assessment and proposed action. The Department of Environmental Quality commented, “Not enough data to support the proposed change. All comments and concerns in May 7, 2020 scoping comment letter remain the same. Synthesis and analysis of data collected at Beaufort Inlet will require additional time. Premature to say that action will result in only minor and short-term impacts.” The Corps responded that after discussions with the state and federal agencies, the Corps has agreed to hopper dredging and bed leveling without window restrictions for an initial period of three years.

The South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council wrote, “Elimination of hopper windows is inconsistent with established Council policy developed to aid in effective management of economically significant fisheries closely tied to these habitats.” The Corps responded to this comment with the proposed three-year period with no dredge window.

The Corps in August 2020 submitted a copy of the draft environmental assessment and consistency determination to the state Division of Coastal Management. The Corps provided additional information in December 2020, outlining commitments to monitor for three years during dredging at both harbors. The division provided its final federal consistency decision on Dec. 31, 2020, which is valid while the Corps monitors the harbors for three years. 

The Corps said that based on findings described in the environmental assessment released in February that it was in the federal interest to allow hopper dredging and bed leveling to occur without the historic restriction.

“The overall benefit of the proposed action is that it will allow for flexibility and assurance in maintaining the (Wilmington) and (Morehead City) navigation channels balanced with species protection, reduced maintenance dredging costs, and provision of a safer, more navigable channel for ships calling on the Ports,” according to the environmental assessment. Also, bed leveling could help reduce the duration of each dredging project, which would lessen impacts.

The Wilmington District worked with the National Marine Fisheries Service Habitat Conservation Division, the state divisions of Coastal Management, Marine Fisheries and Water Resources as well as Wildlife Resources Commission to develop the management process for maintaining the harbors.

For the next three years the Wilmington District, whose area includes both state ports, may perform maintenance dredging any time of year while monitoring the harbors in partnership with state and federal agencies.

“It is important to note that this is not a static three-year period,” said Col. Benjamin Bennett, Wilmington District Commander in February. “During the three-year period, adjustments will be made based on working groups with state and federal agencies. The idea of a three-year period was developed in collaboration with our partners including the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service.”

When new data and information are acquired and experience is gained, it is to be fed back into the process. The latest information and experience is to be used to inform decisions about the timing of dredging, equipment types or impact minimization measures, which officials say will help the Corps better balance environmental concerns while adequately maintaining Wilmington and Morehead City harbors.

As more and more people move to the coast, there is a constant struggle between development and protecting our coastal environment.

We all need to be working together to resolve the complex issues facing our North Carolina coast. Currently, this is not happening. Standing at the forefront between future development and the environment is the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is an engineer formation of the United States Army that has three primary missions: Engineer Regiment, Military Construction and Civil Works. These engineers build sea walls, renourish beaches, dredge inlets and give approval for others (towns and contractors) to perform activities such as the construction of terminal groins and creating new or restoring existing navigational channels by dredging. Another important mission is aquatic ecosystem protection and restoration. Therefore, and unfortunately, the future of our coastal environment is not in the hands of natural resource agencies and coastal scientists, but rather in the hands of engineers.

A generalized difference between engineers and coastal scientists is that scientists are trained to understand natural systems while engineers are trained to manipulate the natural systems. Protecting our coastal environment should require and combine both; the engineers’ practical problem-solving expertise along with the scientists’ expertise on how nature works. Unfortunately in problem solving, coastal engineers usually ignore the scientific concerns expressed by coastal scientists. It is this scientific uncertainty about natural events that can undo engineering interventions on the coast. In some cases, the consequences of intervention can take several decades to become apparent. This makes it difficult for the general public to access applications and make the connection between Corps intervention and consequences it triggers.

The Corps recently approved permits to place a terminal groin on the east end of Ocean Isle Beach and to perform new dredging to create a navigational channel in Jinks Creek at Sunset Beach. What does the science say about these two projects? What are the probable future consequences the taxpayers, residents and vacationers of Ocean Isle Beach and Sunset can expect?

Example 1. A terminal groin was approved for the east end of Ocean Isle Beach because the beach in that area is eroding. A groin is a long, solid structure that extends out into the water, perpendicular to the shoreline, and is typically made of cement or rock. Groins prevent erosion by trapping the longshore transport of sediment on the updrift side of the groin. Wave actions naturally remove sand from the beach and this sand enters the longshore current and moves the sand parallel to the shoreline. In Brunswick County beaches this sand moves east to west. Terminal groins act like dams, physically stopping the movement of sand. Groins do result in a buildup of sand on the upstream side of the groin, which is precisely what they are designed to do. However, the areas further downstream are cut off from the natural longshore transport thereby triggering more erosion.

Figure 1 demonstrates that once the first groin is constructed additional groins will be required to protect the beach downstream. This figure shows a series of six groins along a beach. Notice the erosion downstream from the groin at the top of the figure. 

On the other hand, soft stabilization such as beach nourishment, dune building, marsh systems and living shorelines should be considered before intervention with hard structures like terminal groins. Soft structures will not subject the beaches of Ocean Isle Beach and eventually Sunset Beach to a series of terminal groins.

How can placing a terminal groin on Ocean Isle Beach be considered beach restoration when it will trigger more erosion? If a terminal groin is placed on the East end of Ocean Isle Beach how many future, additional groins will be needed? What will be the cost? Who will pay?

Example 2. The Corps recently approved a Sunset Beach permit to create a new navigational channel in South Jinks Creek, which is a naturally occurring shallow water tidal creek that has never been dredged before. Figure 2 shows the location of Jinks Creek on the East end of Sunset Beach. Jinks Creek via Tubbs Inlet connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. Just west of South Jinks Creek are the feeder canals and Canal Bay area. North Jinks Creek is surrounded by salt marshes which have been designated primary nursery areas and thus cannot be dredged. The town originally proposed to dredge all of Jinks Creek along with the feeder/canals and Canal Bay but, due to the high density of oyster beds North Jinks Creek was removed. 

Scientists have clearly expressed concerns that dredging a 1,700-foot-long, 80-foot-wide navigational channel that is 5 feet mean low water level in South Jinks Creek will increase the risk of flooding and erosion after storm surges on the east end of Sunset Beach. The engineering consulting firm Moffat and Nichol hired by the town said their computer modeling indicates there will not be any increase of flooding or erosion. The engineers state their modeling data estimates the maximum flood increase to occur in South Jinks Creek may be equal to an order of only 1/64 of an inch.

North Carolina State University professor emeritus Dr. Len Pietrafesa, the Burroughs and Chapin Scholar at Coastal Carolina University, Dr. Paul Gayes, a professor of marine science and geology at Coastal Carolina University and executive director of the Burroughs and Chapin Center for Marine and Wetlands at Coastal Carolina University, and Dr. Shaowu Bao, associate professor at the Coastal Science Center at Coastal Carolina University, using the very same computer program but with additional input data, disagree.

According to Dr. Pietrafesa, the study done by the consulting firm did not take into account nonlocal forcing due to wind set up at the mouths of tidal inlets, such as Tubbs Inlet that connects to South Jinks Creek, which are stochastic, or cannot be precisely predicted, and can overwhelm the amount of volumetric transport that can be driven into the system, particularly for South Jinks Creek. There already is major erosion in this area as shown by the extensive network of sandbags where Tubbs Inlet joins South Jinks Creek. If the three independent academic scientists are correct, the property owners in this area can expect more sand bagging on the rest of South Jinks Creek and possibly in Canal Bay. Sandbags are most likely only a temporary fix. What is next, other hard structures like bulkheads or sea walls? What will happen to the property values in this area?

After the initial dredging, maintenance dredging will be required every few years to keep the unnatural channel open. What will be the escalating costs of the required additional dredging? Who will pay for them?

Another consequence of dredging South Jinks Creek is that it will increase the sediment load deposited in North Jinks Creek. This will bury the high density of oyster beds. Oysters are a “keystone” species, meaning their removal could dramatically change the ecosystem. What will be the ecological impact on North Jinks Creek and the surrounding primary nursery areas? How can dredging a shallow-water tidal creek that has never been dredged before be considered aquatic ecosystem protection and restoration? 

In addition, the increased sediment load deposited in North Jinks Creek will most likely require that North Jinks Creek be dredged followed by more maintenance dredging. Again, what will be the escalating costs and who will pay? 

The civil works side of the Corps’ mission includes:

1. Navigation.
2. Flooding and storm protection.
3. Aquatic ecosystem restoration.

If you protect wisely you don’t have to restore. They are naturally a function of each other. If we are serious about attempting to protect what little natural environment, we have left we must convince the engineers of the Corps to collaborate with the independent academic scientists who have dedicated their professional lives to studying our coast. True collaboration leads to win-win solutions.

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

More than two years have passed since the Army Corps of Engineers announced that only sand pumped from federal projects could be placed in Corps-maintained dredged material disposal sites, leaving local governments, marinas and private property owners the challenge to find land on which to put sand removed from clogged waterways.

Since then, state and Corps officials have been working on a plan to identify nonfederally maintained sites, information that may be rolled out incrementally in the months leading up to the release of the first phase of the plan, according to Todd Horton, the Corps’ deputy chief of navigation.

“Our goal right now is to have our entire project completed by February 2022,” Horton said earlier this month in a meeting hosted by the North Carolina Division of Water Resources.

He said that, to date, the Corps has identified a little more than 20 nonfederal placement sites, the majority of which were initially constructed on state-owned property by the Corps to be used as disposal areas. At some point those properties were turned over to private owners.

A geographic information system, or GIS, database has been created to map each site and include information, such as how much sand a site can hold, and will eventually be placed on a website hosted by either the Corps or the state.

That database is part of the state’s dredged material management plan.

As part of that plan, the Corps will evaluate the dredging needs of nonfederal users for the next 20 years.

The Corps’ Wilmington District is currently gathering that information, calling marinas to assess where they’re dredging, how often they’re dredging and where they’re placing dredging material.

“As of now we’ve contacted 78 marinas requesting data of which we are about 65% complete collecting data from those sites,” Horton said during the June 9 meeting.

The Corps has identified 75 other entities with marine facilities, including homeowners’ associations and hotels with large marine docks, to contact.

“We haven’t reach out to those 75 facilities yet, but we will in the next few weeks,” Horton said.

Wilmington district officials announced in late 2018 that sand dredged in nonfederal projects could no longer be placed in Corps-maintained facilities.

That decision was made based on the Corps’ February 2017 guidance to conserve space within its disposal sites after millions of cubic yards of material dredged from nonfederal projects were placed in a single dredged material placement facility in Galveston, Texas.

The Corps manages more than 200 dredged material placement facilities totaling more than 5,000 acres in North Carolina. Some of those sites have not been used while others are nearly full.

It is unclear exactly where and how material from nonfederal dredge projects are being disposed.

Such work has to be permitted by the state Division of Coastal Management. The terms of a permit include where material is to be placed.

That information was not available in time for publication of this report.

In Carteret County, the county’s shore protection office has been creating its own list of potential disposal sites.

“We’re looking for properties that have enough land to take all this material,” said Greg “Rudi” Rudolph with the county’s shore protection office.

Potential disposal sites have to meet certain criteria, including road access to the property, proximity to the channel being dredged and capacity. And, the property owner has to be willing to take the dredge spoil free of charge.

“In return, it’s theirs,” Rudolph said.

For one of the county’s more recent dredging projects in Old Ferry Channel in Bogue Sound, dredge spoil was placed on a little more than 1 acre of private property off Bay Shore Drive in Cape Carteret.

The project completed in early April dredged more than 24,000 cubic yards of sand from shoaling hot spots along a little more than 11,300 feet of the channel. The dredged material was the equivalent of about 2,100 dump truck loads.

Under the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit terms, silt fences had to be placed on the property to catch runoff. Material could not be piled higher than 6 feet above grade and then had to be seeded.

In all, Carteret County has completed six dredging projects – three large projects dredging more than 1,000 cubic yards and three small projects of about 1,000 cubic yards, Rudolph said.

The county has relied on grants from the state’s Shallow Draft Navigation Channel
Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund to help cover the cost of dredged material disposal.

Rudolph said he applauds the creation of regional disposal facilities, the need of which is only going to grow as building continues in coastal areas.

Carteret County has 80 miles of oceanfront, 1,738 miles of estuarine shoreline, 506 square miles of land and 834 square miles of water.

“So, we’re more water than land,” Rudolph said. “There’s only so much land so possibly more of the vacant land around here is going to be used more in the next five to 10 years.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday a joint effort to help increase renewable energy production in U.S. offshore waters.

The agreement between the bureau and the corps is to help plan and review renewable energy projects on the Outer Continental Shelf. Additionally, the partnership is intended to help the Biden administration meet its commitment to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, according to the bureau.

The partnership between the two organizations is a result of President Biden’s Executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, which directed interagency consultation between the Department of the Interior and Department of Defense, or DOD, in order to increase renewable energy production on public lands and in offshore waters, while ensuring robust protection for our lands, waters, and biodiversity and creating good-paying jobs.

“This agreement shows the value of a whole-of-government approach to clean energy development,” said Bureau Director Amanda Lefton, in a statement. “BOEM has a long history of successful collaboration with the DOD and USACE on energy and marine mineral projects. Additionally, our state partnerships are vital to the advancement of BOEM’s renewable energy program.”

The agreement will allow the Corps to provide the bureau more scientific and technical resources needed to evaluate offshore wind projects on the Outer Continental Shelf.

“This partnership is a great example of federal agencies coming together for a common goal: to advance renewable energy solutions for the nation,” said Corps North Atlantic Division Programs Director Karen Baker. “We look forward to applying USACE scientific and technical support to enable the BOEM-led team.”

While the scope of the agreement covers all renewable energy activities in the Atlantic, the initial focus will be on the Corps supporting the review of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Commercial project and the Kitty Hawk project.

“I applaud the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to advancing clean energy jobs and tackling climate change through additional support for offshore wind development,” said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. “North Carolina is a national leader in clean energy and manufacturing, and partnerships like this one support both our environment and economy.”

Officials said the agreement gives BOEM access to the Corps’ technical expertise while planning new leasing in the Atlantic and reviewing National Environmental Policy Act documents, construction and operations plans or project proposals, facility design reports and fabrication and installation reports.

Officials noted that recent technological advances have enhanced the cost-effectiveness of renewable energy projects. The economic potential provides a path that to diversifying the national energy portfolio while combatting climate change, creating jobs and encouraging investment in communities, the bureau said.

The Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District is requesting the state drop its environmental window for hopper dredging within the federally maintained channels at North Carolina’s ports.

Eliminating the hopper dredging window would allow the Corps more flexibility to maintain the deep-draft channels and save millions of dollars, according to an environmental assessment, or EA, the district released in August.

The Corps is also asking that bed leveling be allowed throughout the year in conjunction with hopper dredging. In bed leveling, dredge contractors use plow-like equipment to level out ridges and trenches created during dredging.

The window for hopper dredging in the state is Dec. 1 – April 15.

“Previous environmental policy documents that were coordinated between the Wilmington District and the State of North Carolina aimed to avoid dredging/placement during periods of high biological activity,” Dave Connolly, the district’s public affairs chief, said in an email. “Using risk management-based decision making for dredging eliminates constraints based on specific dates and will allow more flexibility and increase efficiency in maintaining the harbors while improving navigability and safety.”

Under what the Corps refers to as the Regional Harbor Dredge Contract, or RHDC, Wilmington is paired with Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia, districts as a cost-saving measure when contracting for harbor maintenance projects predominately using hopper dredging.

Wilmington District is the only district within the RHDC that has an environmental window for hopper dredging.

That could be a sticking point for these districts when it comes time to bid for a hopper dredging contract.

These particular dredges are in short supply. There are 13 available for the coast stretching from Maine to Florida and across the Gulf Coast to Texas.

Since coming under the RHDC in 2017, the districts have not been forced to pass a dredging cycle because they could not secure a hopper dredge, Connolly said.

But, prior to the regional contract, projects in the Morehead City Harbor had to wait another dredging cycle because of dredge availability, he explained in the email.

According to the Corps’ assessment, four hopper dredges are scheduled for work through March 2021 and one remains in an “idle” status.

“This leaves only eight available hopper dredges between now and March 2021 to perform all the required dredging for approximately twenty-five to twenty-eight USACE contracts to remove 50-55 million cubic yards (CY) of dredged material in fiscal year 2021,” the EA states.

To remove that 50-55 million cubic yards of material, each dredge would have to remove 25,000 CY a day for 250 days, or about eight months.

A hopper dredger vacuums material from the channel floor and holds that material on the vessel.

They are the preferred dredge to maintain portions of the harbors leading to the state’s ports because they are more efficient, safer and economical, compared to other types of dredges, according to the environmental assessment.

Shoaled material sucked onto hopper dredges used at the ports in Morehead City and Wilmington is placed within preapproved offshore disposal sites, not on adjoining beaches.

“Our office had no significant comments because the project doesn’t include upland (beach) sand placement,” Lilibeth Serrano, public affairs specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Raleigh Ecological Services Field Office, said in an email.

USFWS is recommending the Corps apply current guidelines for avoiding impacts to the West Indian manatee, which is both under the federal Endangered Species Act and North Carolina Endangered Species Act.

Protections for federally listed species are included in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s South Atlantic Regional Biological Opinion, or SARBO, for dredging and material placement.

David Bernhart, head of NOAA’s Protected Resources Division, explained in a telephone interview that the SARBO dates back to the late 1980s to early 1990s.

“At that time, we were discovering for the first time how hopper dredges could capture and kill, if done in certain ways, a lot of sea turtles,” he said. “At that time, we worked with the Army Corps and implemented these seasonal restrictions on hopper dredges to protect sea turtles. It was pretty simple. It was let’s move all of the hopper dredging into the winter months. That was highly effective.”

Since that time, other species, such as Atlantic sturgeon and some corals, have been added for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

One of the things officials noticed was that the previous environmental hopper dredging windows for sea turtles placed 100% of dredging within the right whale calving season, which generally runs December through March largely from Florida to Georgia, but sometimes as far north as North Carolina.

“In our new SARBO that we were working to develop with the Army Corps we wanted to have a broader view of all the risk factors and we did want to revisit that issue of restricting the Corps to just working in the winter time,” Bernhart said.

“For our purposes, that was putting a lot of risks on the right whales. We have reissued as of this March a new, greatly updated SARBO that considers all of the ESA listed species and much less restrictive in terms of limitations on when and where. So, all of our formal ESA consultation has already been done,” Bernhart continued. “The general framework is that there will be a lot of monitoring and coordination by the Army Corps in communication with us as they implement changes because they did things this one way for 25 years or maybe closer to 30 years with those other windows. So, we don’t have full experience with how things are going to go when we deviate from this so I think they’re treating everything with let’s monitor and adjust as needed. We do know that we’ve got a lot more mitigations for particularly sea turtles that are effective that you don’t have to go all the way to closures.”

Several fishery species are present in the project areas between the months of April and June. Those include: Atlantic sturgeon, American Atlantic sturgeon, American shad, river herring, shad, white shrimp, blue crab, gag grouper and summer flounder.

The EA includes an essential fish habitat assessment and concludes that impacts to fishery species are not expected to be significant. Based on the channels’ proximity to designated nursery areas, “no adverse effects are anticipated” to occur in primary or secondary nursery areas, according to the assessment.

Wilmington District’s EA examines three alternatives, including taking no action and expanding the current environmental window from July 1 to April 15.

In the interest of public safety due to the COVID-19 concerns, there is a moratorium at this time on issuing any new shoreline permits, licenses or any other shoreline management activity that requires U.S. Army Corps of Engineers personnel to make a site visit or inspection.

The Wilmington district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Wednesday the moratorium and that public access would be restricted at the district’s corps facilities in the interest of public safety due to the COVID-19 concerns.

Access has been restricted to all operational areas at the district’s lake and dam projects throughout North Carolina and Virginia, and locks and dams on the Cape Fear River. Additionally, all corps’ visitor centers, environmental education facilities and resource management offices will be closed to the public until further notice.

All previously scheduled USACE public tours, site visits, meetings and educational events to be held will be canceled. Any USACE sponsored special events will also be canceled.

All campgrounds will delay opening indefinitely until further notice. Reservations made through recreation.gov will be canceled and full refunds will be provided. All current closures will remain in effect.

Some facilities, such as marinas, boat ramps, and campgrounds, are operated by other entities. The public should contact the respective state or local agencies and marinas directly for the latest on their operating status.

SUNSET BEACH – The lingering question of where Sunset Beach will put beach-suitable sand dredged from surrounding waterways has prompted the withdraw of the town’s federal permit application.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has withdrawn the town’s application seeking to dredge roughly 3 miles of waterway and place beach-compatible sand on a little more than 8 acres of oceanfront.

The decision to pull the permit application was made after the town notified the Corps it was looking for a new site on which to place the sand, Jed Cayton, a public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington district, said in an email.

“The application was withdrawn in response to information provided to the Corps that proposed placement area for the beach compatible material will change,” Cayton said. “The placement location has not been determined yet and this office was unable to make a permit decision with the incomplete project design.”

He then referred to a letter the Corps sent to the town in January giving the town a rundown of all the information Corps officials needed to make a decision on the permit application.

That letter specifically noted that the placement site is not eroding or in need of additional sand.

Members of the state’s Coastal Resources Commission, or CRC, last month discussed the letter before ultimately casting a split vote to grant a variance to the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit the town was granted, with conditions, last fall.

The CRC’s variance gives the town approval to dredge about 18 acres, including south Jinks Creek, to a depth deeper than the connecting waters along its eastern border.

The proposed dredging would help improve navigational access to canals, a bay area and feeder channel through Jinks Creek, which connects Tubbs Inlet to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

The major permit issued to the town last October authorized the project with the condition that the maximum dredging depth be 2 feet below mean low water, which is consistent with a state rule prohibiting canals and boat basins from being dredged deeper than connecting waters.

The CRC’s variance would allow the project dredge about 10,650 feet of south Jinks Creek, the bay area and the feeder channel, to a depth of no more than 6 feet below mean low water. A series of finger canals would be dredged to 5 feet below mean low water.

Dredging at this depth would ensure the waterways will be navigable at low tide immediately after the project is complete, the town’s project consultant told the CRC last month.

The consultant told the commission that state law dictates beach-compatible sand has to be placed on the downdraft beaches. That means sand has to be placed on Sunset Beach or neighboring Ocean Isle Beach, which declined placing the sand on its ocean shoreline.

Sunset Beach Administrator and Interim Planning Director Hiram Marziano II said the town is in the scoping process of finding a new proposed location in which to place the sand.

“At this point we don’t have a new location yet and we’re looking at other opportunities,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “We’ve been working on another location for the last several months.”

The original proposal was to place an estimated 40,500 cubic yards of beach-compatible sand from south Jinks Creek onto about 1,600 feet of ocean shoreline between Fifth and 12^th streets. Noncompatible material, an estimated 48,600 cubic yards, is to be placed in an upland landfill.

In order to place the sand on the beach, the town would have to get easements from private property owners along that stretch of the island.

Marziano said some of those property owners said “flat out” that they would not grant easements, leaving the town in a “our hands are tied” position.

“This is an opportunity for us to resubmit everything,” he said. “This is just part of going through this process.”

When asked if the town has a timeline in which to identify a new sand placement site, Marziano answered, “ASAP,” noting there is not a specific time line.

Sunset Beach will have to submit a new permit application once it finalizes proposed project plans and a disposal area, Cayton said.

“This office will review the submitted documentation and determine if any additional public input is needed based on the proposed changes,” he said.

The town will also have to go back to the state Division of Coastal Management, or DCM, for approval.

“Due to this change, the DCM will be requiring a major modification of the existing permit,” Christy Simmons, the division’s public information officer, said in an email.

Updated Jan. 15 to include comments from Army Corps of Engineers

The Army Corps of Engineers is providing more than $281 million for rebuilding beaches in North Carolina communities damaged by hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

The Corps announced Monday it will use funding provided in the Additional Supplemental Appropriations Disaster Relief Act of 2019 for flood and storm damage reduction projects in the Surf City and North Topsail Beach area and Carteret County’s Bogue Banks.

The act provides nearly $3.26 billion for five project categories, including construction, flood control and coastal emergencies. The Corps will use an estimated $281.5 million in construction funding for the two projects.

Surf City and North Topsail Beach will receive $237 million and Carteret County will receive $44.5 million. The announcement is on the heels of the state learning last week that the Corps awarded $39.6 million for design and construction of a new levee in the Edgecombe County town of Princeville, which flooded during Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

“These substantial investments by the Army Corps of Engineers will help make North Carolina safer and more resilient against future storms. North Carolinians have been hit hard by recent storms, and I appreciate the efforts of our federal partners as we work to rebuild smarter and stronger than ever,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a press release.

With the latest announcement, the Corps says it will have allocated around $321.1 million of the $740 million provided by the law for construction to build flood and coastal damage reduction projects.

Greg Rudolph with the Carteret County Shore Protection Office said Tuesday that his office had been pursuing two parallel paths for well over a decade for nourishment along Bogue Banks. The first path is the Corps 50-year project, which he described as long-range plan contingent on Congress providing funding for all the steps that they started working on in 2001.

Rudolph said that the county knew the Corps process would take time and that the county may never actually get the funding, so the county initiated its own 50-year master plan for beach nourishment.

“This (the master plan) is basically a permitting vehicle so we can conduct projects across the island. Everything we have done post-Florence has been under the auspices of the master plan,” Rudolph explained. Funding for the master plan comes from a “complex interplay of (county) occupancy tax money and whatever we can get from the state and FEMA.”

He said that the Corps project needed tens of millions of dollars from Congress to start construction, “that we honestly thought we would never receive … that is until we received the news over the weekend.”

Rudolph explained that the Corps project has a lot more rules of engagement than the one-time, one-storm FEMA projects.

“We will need to fulfill the Corps’ parking and access requirements — we’ve made good headway there — and the Corps has a different easement than we have on record for our oceanfront property owners and both of these requirements will take a considerable amount of work on our (the towns’) part,” he said.

The Corps program is a 65% federal and 35% nonfederal cost-share agreement and the state has provided 75% of the nonfederal match in the past, but that’s not a guarantee moving forward, Rudolph added.

Topsail Island funding

The $237 million marked for federal beach nourishment of Surf City and North Topsail Beach is in addition to a privately funded beach nourishment project, Surf City officials announced Monday.

“We have been working toward obtaining this funding for a significant amount of time and with persistence have now been approved federally. Many people have worked on getting this project approved,” according to the announcement.

Decisions regarding the project’s timeline and coordination with the privately funded project to maximize the benefit for the town are expected in the coming weeks, Surf City officials said.

Ashley Loftis, Surf City’s finance director and assistant town manager, told Coastal Review Online Tuesday that the town was notified several months ago that the federal government may allocate funds for projects such as theirs.

“We were not certain if our project would actually be funded or not. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that it was,” she said. “This money will be used to fund the joint federal beach nourishment project between Surf City and North Topsail Beach.”

Right now, the town is working to secure a day and time to meet with Corps representatives to discuss details of moving forward. Once those details are finalized, the town will provide the information to the public, she said.

Bryan Chadwick, North Topsail Beach town manager, told Coastal Review Online Tuesday that the town also received word a few months ago that the project might be funded.

“We have been working with federal officials to get this new start but were uncertain if it would actually be funded. As you can imagine, we are very thankful it was,” he said, adding that town is grateful to the elected officials who promoted the project.

Chadwick explained that the funding will be used to help build the dune system and beach profile in parts of North Topsail Beach, including Ocean City, which is in North Topsail Beach and in the area of the project, and Surf City. “This will assist in resiliency during storm events,” he said.

“We will be meeting in the near future with all stakeholders involved in this project for any next steps,” he said.

Dave Connolly, Public Affairs chief with the Army Corps of Engineers, told Coastal Review Online Wednesday that the district submitted the Surf City/North Topsail project as a part of a package of requests for consideration under the fiscal 2019 Supplemental Bill.

“So it was not guaranteed approval but also not unexpected either. The money will be used for the initial construction of an authorized Coastal Storm Risk Management project,” he said.

Connolly provided a map of the 9.9 miles that have been authorized for the project. The white line that says project limits is the authorized area. The area does not include Topsail Beach. “Topsail Beach was not included in the funding bill as the town chose not to proceed with the federal project,” he said.

The cost share is 65% federal and 35% nonfederal but for ongoing construction, 100% will be federally funded until construction completion, he said. There will be a 30-year payback of nonfederal share at 35% upon completion.

“The North Topsail/Surf City project was authorized in 2014 and the towns have been in strong support of project implementation since that time. The project, once constructed, will go a long way toward reducing the risk of damage from coastal storms such as Hurricane Florence,” he said. “These projects are designed to keep beaches healthy. Healthy beaches not only are important to our quality of life but also protect people and property along the coasts from hurricanes and coastal storms.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., responded to the funding with a joint announcement Monday.

“Each storm that hits North Carolina takes a toll on our beaches and river basins,” Burr said. “After the historic damage inflicted by recent hurricanes, it was clear that more preventive measures needed to be taken to better protect our coastal communities. This additional $281.5 million allocation will do just that. I applaud the Corps of Engineers for investing more than $321 million in North Carolina so we can reduce the impact of future storms.”

The senators cosigned a letter with 7^th District Rep. David Rouzer in June 2019, asking the Corps to consider the Surf City/North Topsail Beach project. Tillis also contacted the Office of Management and Budget in July asking for disaster relief funds following hurricanes Matthew and Florence and had recommended to the Corps that the Carteret County project be considered, according to Tillis’ office.

Third in a series

WILMINGTON – A former Florida-based Army Corps of Engineers employee who pleaded guilty earlier this year to lying to investigators about getting paid by an environmental consulting firm in assisting with contract negotiations and sharing sensitive internal government information did not have a hand in the Wilmington harbor improvement project, according to an official with North Carolina State Ports Authority.

Tracey Jordan Sellers, a civilian employee with the Corps’ Jacksonville, Florida, District, pleaded guilty in July of making false statements to Department of Defense investigators about working part-time for a private firm on a handful of projects, two of which were in North Carolina.

The Joint Factual Statement filed July 12 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida does not identify the company or the specific projects in which Sellers was involved.

Bethany Welch, the ports authority’s senior manager of communications and business outreach, said in an email that Dial Cordy and Associates, which has a regional office in Wilmington and is headquartered in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, helped prepare the ports’ draft feasibility study and environmental report for the proposed harbor project.

“Tracey Sellers was in no way involved or contacted for any information in the feasibility study by Dial Cordy,” Welch said.

Dial Cordy President and CEO Steve Dial did not return a call seeking comment.

In comments submitted to the Corps’ Wilmington District, lawyers representing the Village of Bald Head Island question whether Sellers may have worked on the project.

“While none of the Plea Agreement, Joint Factual Statement, or news report say that Dial Cordy & Associates was the environmental consulting company for whom Ms. Sellers worked, given that Dial Cordy was involved in Florida and has offices in Wilmington, North Carolina, and may have been involved in the North Carolina projects (especially in light of the dates of the referenced projects), we believe these questions merit further investigation,” the letter states. “If in fact she worked on this project, this omission in the Draft Report disclosures should also be investigated and explained,” lawyers for the Brooks Pierce law firm wrote.

“… we believe these questions merit further investigation.”

Brooks Pierce law firm’s letter to the Corps

Sellers, a biologist, was contacted in November 2014 via email by a senior member of the unidentified company offering her a part-time job, “related to a bid proposal that COMPANY planned to submit to a state agency in North Carolina,” according to her statement.

Sellers, without seeking or getting approval from Corps ethics officials, provided her resume to the company and “reviewed and made suggested edits” to part of the company’s bid proposal, the statement said.

“Because the state project would later be reviewed by USACE’s Wilmington District, Sellers agreed to limit her participation to ‘technical writing support only’ and suggested that she not attend any meetings with USACE,” the statement said.

Sellers did not receive pay for the work.

She was offered a second part-time job on another project in North Carolina by the same senior member of the company in October 2018.

This project would also be reviewed by the Corps’ Wilmington District, according to the statement.

Sellers, again without authorization from the Corps, “provided advice about the project and asked for a contract for her services,” the statement said.

The company agreed to pay her up to $9,000 over six months at a rate of $50 per hour.

Sellers, who was sentenced in September, also worked with the consulting firm on major dredging projects in south Florida and negotiated a contract for a job with the company on a proposal for a project in Louisiana, the statement said.

“All of the foregoing issues potentially bear on the reliability and credibility of the materials being submitted to the Corps for consideration in its evaluation of this project,” Brooks Pierce lawyers said in their letter to Wilmington District.

They conclude by asking district officials to disregard the entire draft report and investigate and determine the circumstances under which the report was prepared.

The Wilmington District did not respond to questions from Coastal Review Online by deadline.

Lawyers for the island have expressed a number of concerns about the proposed project to widen and deepen with harbor channel to make way for larger container ships operating out of Asia.

Those concerns include the potential impacts dredging the channel to a deeper depth will have on Bald Head’s beaches.

The Corps of Engineers Wilmington District is in the beginning stages reviewing the harbor project through the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, process.

SUNSET BEACH – The Army of Corps of Engineers is broadening its review of a portion of Sunset Beach’s proposed dredging project, one that continues to draw skepticism from some of the town’s residents as well as environmental groups.

Moffatt & Nichol, an engineering firm hired by the town to oversee the project, was notified last month that the town must now apply for an individual federal permit rather than a general permit to dredge south Jinks Creek, a feeder canal and bay area of the island.

The change will set into motion a standard, 30-day public comment period for a project being heavily scrutinized because it includes dredging south Jinks Creek, the northern half of which has never been dredged, leads to marshes and tributaries that are designated Primary Nursery Areas (PNA), and is arguably itself a PNA.

The Corps had not announced the public notice as of publication of this report.

No portion of the creek is currently classified as a PNA by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission, which makes these designations to protect habitat, particularly along bottom areas such as sand, mud, sea grasses and oyster rocks.

Jinks Creek is roughly a mile long and connects Tubbs Inlet with the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, providing ocean access to property owners who live on the eastern end of the Brunswick County island.

The creek supports nearly 1,200 oyster species per acre, or a little more than 50,300 total, between the Intracoastal Waterway confluence and the entrance to the feeder canal, according to a February 2018 survey conducted by Moffatt & Nichol.

That survey concludes that proposed dredging “may create impacts” to about 12,810 oysters and disturb an estimated 10.72 acres within the creek between the Intracoastal Waterway confluence and feeder canal.

The lingering question is what those effects may be on the portion of creek that would not be dredged.

“I don’t think any of us have any problem with dredging the feeder canal or the canal bay area,” said Sunset Beach property owner Richard Hilderman. “Our problem is with Jinks Creek. To me, the major concern is the oyster bed in (north) Jinks Creek.”

Hilderman, who is also a founding member of the Brunswick Environmental Action Team, or BEAT, and a retired biochemist, believes dredging the canal in south Jinks Creek will increase the amount of sediment collecting in north Jinks Creek.

“If you put that channel in south Jinks Creek you’re going to increase the sediment load into north Jinks Creek and then you’re going to bury the oysters,” he said. “To me, somebody has got to do a better study on what the dredging is going to do to the oysters in north Jinks Creek. I think it’s very encouraging that the Corps of Engineers is saying wait a minute, we need to take a step back and look at this.”

The town received a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit from the state in January to dredge Mary’s Creek and Turtle Creek as part of an overall project that includes roughly 3 miles of waterway.

Shoaling in these waterways is making it difficult for boaters to reach the Atlantic Ocean outside of a short window of opportunity that’s based on the tide, according to proponents of the dredging project.

The state Division of Coastal Management, or DCM, notified the town last December that the application to dredge south Jinks Creek, the feeder canal and bay area would have to be resubmitted because it missed several pieces of information.

Under the CAMA major permitting process, DCM heads the coordination between the various state and federal review agencies and general federal permit requirements are folded into the CAMA major permit.

Projects that receive a general federal permit are those expected to have only minor impacts to streams, wetlands and other waters.

Individual permits, which are also called standard permits, are required generally for projects with the potential for substantial environmental impacts, according to the Corps’ website.

Tyler Crumbley, a project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington district, said in an email that the Corps has a majority of the information in the general permit application, “and will just need to be referenced.”

“The next step will be to complete the requests for consultation to the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and the (National Marine Fisheries Service Protected Resources Division) with an updated Biological Assessment and effects determinations,” Crumbley said.

The Corps initially determined the work proposed for south Jinks Creek and the canals “may affect likely to not adversely affect” the environment based on the statewide programmatic biological opinion, or SPBO.

The SPBO was created in 2017 to streamline the process for beach renourishment projects by eliminating the requirement for the preparation of individual, project-specific assessments and case-by-case federal reviews.

A July 29 letter from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Corps recommended the language in the biological assessment be revised to state the project, which includes placing dredged sand onto 1,600 linear feet of ocean shoreline, “may affect, and is likely to adversely affect” five species of sea turtles, red knot, piping plover and seabeach amaranth.

Now the Corps is requiring a project-specific biological opinion, which is part of a process known as Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, where federal agencies consult with one another to conserve threatened and endangered species.

This could lead to a formal consultation between Fish and Wildlife Service officials and the Corps.

The biological assessment is undergoing its third revision since it was initially submitted, Crumbley said.

“The (biological assessment) pertains to the potential impacts for all components of the project proposal on species and their habitats,” he said.

That includes the potential impacts to the oysters and habitat in north Jinks Creek.

If it turns out that a formal consultation is required, the agencies have 135 days to render a biological opinion.

The Corps generally issues decisions for standard permits within 120 days.

Officials with the Corps’ Wilmington district issued a public notice Thursday seeking comment on the application received from Richard V. Scarborough. The Corps had previously issued Scarborough a notice of violation for filling 0.29 acres of wetlands on the property without a permit last September.

Scarborough in his application proposes to restore 0.15 acres of the previously filled wetlands, which was a violation of Section 301 of the Clean Water Act, as well as additional filling of 0.1 acres of wetlands, resulting in a total of 0.25 acres of permanent wetland impacts, according to the Corps.

The Corps said it had suspended legal action on the violation pending the outcome on the application. The Corps’ said its final decision will be based on public comments on the proposed project. The decision could be to issue the permit with or without conditions or deny the proposed work.

“The decision whether to issue a permit will be based on an evaluation of the probable impacts including cumulative impacts of the proposed activity on the public interest. That decision will reflect the national concern for both protection and utilization of important resources,” according to the Corps.

Scarborough could not be reached for comment for this report.

The site, 437 and 455 The Lane in Wanchese, includes 0.65 total acres of wetlands and 0.12 acres of high ground. The 0.29 acres already filled was for a gravel parking lot. The proposed expansion includes construction of a new building, wastewater system, parking and drive aisles for large trucks delivering materials.

The project would be within the service area of an existing mitigation bank. The wetland fill would be mitigated by a purchase of 0.5 wetland mitigation credits at a ratio of 2:1 from Great Dismal Swamp Restoration Bank LLC, according to Corps documents.

The public notice triggers essential fish habitat consultation requirements under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Corps’ initial determination is that the proposed project will have no effect on essential fish habitat or associated fisheries.

No historic properties or endangered species would be affected, according to documents, but the Corps will request an opinion from the state Division of Coastal Management on whether the proposed work would comply with the North Carolina Coastal Zone Management Program.

How to comment

The Corps will accept written comments on the proposed work until 5 p.m., Sept. 16. Comments should be submitted to Billy Standridge, Washington Regulatory Field Office, 2407 West Fifth St., Washington, North Carolina 27889.

The public notice and all attached plans are available on the Wilmington District’s website.

JACKSONVILLE – The North Carolina Beach, Inlet and Waterway Association is rolling out a plan that, if approved, would allow municipalities and private businesses to once again unload sand in federally maintained dredged material disposal areas in the state.

Members of the nonprofit, also referred to as NCBIWA and pronounced “N.C. byway,” met recently with officials from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington district and staff from U.S. House and Senate offices to kick off a campaign that would scale back the nationwide ban on the use of the Corps-maintained disposal sites.

The initial move in what is being described as a two-pronged approach is to get the Corps to narrow the ban to deep-draft navigation projects, which are those where a channel is maintained deeper than 16 feet.

The Corps’ February 2017 guidance was made to conserve space within its disposal sites after millions of cubic yards of material dredged from non-federal projects were placed in a single dredged material placement facility, or DMPF, in Galveston, Texas.

Limiting the rule to deep-draft navigation projects would offer North Carolina municipalities and small businesses the opportunity to dump dredge spoil pumped from shallow-draft projects onto federally managed disposal areas.

“In our minds, that would allow Wilmington district to evaluate on a case-by-case (basis), ‘will this project impact future capacity?’” said Robert Neal, NCBIWA treasurer.

A majority of North Carolina’s inlets are shallow-draft navigation channels, meaning they are no more than 15 feet deep. The shipping lane of the Cape Fear River and Beaufort Inlet are the only deep-draft channels in the state.

Seventeen of North Carolina’s 19 navigable inlets are shallow-draft inlets, which tend to shoal more rapidly than deep-draft inlets and therefore require more frequent dredging to keep them unclogged and navigable.

“They need to hear from us how this is affecting us,” said Kathleen Riely, NCBIWA executive director, referring to officials in the Corps’ office in Washington, D.C. “I think they need to hear from us directly, ‘look, this is what it’s done.’”

So far, Wilmington district officials have declined requests from two small businesses and three towns in the state to use Corps DMPFs.

Those projects included maintenance dredging at Ocean Isle Beach, Holden Beach and Sunset Beach in Brunswick County and Bradley Creek Marina and Masonboro Yacht Club in New Hanover County.

They included more than 100,000 cubic yards of sand and “potentially” more than $1 million, according to information provided by NCBIWA.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, NCBIWA officials said.

Marinas and other small businesses, and several beach towns, including Southport and Oak Island in Brunswick County, Topsail Beach in Pender County and other communities will experience hardships as a result of the policy.

Without access to federally maintained disposal areas, non-federal entities are limited to hauling dredged material by truck to upland areas.

Neal referred to such operations as “bucket and barge.”

“We’re talking about small businesses so the additional cost of that is a significant cost on them,” he said.

The Corps manages about 218 DMPFs totaling more than 5,000 acres in North Carolina. Some of those sites have not been used.

“We’ve got a couple we’re worried about,” said Justin McCorcle, an attorney with the Corps’ Wilmington district.

One facility near Masonboro Inlet in New Hanover County is full, he said.

The Coast Guard gave the Corps $1 million to raise the dikes at a facility near the Southport Marina in Brunswick County.

“Utilization of that capacity that the U.S. Coast Guard paid for is difficult,” McCorcle said. “Obviously in the Wilmington district we’re not in the position to advocate a change to our policy or particularly talk about how it is likely to be changed. We were not closely involved in the drafting of it. What we can express is what our concerns are and what we would be looking for moving forward. How do we make sure we have those available? I think we would want some sort of plan for what to do when an area became full. I think that would be the basic issue.”

A majority of the federally maintained dredge disposal areas in North Carolina are state owned, but the easements to the Corps are in perpetuity.

Neal said North Carolina is behind other coastal states like Florida and New Jersey, which have historic dredge disposal site management plans.

The idea, though, is for North Carolina to eventually have its own dredge management plan.

“We have short-term issues that need to be resolved and then we’re working on a long-term plan down the road,” Riely said.

NCBIWA is requesting a five-year grace period for the Corps’ Wilmington district and the state to work together to create such a plan.

“What we would like to do is propose something in unison with the district and the state,” Neal said.

Part of the work will be getting a handle on how often the sites will be used and how much material is expected to be disposed of within the sites.

“It’s a risk calculation,” McCorcle said. “Are there critical dredging issues at these facilities? What kinds of quantities? Are there adequate facilities nearby and do those appear to have adequate capacity? How can we identify the risk and make sure the (Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway) stays navigable?”

OCEAN ISLE BEACH – Getting permission to dump sand in federally maintained dredged material disposal areas may not be entirely impossible, but a nationwide policy heavily restricts access for North Carolina coastal municipalities and businesses that have long relied on the sites.

If the Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District office, along with local and state officials, can come up with ways to work around the policy, all indications are that it could come at a hefty price for non-federal users, including beach towns and private marina owners.

The policy indicates that while non-federal projects may apply to dispose of material on a Corps-maintained site if the project meets specific requirements, most federal projects are perpetual, and therefore “few” sites will have extra space.

Though the Corps’ nationwide guideline is more than a year old – it became effective Feb. 3, 2017 – word of it has gradually spread along the North Carolina coast.

The policy was the final topic of discussion at the state Coastal Resources Commission’s quarterly meeting held last week in Ocean Isle Beach, where one Corps official proclaimed the guideline “hit all of us by surprise.”

Justin McCorcle, an attorney with the Corps’ Wilmington district, explained to commission members that the decision to restrict sand disposal from non-federal projects was made to conserve space within federal dredged material placement facilities, or DMPFs.

“There are some disposal areas where we are going to run out of capacity before very long.”

Justin McCorcle, attorney, Army Corps of Engineers

The issue stems from cases involving major harbor projects where the Corps has had to find new facilities to place dredged sand because the DMPFs were full, in part, with material from non-federal projects.

Only one of the federal disposal sites in North Carolina is full, McCorcle said.

“There are some disposal areas where we are going to run out of capacity before very long,” he said. “For the most part we’re doing OK.”

There is a distinction between “at capacity” and “full.”

Full means just that – no more room for sand.

When a site is at capacity, the Corps has the option to build higher dikes so more sand may be placed in the DMPF.

There is a limit to how high the dikes can be built so, “At some point those areas run out of space,” McCorcle said.

He said the Corps is examining the federally managed disposal sites in the state, looking at each disposal area and pinpointing potential opportunities to extend beyond the Corps’ 1,000-foot easement at these sites.

Sand in a DMPF can be removed and recycled, which would free up space and open the possibility of a trade-off.

Material excavated from a town-initiated, shallow-draft inlet dredging project, for example, could be placed in a federal disposal site if that town first removes an equal amount of sand from the DMPF.

So, if 100,000 cubic yards of sand is anticipated to be dredged from a non-federal dredge project then 100,000 cubic yards of sand must be removed from the DMPF in which the dredged sand is to be placed.

The Corps has been charging a disposal fee to place dredged material in its DMPFs, which in the case of North Carolina are primarily on state-owned land. That fee would be waived in a sand-for-sand trade, McCorcle said.

Material removed from a federally maintained disposal site could be used for a variety of ways. If sand is beach compatible it can be injected onto an ocean shoreline as part of a re-nourishment project. Sand may also be used to cap landfills or on construction sites.

The sand in the DMPFs is free. Costs associated with evaluating its quality and moving it are not, particularly at disposal sites that cannot be accessed by road.

Thus is the case for Sunset Beach, which recently applied for a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit to dredge Mary’s Creek and Turtle Creek.

About 16,000 cubic yards of material is anticipated to be dredged in the project, which is being conducted by coastal engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol.

In a letter dated Nov. 1 to the state Division of Coastal Management providing additional information about project plans, Moffatt & Nichol engineers wrote that dredged material from the creeks would be transferred to a dump truck or other type of hauling equipment at a state-maintained public boat ramp. The material will be moved from the boat ramp area and disposed at a landfill in Brunswick County.

This may be the disposal area for a majority of the estimated 105,000 cubic yards of material anticipated to be removed in town’s waterway dredging project, which includes about 3 miles of canals and feeder canals, Mary’s Creek, Turtle Creek and south Jinks Creek. A small amount of material identified as beach compatible will be placed on a portion of the town’s oceanfront.

“Things are still a little fluid because we are still in the permitting process for many other waterways,” Sunset Beach Mayor Greg Weiss said. “Our strong preference is to take the spoils directly from the dredge to its ultimate destination site at the landfill off Old Georgetown Road.”

The town’s consultant has been researching possible alternative disposal sites, including one privately owned lot along the Intracoastal Waterway, a prospective location that could save the town money.

“But we’ve really not investigated that further yet to see if it would provide for the environmental safety we’re looking for,” Weiss said.

Todd Horton, the Corps’ deputy chief of navigation, said the Corps is looking into options for the town to use one of its DMPFs. The DMPF in question cannot be reached by roadway, which means the town would have dredge or barge material from the disposal site.

“I’m not sure how council members will react to that but my impression is we will not go back to that alternative,” Weiss said.

The town is among a small number of non-federal projects in Brunswick County and New Hanover County that have been affected by the policy since it was enacted last year.

Coastal engineer Chris Gibson with TI Coastal Services Inc. headed the first project in the state to get hit with the new guidelines.

After much wrangling, Gibson said the Corps permitted the project at Southport Marina a one-time use at a disposal site.

“There’s got to be some way that we can work around this,” Gibson said. “There are places on the (Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway) that haven’t been used in years upon years and they’re not allowing those to be used? I deal with dozens of these projects every year. There really is no viable land. There are a few parcels here and there, but realistically these sites have to be proximate to a marina. You can’t just pump 15 miles.”

“In the not-so-distant future you’re going to see marinas that are no longer going to be viable.”

Chris Gibson, TI Coastal Services Inc.

The implications of the policy, he said, could be grim for the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, or AIWW, industry.

“In the not-so-distant future you’re going to see marinas that are no longer going to be viable,” Gibson said. “In two to three years small dredging companies will start to go out of business. Regionally, it will shut down all of the companies that do this kind of work.”

Each year more than $400 million in expenditures is generated by AIWW-based industries in North Carolina, New Hanover County Shore Protection Coordinator Layton Bedsole said at the CRC’s Nov. 29 meeting.

In contrast, the Corps’ annual budget for the AIWW is about $10 million, he said.

More than 10,000 jobs are associated with AIWW industry, he said.

Those figures were derived from the 2016 N.C. Beach and Inlet Management Plan.

“It appears to me that the Corps of Engineers was putting their deferred maintenance back on the non-federal users in order to continue economic and environmentally sound disposal practices of our AIWW industries,” Bedsole said in an interview following the CRC’s Nov. 29 meeting.

“We need to recognize that this did not come from the Wilmington district and it was handed to the Wilmington district and the initial all-or-nothing approach seems unnecessary especially along the waterways,” he said. “There should be a way that we can determine what are absolutely the Corps’ needs and what areas can be used for the mom-and-pop marinas, for the public accessway ramps, for the residential developments, for the academic research and development, for the nonprofit public use and commercial fishing needs. Surely, it can be better than all or none. I think there are options for the beneficial use of these materials. It will not be cheap to regain the capacity that has been lost over the past 50 years.”

The North Carolina Beach, Inlet & Waterway Association, or NCBIWA (pronounced “N.C. byway”), has formed a dredged material management committee, which is currently looking at ways in which sand dredged from non-federal projects can be used as a short-term solution.

The committee is also inventorying land – local, state and privately owned – that may be available for future disposal use.

“We are working on it,” Executive Director Kathleen Riley said. “First we have to find out what’s out there and we have to find out who owns it. Once we figure out the availability of the sites then we can find a way that we can come to an agreement to use some of that area. NCBIWA looks at the big picture and what we see over time is this will be a big issue at some point for the rest of our coastal communities. We want a long-term solution. That’s important.”

HOLDEN BEACH – Sand that Holden Beach has received for years to re-nourish its east-end oceanfront may instead go to a neighboring island, a prospect that caught town officials by surprise and questioning why the sudden change.

The town is now in the process of obtaining some 60 property easements in the hopes of getting a shot at receiving sand the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers routinely pumps from the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, or AIWW, crossing at Lockwood Folly Inlet.

The Corps has since 2002 given the dredged material to Holden Beach, but Corps officials in late August told town officials that the town would have to get easements and, since Holden Beach’s neighbor to the east, Oak Island, needs fewer easements, that town may get the sand.

The news was a jolt to a town where its board of commissioners this past spring voted unanimously to withdraw a permit application to build a terminal groin at the east end, which loses about 60,000 cubic yards of sand a year, according to annual monitoring.

“We were taken aback by it,” said Holden Beach Commissioner Joe Butler. “We were disturbed at the meeting, we honestly were. For X number of years that sand from Lockwood Folly has been placed on Holden Beach. Financially, it makes more sense to do it that way. From a sand-drift perspective, it makes more sense to do it that way.”

Lisa Parker, chief public affairs officer of the Corps’ Wilmington District, said in an email that the Corps is not implementing a new rule on easements, but rather easements “should have been required all along.”

“In the past we have not required the town to provide us copies of easements to place sand on the beach,” Parker said. “Easements have always been required; as part of our preparation for doing these projects, we are now making sure they are in place before issuing contracts to do the work. The Corps has had permits to place beach compatible sand on adjacent beaches when dredging the AIWW for many years. The specific permit for the Lockwood Folly Inlet Crossing allows for sand to be placed on either Holden Beach or Oak Island.”

Holden Beach Town Manager David Hewett said he doesn’t understand why the Corps is requiring easements because the sand is placed below the high-tide mark, which is under state ownership.

“It’s below the high-tide mark, which, of course, ebbs and flows in the public trust area,” he said. “We’re proceeding with the attempt to acquire the easements, but our position is that it’s a redundant exercise.”

The implication of the Corps’ easement requirement will be wide-sweeping with other beach towns that have been the beneficiaries of sand dredged in federal projects having to supply documentation that can be timely and costly.

“The easement issue has never been an issue,” said Greg “Rudi” Rudolph, head of the Carteret County Shore Protection Office. “Now this time they’re telling us that we need easements. Any raised land, nourished beach becomes property of the state of North Carolina so why would you need easements of these upland areas anyway?”

A majority of the easements obtained along the Bogue Banks oceanfront are permanent, he said.

“Does the Corps want a spreadsheet showing all the parcels? Do they want a hard copy of them all? Are the ones we have not good enough?” Rudolph asked.

Holden Beach is paying Applied Technology and Management Inc., or ATM, $40,000 to conduct a modeling project within the inlet to help make the town’s case for the sand.

“We have accumulated some historical shoreline maps and provided those to the Army Corps of Engineers in support of our position,” Hewett said.

ATM is the same company that identified a 1,000-foot-long terminal groin as the preferred erosion-control method at Holden Beach’s east end.

One of the arguments made against the terminal groin was that routine re-nourishment of the east end, coupled with what is known as the Central Reach project, will be sufficient to combat erosion and less expensive than building a hardened structure.

Terminal groins are wall-like structures built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas of high erosion, like that of beaches at inlets.

The first phase of the Central Reach project was completed more than a year ago and pumped about 1.3 million cubic yards of sand along about a 4-mile stretch of oceanfront in the middle of the island.

Hewett said sand from the federal dredging project has been routinely placed on about a three-quarters-of-a-mile stretch of beach.

These sand injections are included with the town’s beach monitoring program.

“It’s more than 1,000 meters,” he said. “Every two years it varies, but it’s not unheard of to get up close to 200,000 cubic yards.”

That’s not a lot of sand, but that amount is significant to the entire island, Hewett explained.

The town’s annual average erosion rate along the entire 9-mile stretch of oceanfront is about 200,000 cubic yards.

The ocean current washes sand onto and sweeps sand off Holden Beach’s oceanfront from east to west. This is known as a littoral current, which develops parallel to the coast as waves break at an angle to the shoreline.

“That sand benefits the entire island because it migrates east to west,” Hewett said. “The east end of Holden Beach is erosional and the west end of Holden Beach is accretional. That is a direct result of 40 years of putting the sand on the east end of Holden Beach and it migrating to the west.”

For that reason, he argues, it doesn’t make sense to place the sand on the west end of Oak Island.

“It’s a wrong decision from the logical side because of the east-west littoral drift,” Hewett said.

Holden Beach commissioners in October adopted a resolution which states, in part, “natural nearshore transport of sand via littoral drift occurs from east to west in Long Bay, making sand placement on the West End of Oak Island of time-limited benefit while increasing the negative impact on the LWF Inlet.”

Oak Island Town Manager David Kelly did not return a call seeking comment.

Brunswick County Deputy County Manager Steve Stone said he was surprised to hear that the Corps was requiring easements.

“The county does not have an official written policy about the placement or the deposition of the sand,” he said. “But, I think there’s a general consensus that there should be some sort of management plan where sand would be shared between those two communities on some sort of rational basis. The county’s policy is that we want our beach communities to be successful. Ultimately, the towns are free agents.”

Holden Beach anticipates spending roughly $30,000 in attorney fees to get the easements.

“We’re working just as hard as we can so, if we can, somehow through a Hail Mary so we can get what we can,” Hewett said.

WILMINGTON – The Army Corps of Engineers is looking into the possibility of disposing of or removing the locks and dams in the Cape Fear River.

Corps officials will determine whether the federal agency should take no action, deauthorize Locks and Dams 1, 2 and 3 and hand them over to a nonfederal entity, such as the state or local governments, or demolish the structures.

The Corps launched a so-called disposition study earlier this year because the locks and dams, built decades ago to maintain a navigable channel for commercial barges traveling from Wilmington to Fayetteville, are no longer needed for the purpose in which they were constructed.

Commercial use ceased in 1995, according to Lisa Parker, chief public affairs officer of the Corps’ Wilmington District.

“Occasional recreational and small-scale sight-seeing lockages have occurred,” Parker wrote in an email responding to questions.

Maintaining the locks and dams, which were built between 1915 and 1935, costs the Corps about $800,000 a year and refurbishing them would be a “considerable investment.”

“One of the alternatives that must be evaluated is the possible removal of all or part of the structures, to render them ‘safe,’ and related impacts from removal,” Parker wrote. “There is no way of knowing the environmental effects of removal options at this time. Effects could include: changes in vegetation and species, changes in groundwater levels and flow direction in the floodplains, changes in water surfaces within the channel, and other effects. Impacts to communities and industry could be substantial, and will also be evaluated.”

But demolition of the locks and dams is “unlikely given stakeholder interest,” she stated.

Local communities and industries draw water from the pools behind all three dams.

The locks and dams help protect water intakes and they’ve become popular recreation areas complete with boat ramps, restrooms, picnic tables, grills and picnic shelters.

The North Carolina General Assembly noted some of the concerns associated with the removal of the structures from the Cape Fear River when it enacted in 2008 a bill accepting, with conditions, the transfer of the locks and dams.

House Bill 2785 identifies the following concerns:

• The absence of locks and dams No. 2 and No. 3 “jeopardizes existing and/or potential water supply intakes” above those structures.
• Removing Lock and Dams No. 2 and No. 3 “would lower the river surface by upwards of 20 feet and potentially compromise water quality in the middle and lower subbasins” of the river.

Under the bill, the state would accept the transfer of the locks and dams and all federally owned adjacent lands with the stipulation that all three structures be “properly refurbished” and rock arch rapids fish ladders constructed at each one.

The cost estimate to restore locks and dams 2 and 3 is to be identified in the study.

Currently, Lock and Dam No. 1 is the only one of the three structures with a rock arch rapids designed to allow migratory fish such as shad, river herring, striped bass, Atlantic sturgeon and shortnose sturgeon to travel upstream. Lock and Dam No. 1 is at Kings Bluff, about 39 miles above Wilmington on the river.

That project, completed in 2012, was paid for with Federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and state funds as a mitigation requirement for the Wilmington Harbor 96 Act navigation deepening project. The project cost $10.9 million.

An additional $3.4 million was spent to fill a scour hole so that the structure could support fish passage, Parker stated.

Less than a month ago, Cape Fear River Watch submitted a Section 408 application to the Corps requesting a proposal to improve passage at Lock and Dam No. 1 by creating wider gaps in the rocks and larger pools for fish such as striped bass and sturgeon, according to Cape Fear River Partnership Coordinator Dawn York.

More than $3 million, $1.6 million of which was funded by the North Carolina Division of Water Resources, has been allocated to the design of fish passages at Locks and Dams 2 and 3, York said.

It is unclear when an application for those proposed projects would be submitted. York said she was unsure whether the Corps could consider an application while the disposition study is underway.

The study is expected to be complete within 12 to 18 months, according to Parker.

“Things could really change depending on who would take over the locks and dams,” York said.

At this point, that’s anyone’s guess.

“I know that some conversations have been initiated,” York said. “So far no one has stepped up and said we’ll take care of it. No one has been held to the fire to say this is it, this is what we’re going to do with them. It can be a little complicated, but there’s a lot of potential. Certainly, we can look to who would have the resources and willingness to take them on. You may have different parties taking on different parts.”

Take Elizabethtown, for example. The Bladen County town leases the federal land at Lock and Dam No. 2, which is 2 miles from the town’s courthouse, for recreation. What if the town were to take over the lockmaster house and use it as an education center?

Or, what if Bladen County or the state permanently closed the locks and maintained the dams?

What if the Fayetteville Public Works Commission, which has been vocal about future water supply for the city and Army base Fort Bragg, took control of Lock and Dam No. 3, which is just 17 miles southeast of the city?

“It’s sort of just a guessing game as to who’s going to step up to the plate,” York said. “What’s the liability if we have another hurricane like Hurricane Matthew? There was a lot of damage and the Corps spent quite a lot of money to get the lock chambers up and running. Obviously, the cleanest would be for one entity to take them all over. We just want to see a good outcome.”

The Corps expects to host a public scoping meeting of the study sometime this month in which representatives of various agencies, municipalities and counties will be given the opportunity to comment on the study in the morning. The Corps will accept comments from the general public during the afternoon.

WILMINGTON – The Army Corps of Engineers is accepting public comment until 5 p.m. Oct. 4 on a proposal for a general permit to stabilize eroding shorelines using marsh sills in the state’s coastal waters.

“The general permit authorizes the construction, maintenance and repair of marsh sills for shoreline stabilization along eroding shorelines within waters located within the 20 coastal counties of North Carolina and subject to regulatory jurisdiction of the Wilmington District, Corps of Engineers,” according to the public notice from the Corps. A type of living shoreline, marsh sills are low-profile structures constructed parallel to shorelines to reduce wave action and provide protection for existing coastal marshes and shorelines.

Written comments may be mailed to Wilmington Regulatory Division Office, Attention: Ronnie Smith, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC 28403.

Comments received will be used to assess impacts on endangered species, historic properties, water quality, general environmental effects and other public interest factors and to determine the overall public interest of the proposed activity, according to the notice. Comments will also be used in the preparation of an environmental assessment and an environmental impact statement, or EIS, pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

A public hearing on the application within the comment period may be requested in writing with particular reason for holding the public hearing, which will be granted, unless the district engineer determines that the issues raised are insubstantial or there is otherwise no valid interest to be served by a hearing.

This proposal is to be reviewed by state agencies for relevant permits and certificates such as the Division of Water Resources, Division of Coastal Management, Department of Administration, Council of State and the Land Quality Section of the state Division of Energy, Minerals and Land Resources. The Corps said the general permit will not be issued if any required state or local authorizations or certificates are denied.

Learn More

• General Permit Application Public Notice
• Department Of The Army General (Regional) Permit

WILMINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers said no to a beach re-nourishment project for nearly all of the Bogue Banks oceanfront, the Carteret County News-Times reported.

Carteret County Shore Protection Office Manager Greg Rudolph, Atlantic Beach Mayor Trace Cooper and Pine Knoll Shores Manager Brian Kramer met Tuesday with officials in the Corps’ Wilmington district office.

The proposal was to link a western Atlantic Beach re-nourishment project to another project set for this winter to re-nourish beaches from the eastern boundary of Pine Knoll Shores through the eastern part of Emerald Isle.

Issues contributing to the decision included timing and the availability of a hopper dredge that would have been used to move sand from the previously planned Morehead City Port Harbor dredging project, which includes Beaufort Inlet, to western Atlantic Beach and Pine Knoll Shores. Sand from the dredging of Beaufort Inlet will instead be pumped via pipeline dredge to a new near-shore site off Shackleford Banks.

Learn More

• Engineers nix proposal for Bogue Banks nourishment

WASHINGTON, D.C. –  Congressman Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., says he has secured an additional $12.6 million from the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge Morehead City Harbor this year.

Jones’ office announced the funding Tuesday.

In April, Jones wrote a letter to the Corps explaining that the $5.57 million provided for the Morehead City Harbor project in the administration’s fiscal year 2018 budget is helpful but not sufficient to maintain the channel at its authorized depth. The inside harbor channel depth is authorized at 45 feet mean lower low water, or average lowest tide.The shallow draft resulted in economic losses, putting harbor-related jobs at risk.

The Corps announced it had granted Jones’ request. The amount added to the $5.57 million in the president’s budget totals $18.17 million in this year’s federal funding for the project.

“Maintaining Morehead City Harbor is vital to the economic success of Carteret County and Eastern North Carolina,” Jones said in the announcement. “The port supports over 3,700 jobs, and the businesses that rely on it must have reliable access through the harbor. I am very grateful to the Corps of Engineers for agreeing to allocate these additional funds.”

CHAPEL HILL – The Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of Audubon North Carolina, has filed a challenge in federal court to the Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of a terminal groin for Ocean Isle Beach.

The lawsuit filed Monday claims that the Corps failed to objectively evaluate alternatives to the terminal groin, including those that would be less costly to Ocean Isle residents and less destructive to the coast.

The lawsuit describes the Corps’ pre-ordained selection of a terminal groin before consideration of other alternatives, use of unreliable erosion modeling and elimination of alternative approaches that would be cheaper for the town, would adequately protect vulnerable properties, and maintain wildlife habitat on the east end of Ocean Isle.

“The terminal groin at Ocean Isle is bad for taxpayers, wildlife and everyone who loves to visit this special place on North Carolina’s coast,” said Heather Hahn, executive director of Audubon North Carolina.  “Fortunately it isn’t necessary.  There are more effective ways to manage erosion– options that would protect threatened properties, cost residents less money, and work with nature, rather than against it.”

Ocean Isle Beach officials say the planned terminal groin is needed to eliminate long-term erosion damage to existing development on the east end of town.

The law center contends the Corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act in its approval of the project.

The plaintiffs argue that the proposed terminal groin would be particularly devastating to the undeveloped refuge on the island’s east end.

“We’re in court because the Corps failed to fairly consider alternatives that would cost Ocean Isle less, manage erosion, and protect the natural beach on the east end of the island when it approved this destructive project,” said Geoff Gisler, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.  “Federal law requires the Corps to choose the least destructive alternative; with the terminal groin, it approved the most destructive.”

Learn More

• Read the complaint

OCEAN ISLE BEACH – Ocean Isle Beach has received a federal permit to build a 750-foot terminal groin, construction of which is expected to begin later this year.

The Army Corps of Engineers released both a record of decision and the permit for the project Feb. 27.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management issued the Brunswick County beach town in November a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit for the hardened shoreline erosion control structure.

Town officials are now in the process of selecting a contractor and discussing how to pay for the project, the initial construction cost of which is $5.7 million. The 30-year cost of the project is an estimated $45.8 million.

“We’re working on that during our budget process,” said Daisy Ivey, the town administrator.

Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith said the town has been saving to pay for the project.

“We’ve searched for a solution for chronic erosion at the east end for a long time and we think this will be that solution,” Smith said of the terminal groin.

Town officials anticipate construction to begin in November.

For two decades, the town has been battling chronic erosion at the east end, where homes have been lost and roads repeatedly repaired.

The town has tried to curb erosion by installing a sandbag revetment and building up dunes. Public accesses have had to be replaced and water and sewer lines relocated, costing the town more than $3.5 million, according to the town’s environmental impact study, or EIS, on the terminal groin project.

The project calls for placing about 264,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from Shallotte Inlet behind the structure. Dredging and fillet, or sand placed behind the terminal groin, is scheduled to take place about every five years.

The terminal groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore, would be designed to mitigate erosion along 3,500 feet of the town’s oceanfront shoreline west of Shallotte Inlet.

The proposed project will have a 300-foot shore anchorage section made of either concrete or steel sheet piles. The pile will tie into a mound of large armor rock that will stretch 750 feet seaward.

Three signs for navigational aid must be put up in conjunction with the project, a requirement of the U.S. Coast Guard.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion determined the project may affect, but would not jeopardize, the existence of several endangered species, including the piping plover and loggerhead nesting sea turtles.

Federally designated essential fish habitat, or EFH, is expected to be adversely affected, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Habitat will be modified in the groin footprint and during dredging as well as in disposal areas, according to the record of decision.

One of the special permit conditions establishes a work moratorium between April 1 through November 15 to protect fish and protected species during seasonal migrations.

Opponents of terminal groins argue that the structures cause erosion to beaches down-drift of a groin.

According to the Corps’ record of decision, the terminal groin “may increase erosion along the easternmost point” of Ocean Isle Beach, but not impact the shorelines in Holden Beach and Sunset Beach, beach towns immediately east and west of Ocean Isle Beach.

The permit requires the town to monitor shorelines west and east of the terminal groin, Shallotte Inlet, and Holden Beach.

If the project causes an increase in erosion along neighboring shorelines, the town will have to “implement terminal groin alterations” before the beach can be nourishment, according to the permit conditions.

Ocean Isle Beach will be the second town in the state to build a terminal groin since lawmakers in 2011 repealed a long-time law banning hardened shoreline erosion control structures.

Before 1991, only two terminal groins existed on the North Carolina coast – one at Fort Macon at Beaufort Inlet and one at the Pea Island Wildlife Refuge at Oregon Inlet.

In 2015, Bald Head Island became the first beach community to build a terminal groin after the General Assembly’s 2011 decision to allow up to four groins to be built on the coast. Legislators later made an allowance for two more terminal groins to be built, bringing the total to six in the state.

Though Figure Eight Island in New Hanover County was the first to submit an EIS to the Corps for review to build a groin on the north end of that island, it has yet to receive a federal permit.

A vote of the private island’s property owners last year did not net enough support to move forward with the proposed project. It is unclear whether Figure Eight’s Homeowners’ Association’s board of directors will bring it up for a future vote.

Holden Beach is also exploring the possibility of building a terminal groin. That town is waiting for the release of the final EIS on its proposed project.

North Topsail Beach is in the early stages of pursuing a terminal groin project for the north end of Topsail Island.

Learn More

• Read the Record of Decision

WILMINGTON – The Army Corps of Engineers has authorized its first nationwide permit for living shorelines.

Nationwide Permit 54 specifically addresses the construction and maintenance of living shoreline projects.

The new permit solidifies on a national level the value of living shorelines as a more natural erosion control alternative to hardened structures such as bulkheads, say living shoreline advocates.

“We’re really excited about this,” said Laura Lightbody, project director of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Flood-Prepared Communities program. “Our hope is that this nationwide permit will ease [the permitting process] for property owners, giving them more of a choice hopefully leading them down the path of the environmentally preferred option.”

Living shoreline projects are built with various structural and organic materials, such as plants, submerged aquatic vegetation, oyster shells and stone. These projects generally work best along sheltered coasts such as estuaries, bays, lagoons and coastal deltas, where wave energy is low to moderate.

The Corps has folded permitting guidelines for living shorelines into Permit 13, which governs construction of erosion-control projects.

The problem with the current permitting system, critics say, is that in areas including North Carolina, those who apply to build bulkheads and revetments have an unfair advantage because it takes generally less time and money to obtain permits for hardened structures than for living shorelines.

The Corps’ Wilmington District has regional General Permit 291 that covers shoreline projects in or affecting navigable waters. This permit was developed in conjunction with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and was one of the first state programmatic general permits authorized in the country.

The way the system is set up now, general permit applications have to be reviewed by the state Division of Water Resources and Division of Marine Fisheries. After those state agencies have reviewed an application, the applicant must then submit it to the Corps for authorization.

Because this puts the burden on the applicant, most apply for a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit, which is, in essence, a one-stop shop where the state Division of Coastal Management sends an application to all of the reviewing agencies. The review time for CAMA major applications takes 45 days or longer.

General Permit 291 will continue to be available for coastal projects, including living shorelines, according to a Wilmington District public affairs officer.

“If a project involves a CAMA major permit and agency coordination is needed for historic properties, endangered or threatened species or essential fish habitat consultation, we will more than likely process living shoreline projects under GP 291,” Lisa Parker, wrote in an email responding to questions.

Permit 54 specifies a time frame in which the Corps must review a request and respond to an applicant, which will help streamline the permitting process.

With a more streamlined permitting process, Lightbody said the hope is that living shorelines will buck the trend of hardened erosion-control structures.

At least 14 percent of the country’s shoreline is armored by hardened structures, according to a group of researchers who in 2015 conducted the first nationwide survey of artificial coastal erosion control methods.

That’s more than 14,000 miles of hardened shoreline.

“We don’t want that to increase and continue down the path that it’s on,” Lightbody said.

If hardened shoreline structures remain the status quo and the coastal population continues to grow, nearly one third of the nation’s contiguous shoreline is expected to be hardened by 2100, according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s “Guidance for Considering the Use of Living Shorelines.”

The guide, published in 2015, explains why living shorelines, when built in areas suitable for natural stabilization, are a preferable alternative to hardened structures.

Mounting research shows that living shorelines hold up better through storms than hardened structures, enhance intertidal habitat for fish and other marine resources, and better defend against sea-level rise.

Permit 54 states that living shorelines “should maintain the natural continuity of the land-water interface, and retain or enhance shoreline ecological processes.” The permit further states that living shoreline projects must have a “substantial biological component” that should include tidal or lacustrine fringe, or lakeside, wetlands, oyster or mussel reef structures.

Conditions of the new permit require an applicant to build out no more than 30 feet into the water from the mean low water line in tidal waters and no more than 500 feet in length along the bank, unless waived by a Corps district engineer.

Structural materials such as stone, native oyster shell and wood debris must be anchored so it does not move in “most” wave action.

The new permit also mandates native plants be used in living shorelines constructed in tidal or lacustrine fringe wetlands.

The Corps can place conditions applying to specific regions on nationwide permits, or NWPs.

“Regional conditions for the NWPs are still under review and at this time we do not know what the regional conditions will be for NWP 54,” Parker wrote.

The goal, she stated, is to have regional conditions in place by the time the existing nationwide permits expire later this winter.

The Corps issues nationwide permits for a whole host of activities covered by the federal Clean Water and Rivers and Harbors acts. The review of applications for such permits is streamlined because the activities will have minimal effects on the environment.

NWP 54 is one of two new nationwide permits the Corps released Jan. 6. The agency updates its national permits every five years. New and modified permits will become effective March 18.

Learn More

• Corps Revises, Renews Nationwide Permits
• NOAA: Guidance for Considering the Use of Living Shorelines
• Pew: Flood-Prepared Communities

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND – The Army Corps of Engineers has released its final environmental study on Figure Eight Island’s proposed terminal groin project.

The publication yesterday of the final Environmental Impact Statement triggered the Figure Eight homeowners’ association’s board of directors to file for a federal permit to build a 1,500-foot-long terminal groin at the island’s northern end.

Before a federal permit may be issued, the proposed project must get the green light from several federal and state agencies.

The homeowners’ board must also obtain a Coastal Area Management Act major permit from the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management before construction can begin.

“We are preparing the state application now,” said David Kellam, Figure Eight Island administrator. “I certainly would say we will get it in in the next couple of months anyway.”

The Corps is taking public comments on the final study through Aug. 1.

The Corps will decide whether to issue a permit after the comment period ends and after completing its formal consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service over the groin’s potential effects on protected endangered and threatened species.

Those agencies are reviewing the project’s potential impacts to critical habitat to fish, sea turtles and shorebirds, including federally protected piping plover and red knots.

For nearly a decade, sand has accreted at the private island’s north end, creating what is now nearly 60 acres of unspoiled beach at Rich Inlet in New Hanover County. This sandy spit is a nesting, resting and eating haven for thousands of shorebirds.

Opponents of the project argue that the build up at the north end defeats a need for a terminal groin.

The channel in Rich Inlet historically shifts to a more northern alignment toward Hutaff Island, a move that is expected to occur in the future and prompt erosion at the north end, according to the study.

“It might be protected today, but there’s no guarantee that in the next year or two years or three years from now they will not be back in the same predicament,” said Mickey Sugg, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington office.

Figure Eight’s board says a terminal groin will prevent the severe erosion at the north end that the island has experienced in the past. A terminal groin is a structure made of rock or other material placed perpendicular to the shore adjacent to an inlet to stabilize the beach.

Environmental groups, including North Carolina Audubon and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, have been fighting the board’s proposal to harden the shoreline at Rich Inlet. The inlet is one of the few remaining natural inlets in the state.

Audubon, the federation and the Southern Environmental Law Center submitted several comments on the Corps’ supplemental environmental study questioning the need for the project and its potential harmful impacts.

Comments from those groups, federal and state review agencies and the general public, including more than 450 individual emails, were submitted during the supplemental EIS comment period last year.

In a number of comments from the fish and wildlife service, the federal agency stated that the Corps’ supplemental study did not adequately discuss the potential effects to designated piping plover critical habitat.

“The Service has concerns for the potential losses of nesting and foraging habitat due to both direct and indirect impacts, particularly within the Critical Habitat Unit,” the agency stated. “The [biological assessment] and final EIS should address the potential loss of designated critical habitat over time, as a result of the construction of the terminal groin.”

The final study states that modeling shows the sand spit north of the terminal groin would remain fairly stable and that, at the end of the five-year simulation based on 2012 conditions, the spit “was still a viable feature on the north end.”

The Corps released nearly a year ago a supplement to its 2012 draft Environmental Impact Statement after the homeowner’s board submitted a preferred design and location different from what was included in the original study.

The new design placed the structure 420 feet further north of the alternatives listed in the original study.

Figure Eight’s preferred alternative would extend about 505 feet seaward between mean high and low water lines. The remaining 905-foot anchor would span across the north end of the island, ending near the Nixon Channel shoreline.

The anchor will need to be built across upwards of 12 to 15 properties.

The HOA board will have to obtain easements from the owners of each of those properties.

Figure Eight Island is unincorporated, and the homeowner’s association doesn’t have the legal authority to condemn property. If even one property owner holds out, it could stall the proposed project indefinitely.

“We are in the process of securing easements,” Kellam said. “None have actually been written, but numerous property owners have agreed to them. Some of them have requested further conversation with us on it.”

The homeowner’s board will be meeting with those property owners after the July 4 holiday, he said.

According to state statute, a CAMA major permit application must include a copy of the deed “or other instrument” claiming title to the property.

Moving forward with the project without first securing the needed easements is a waste of money and everyone’s time, said Todd Miller, the executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation. “The Figure Eight Homeowners Association is like an emperor with no clothes in  its attempt to build a groin on private properties without getting landowners’ permissions,” he said.

The Corps does not require proof of land ownership in its application.

“When we receive a request, whether it’s this project or any kind of project, we’re under the assumption that they have received any easements they need to receive,” Sugg said. “If we issue a permit that doesn’t supersede any type of requirements for the applicant or permittee to go through someone’s property. Our permit doesn’t supersede anybody’s property rights whatsoever.”

To Learn More

• Final EIS

WILMINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers has issued its final environmental impact statement for the proposed terminal groin in the Brunswick County town of Ocean Isle Beach.

The Corps’ Wilmington district issued public notice today involving the town’s proposed project to build a 750-foot terminal groin with a 300-foot shore anchorage system. The project is meant to curb chronic erosion along the eastern portion on the town’s oceanfront shoreline and also includes periodic beach renourishment, but opponents say the costly plan poses a number of risks.

The town says 238 parcels and 45 homes, including 18 on the oceanfront, are vulnerable to erosion damage during the next 30 years if past erosion trends continue. Five homes on the east end of the beach have been lost to erosion since 2005. Also at risk are roads and town utilities.

“The main concerns of residents and owners at Ocean Isle Beach are the economic losses resulting from damages to structures and their contents due to hurricane and storm activity and the loss of beachfront and due to the ongoing shoreline erosion along the east end of the island in proximity to Shallotte Inlet,” according to the study’s executive summary.

Those opposed to the project, including the N.C. Coastal Federation, say the estimated taxpayer costs associated with the project could total $46.5 million over the next 30 years, all to protect properties with a combined tax value of only $7.5 million. Opponents also cite the project’s risks to the quality of the public beach for access and degradation or destruction of habitat designated as “critical” for fish and wildlife. The groin could also influence, in a negative manner, the beach on the other side of the inlet at the west end of Holden Beach, according to the federation.

Learn More

• Ocean Isle Beach terminal groin final environmental impact statement

MOREHEAD CITY — The Army Corps of Engineers is considering a plan to relocate the shipping channel at the state port here to try and resolve longstanding shoaling problems, the Carteret County News-Times reported.

The plan would shift the channel in Beaufort Inlet westward, away from Shackleford Banks and closer to Fort Macon.

Shoaling has affected business at the port. The channel is federally authorized to a depth of 45 feet, but ships are currently limited to a 37-foot draft.

The Corps is preparing an environmental assessment, according to a Feb. 4 letter signed by Elden Gatwood, chief of the Corps’ planning and environmental branch.

“Shifting the channel alignment approximately 300 feet west, away from Shackleford Banks, would provide a navigation channel more aligned with natural deep water,” according to the letter. “This would reduce maintenance dredging requirements and increase ease of navigation for containerships calling on the Morehead City State Port terminal.”

Any material removed from the inlet deemed to be beach quality would be stored in nearshore placement areas or at Fort Macon and Atlantic Beach.

Learn More

• Read the full report.

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — Two decades of chronic erosion have taken its toll on this beach town’s east end where beachfront properties have been consumed by the ocean and state roads repeatedly repaired.

Town leaders are now banking on the construction of a 750-foot terminal groin to fend off further loss of sand, according to a recently released environmental study by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“The town of Ocean Isle Beach has been planning for this for a long time, long before the law was changed,” Mayor Debbie Smith said. “We knew we had to do something at some point. None of the stopgap measures that we’ve performed have been effective.”

The stretch of beach at the eastern end of the barrier island was left out of the town’s 2001 federal beach nourishment project because of a predicted high rate of sand loss on that section of beach. About 2,000 feet of the eastern tip of the roughly 5.5-mile-long island has remained highly susceptible to erosion.

A sandbag revetment and dunes have been built, public accesses replaced and water and sewer lines relocated, costing the town more than $3.5 million and the N.C. Department of Transportation about $1 million over the past decade, according to the Corps’ draft Environmental Impact Statement that was released Jan. 23.

“Right now we’ve got a 1,500-foot wall of sandbags down there, which nobody likes,” Smith said. “We believe our modeling from our engineers is showing us that not only will this terminal groin protect where we have sandbags in front of our properties, it will probably extend the life of our federal beach re-nourishment project from a three-year cycle to a five or six-year cycle.”

The town considered three lengths of terminal groins, including a 500-foot wall and a 250-foot wall.

Predictions that a 750-foot terminal groin would stabilize the shoreline and save money over the next 30 years by extending the time between re-nourishment projects prompted the town to choose that particular length of wall.

The terminal groin, which would include a 300-foot anchorage section upland, would be designed to control rapid shoreline changes just west of Shallotte Inlet.

The proposed project would include beach fill from the inlet, which separates Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beach and is where the town gets sand for its re-nourishment project. The sand source would be tapped every five years to nourish a 3,214-foot section of shoreline directly west of the terminal groin.

“It will be built where it is leaky and porous,” Smith said. “Where it’s located we’re not going to rob anyone of sand.”

The proposed terminal groin was “found to not have any significant impact on the shoreline or periodic nourishment requirements of the federal project west,” according to the draft document.

The study states that there are nearly 240 parcels, 45 homes and more than 1,800 feet of roads and utilities vulnerable to damage or loss from erosion over the next 30 years.

Smith said property owners are “on board” with the proposed project.

“Not only the ones who have been directly affected, but the other property owners understand that the publicity of an eroding beach is not good for anyone on the island,” she said.

A terminal groin may not be good for the island either, according to the N.C. Coastal Federation, which is opposed to hardened erosion-control structures.

“We are still in the process of reviewing the draft EIS and will be developing detailed comments for the record,” Ana Zivanovic-Nenadovic, program and policy analyst with the federation, said in an email. “From the first look we can say that this structure will only protect a few homes at a very high cost to the entire community.”

An analysis she conducted for the federation in 2012 looked at land ownership and tax records of property at the eastern end of the island. It revealed that 61 percent of the 631 properties in the hazard area near the inlet at the time was held by three companies owned or managed by the family of Odell Williamson, a longtime civic leader and one of the original developers of Ocean Isle Beach.

More than 300 of those properties are currently not suitable for building and each has a total taxable value of $100, according to the analysis.

The projected cost of building a terminal groin at the inlet and subsequent re-nourishment over a 30-year period is about $46.6 million. The town would pay for about half of the federal storm damage reduction project costs associated with that tab and the government would pick up the other half.

“This structure will put the town on the hook for potential claims of property losses for lands that are currently undeveloped and which can’t be developed at the eastern end of the island,” Zivanovic-Nenadovic stated.

She emphasized the state law requirement that local voters approve funding to build a terminal groin.

Registered voters on Bald Head Island last May approved an $18 million bond referendum to fund that town’s terminal groin project, the first in North Carolina to receive a state permit for construction since the General Assembly in 2011 passed a law allowing up to four such structures along the coast.

Construction of the 1,900-foot terminal groin at Bald Head is expected to begin in the coming months. The groin will be built in two phases, the first of which will be 1,300-foot structure. An additional 500 feet of wall will be added following a two-year monitoring period.

Figure Eight Island in New Hanover County continues to await the release of a supplement to the original draft EIS of the private island’s proposed terminal groin project.

“It’s still being developed and no time has been given as to when it will be released,” said Mickey Sugg, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington office.

Holden Beach is also pursuing a terminal groin project, though it is unclear where that town is in the process.

The release of the draft EIS of Ocean Isle Beach’s proposed project will be followed by a public comment period and eventual release of a final environmental statement.

“We hope if we can keep it on track and, given all the comment periods and reasonable anticipation from changes made, we’re hoping maybe we can apply for a permit this fall and have construction over the 2015-2016 winter,” Smith said. “That’s a timetable we should be able to meet.”

A version of this story also appears in the Tideland News.

The Hofmann forest has freshwater forested wetlands like Bladen Lake State Forest’s, above, in North Carolina. A report released earlier this year by the EPA found that states along the Atlantic coast have lost more than 200,000 acres of freshwater forested wetland since 2004. Photo source: Ducks Unlimited

MAYSVILLE – Extensive ditching in the Hofmann Forest in Onslow and Jones counties that drained about 6,500 acres of wetlands may have violated federal law by being dug without permits, the Army Corps of Engineers has concluded after a three-month investigation.

The Corps’ District in office in Wilmington included a description of the alleged violations in a letter it sent recently to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Atlanta, explained Mickey Sugg of the Corps’ regulatory section in Wilmington. EPA will determine if the ditching violated the federal Clean Water Act and what the penalties might be.

Under Section 404 of the law, the Corps has the job of regulating most ditching and filling of wetlands. The law allows forestland owners to dig small ditches to allow trees to grow or to make it easier to harvest them. Major ditching that changes the water table and dries out the land to make it suitable for other uses isn’t allowed without a permit.

“It (the letter) basically says that after our investigation, we feel that some activity there does not meet the requirements for a minor drainage exemption (for forestry),” Sugg said Monday. “It says that we recognize that they (EPA) have the ultimate responsibility to make the decision on whether enforcement action should be taken.”

The letter states that about 6,500 acres of wetlands have been affected by ditches that were dug between 2010-2012.

Hofmann Forest is owned by N.C. State University and has been at the center of a year-long controversy surrounding its planned sale for $150 million to an Illinois-based agricultural group. The sale is supposed to close by June 30, but a coalition of environmentalists and foresters is fighting the sale, citing potential damage to the ecosystem if the forest is converted to agricultural, commercial or residential uses. It’s unclear whether the alleged ditching and possible penalties will affect the sale.

Todd Miller, the executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation, is pleased that the regulatory agencies are finally paying attention. He instigated the Corps’ investigation late last year when he asked the Corps for permits relating to wetland draining in the Hofmann. Miller made the request after reading in an “investor prospectus” written by the new owners that more than 5,500 acres of forest had been cleared and could be converted to agricultural uses. Such a conversion would first require permits from the Corps.

“The EPA has raised the alarm about unacceptable losses of forested wetlands in North Carolina,” he said, referring to a report released earlier this year that found that states along the Atlantic coast have lost more than 200,000 acres of freshwater forested wetlands, like those found in the Hofmann, since 2004. “It appears from what has happened in the Hofmann Forest that many of these losses result from a failure of federal agencies to enforce their own wetland safeguards.”

Davina Marracini, an EPA spokeswoman in Atlanta, said she could not comment on the timetable for the EPA investigation. Nor could she comment on the possible penalties or on whom they might be imposed. She cited agency policy that prohibits comments on an ongoing investigation.

Todd Miller

Ron Sutherland, a conservation scientist with the Durham-based Wildlands Network, has opposed the sale of the Hofmann and is a plaintiff in a lawsuit to require an environmental assessment before the sale can take place. He said Monday that the Corps’ letter “clearly shows how all of this is a gray area … and how uncertain it is in terms of the future use of Hofmann” by the buyer.

The letter, he added, “also is most likely indicative that N.C. State and the buyer will have their hands full trying to sort things out with the Corps and EPA.”

In addition, Sutherland said, the Corps’ finding begs the larger question of how wetlands determinations and laws might affect the rest of the forest and its use by any buyer.

Ron Sutherland

The Hofmann land was acquired in the 1930s for research and to provide income for N.C. State’s forestry program. The working research forest, basically a tree farm, is technically owned by the Natural Resources Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the school’s College of Natural Resources. The money from the sale would be placed in endowment funds, and income from investments would be used to benefit the college, university officials have said.

But the sprawling forest is habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals and acts as a sponge, soaking up stormwater that otherwise would flow into the headwaters and watersheds of three significant coastal rivers: the White Oak, New and Trent. It also serves as a link of sorts between other habitat and wetlands areas, including the Croatan National Forest in Carteret and Craven counties, wildlife and conservation areas at the Camp Lejeune in Onslow County and the 75,000 acres of the Holly Shelter Game Land, managed by the N.C. Wildlife Resources in Pender County.

Opponents don’t trust statements by the buyer, Hofmann Forest LLC, that it doesn’t plan to develop the property. The corporation has said it will continue farming timber and underwrite some of the costs by selling rights to the military to train over and in the forest. It also says it plans to continue to allow school forestry researchers to continue to work there.

That prospectus that caught Miller’s eye, however, outlines plans to develop a tract large enough for up to two million square feet of commercial space and more than 10,500 homes, including a golf community, and converting as much as 50,000 acres to farms. It also notes the potential for mineral excavation and gas exploration.

It’s still unclear whether penalties would be proposed before the sale occurs, and whether those penalties would have any bearing on the sale. NCSU and Hofmann officials thus far have said they are cooperating fully with the investigation and do not expect it to affect the sale.

Sugg has said that if the sale of the property occurs before enforcement actions are taken, it’s not entirely clear whether those actions would be against N.C. State and its foundation or against the new owner.

Meanwhile, the coalition’s lawsuit to require an environmental assessment before the sale can take place grinds on. Wake County Superior Court Judge Shannon R. Joseph, in a decision in December, granted a motion by the university foundation board to dismiss the lawsuit, but the plaintiffs have appealed. Sutherland said the plaintiffs are still waiting for the university’s legal response to the appeal. Once all parties respond to the appeal, a court date could be set, he said.

WILMINGTON — The Army Corps of Engineers’ is investigating possible illegal ditching of wetlands in the Hofmann Forest in Onslow and Jones counties.

The Corps started the investigation after the N.C. Coastal Federation asked for information about more than 5,500 acres in the forest that may have been cleared, possibly for agricultural uses.  Mickey Sugg, a regulator with the Corps’ Wilmington District, said the investigation is in its early stages, but that “it appears” that some ditches in the forest owned by a N.C. State University foundation “don’t meet the criteria for our exemption.”

“We haven’t made a final decision – we’re really a long way from that and we’re still gathering information and coordinating with the (U.S.) EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) – but that is what we’re looking at so far,” Sugg said.

The Corps regulates the ditching or filling of most wetlands under the federal Clean Water Act.

“The forest is a critically important tract of land for the health of the Trent, White Oak and New rivers,” noted Todd Miller, the federation’s executive director. “So we’re happy to learn that the Corps is taking our concerns seriously that wetlands are being protected in the Hofmann.”

Back when this picture of the Hofmann Forest was taken in 1954, there were no federal regulations about ditching wetlands. Now a permit is required in most instances. Photo: NCSU

The investigation of possible wetlands violations is the latest chapter in the ongoing Hofmann Forest saga, which started last year when the university’s Endowment Fund announced plans to sell the 79,000-acre forest. The proposed $150-million sale to an Illinois-based agricultural company elicited protests from school faculty and students, spawned a lawsuit and raised fears among environmentalists. The forest makes up a large percentage of the watershed for three key rivers and is part of a much larger and increasingly rare woodlands ecosystem, linking the Croatan National Forest in Carteret and Craven counties to forests at Camp Lejeune and Holly Shelter in Pender County.

Those fears were heightened by an “investors’ prospectus” that surfaced late last year. It raised numerous questions about what the new owners, Hofmann Forest LLC, will do with the land. The document outlines agricultural, commercial and residential development on much of the forest, calling into question assurances by the prospective new owner that it would maintain most of the forest for research and not convert it to agricultural, commercial and residential uses.

A section of the prospectus drew Miller’s attention and triggered his request to the Corps in November under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The prospectus notes that 5,502 acres in the forest have been clear cut or “prepped” for reforestation as of Feb. 2013. “These areas could easily be converted to agricultural uses without having to go through the Corps of Engineers,” the document states.

In his letter, Miller asked the Corps to provide any permits, documents, notes, records of phone conversations or any other information that would indicate that the ditching was done under Corps’ rules.

M. Brooke Lamson, the Corps’ district counsel, responded to the federation’s request on Jan. 24. In the letter, she noted that the Corps did not “generate or participate” in the creation of the prospectus, “nor does it concur with all of its contents. However, based on the information submitted, we have contacted Hofmann Forest to inquire about those activities referenced in your letter, and as a result, have conducted a site visit. We are… currently in the process of gathering information. Once this process is complete, the Wilmington District Regulatory Division will take action as appropriate.”

The Corps’ answer includes some heavily redacted field notes from a Jan. 7 site visit by Corps’ staff and others, but doesn’t include memos, letters and emails among Corps’ officials or between the Corps and other agencies.

Todd Miller

“The release of these documents could discourage open, frank discussions on matters of policy between subordinates and superiors, disclose proposed actions or policies before they are actually decided upon or adopted, and potentially contribute to public confusion concerning reasons and rationales that may or may not be the grounds for a future agency decision,” Lamson wrote

Sugg, who was a part of the site visit, said that the key issue appears to be the property owner’s interpretation of forestry practices that are exempt from Corps’ regulations on draining wetlands. The Corps allows minor ditching without a permit to promote and enhance tree growth or to allow trees to be cut for sale.

But if ditching appears to be of sufficient magnitude to “draw down the water table to where it could allow the planting and harvesting of crops,” Sugg said, “that would not qualify for an exemption.”

Those kinds of ditches would require a Corps’ permit before they could be dug.

Some of the areas where ditches have been dug, Sugg said, “appear to have been really wet.” It’s possible that those ditches have helped drain off enough water that the wetlands could be converted to drier uses, he said.

That’s where the EPA would come in, Sugg said. It oversees those kinds of issues as they relate to the Clean Water Act, he said.

Sugg said he doesn’t know long it will take for the Corps to determine if the law was violated. “It could be months or longer,” he noted.

If the Corps determines after the land has been sold that a violation occurred, who will be penalized, the university or the new owner?  “There are many variables that affect the answer to that question,” Sugg said. “The parties against whom a potential enforcement action is taken depends on the particular circumstances of each case.”

The Corps’ lawyers make those decisions, he said.  Generally speaking, though, a new landowner’s liability increases with his knowledge of the activity that broke the law, Sugg said.

“The buyer’s potential for exposure to such remedies may increase if they had knowledge or close association with the party that did the unauthorized activity,” he said. “To the extent possible, the person who did the unauthorized work will be subject to enforcement action and be held accountable for any measures that we may require.”

Miller said he is hoping for a speedy resolution. “Considering the importance of the land and the controversial nature of the sale, we hope the Corps puts this on the front burner and makes a determination before the sale is finalized,” he said. “That’s what we’ll ask them to do.”

Meanwhile, there is no word yet on any imminent conclusion to the ongoing legal maneuvering surrounding the sale. Wake County Superior Court in December dismissed a lawsuit by opponents to require the state to do an environmental assessment before the sale can take place. Opponents have appealed the ruling, but no court date has been set. The university has until June 30 to finalize the sale.