First of two parts

SURF CITY – Capt. Ray Brittain wasn’t kidding.

The white PVC pipes he described at a public meeting last April as jutting from waters that hug stretches of banks and fill pockets of bays in the sounds behind Topsail Island are easily in the hundreds, if not thousands.

The pipes signal the locations of shellfish leases in Stump and Topsail sounds, the waters of which have become a hot commodity for shellfish growers shut out from farming in coastal counties north and south of Topsail Island because of temporary and permanent leasing moratoriums.

“We’re not over here hatin’ on anybody,” Brittain said one morning in late May as he stood on the bow of his sleek 22-footer equipped with rods, reels, tackle and other amenities advertised on his fishing guide website. “We don’t own the water. We’re out here sharing it with everyone else.”

Brittain, who owns Spring Tide Guide Service, has been fishing the waters around Topsail Island and the New River for more than 35 years. He’s witnessed firsthand the changes to the barrier island and adjacent mainland areas during that time, where development has exploded on the land and off.

It’s the latter he invited to show North Carolina Coastal Federation Coastal Management Program Director Kerri Allen during a listening session the nonprofit and North Carolina Sea Grant hosted in Surf City on April 14. The meeting was opened to Topsail Island officials, residents, and business owners like Brittain to discuss their experiences with shellfish leases, which have in recent years become contentious as more and more have been permitted.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, will host an informal presentation and listening session for shellfish growers in September.

Allen; Lela Schlenker, the Coastal Federation’s newest coastal advocate; Capt. Mike Oppegaard, owner of Native Son Guide Service out of Hampstead; and this reporter joined Brittain on a warm, sunny mid-weekday morning on his boat for a tour through the sounds.

Our first stop of the tour was at a large bay punctuated by fields of white PVC pipes marking water column shellfish leases where lines of floating cages poke from the water’s surface.

Brittain didn’t hold back his feelings about the pipes, saying he is “sick of explaining” to curious customers why they’re there. Even so, he complimented the grower of the shellfish lease we visited first.

“He actually runs a good operation,” Brittain said. “Nobody’s arguing that. We’re just overrun here.”

Today, nearly 190 shellfish leases are in the waters behind the 26-mile-long barrier island from the New River and its adjacent estuarine waters south to Topsail Sound. The number of water column leases and bottom shellfish leases in Onslow and Pender counties has increased by roughly 46% since 2018.

The rapid expansion of leases, particularly water column leases where gear must float more than 18 inches above the waterbed, has led in recent years to complaints about impacts to the viewsheds of waterfront properties, boating and kayaking access, and infringement on popular fishing spots.

Those mounting complaints from community members and local government officials who serve them have prompted calls for a temporary pause on new shellfish lease permits in waters behind the island.

State Rep. Ted Davis, R-New Hanover, in late April introduced legislation to extend that county’s 2019-imposed shellfish leasing moratorium by another five years through to July 1, 2031. A little more than two weeks after Davis put House Bill 1113 forward, a section was added to the proposed law to temporarily prohibit new shellfish leases “in certain areas” of Pender and Onslow counties.

And, more recently, the Atlantic Beach Town Council adopted a resolution urging the North Carolina General Assembly to extend Bogue Sound’s moratorium on new shellfish leases. That 2019 moratorium is set to expire July 1.

Allen told those who attended the April forum that a pause would give the Coastal Federation and Sea Grant more time to consult with residents, recreational waterway users, and shellfish growers. Their feedback would help shape future policies to protect the industry, secure its long-term sustainability, and resolve user conflicts, she said.

The Coastal Federation and Sea Grant plan are in the process of creating a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database pinpointing areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind Topsail Island. That database is anticipated to be published next year.

Like most who’ve vocalized their concerns about the number of shellfish leases that have been permitted in the waters behind the island, Brittain and Oppegaard say they support the shellfish industry.

“Nobody thought through the issues we’re having now,” Oppegaard said. “We’re saturated. The number one issue is density.”

The large schools of drum that used to swim into the bay where Brittain first stopped once easily accommodated a handful of fishing boats at one time, he said.

“You’ll catch a fish here and there, but you don’t see big schools anymore,” he said. “You can’t pressure them so much or they’re going to leave.”

Oppegaard piped in, “I just quit coming in here.”

The men raised numerous questions regarding shellfish leases, including how aquaculture noise and cages impact fish movement, whether the volume of PVC pipes some growers use is necessary, why growers are not required to carry insurance, and whether farming operations can be moved farther away from shorelines.

“You really want the bank,” for fishing, Brittain said as he coasted along the landward side of Permuda Island Reserve, a narrow, roughly 1.5-mile-long undeveloped island in Stump Sound in Onslow County.

“If you look, it’s all leased up,” he said, pointing to rows of floating shellfish cages near portions of the island’s shoreline. “Every point and pocket has stuff on it now. We’re all pushed into tighter places where there’s actually fish. If we can just get some perimeters in place. We’re just overrun here.”

Next in the series: Leaseholders say they’re boxed in.

Stewards of North Carolina’s rivers and streams have created a manual designed to assist local governments in establishing land use rules that protect water quality and boost community flood resilience.

The new guide, “Gold Standard Development Practices for Watershed Protection,” was developed in response to river keepers’ documentation of irresponsible land use practices that have resulted in severe and devastating impacts across the state, said Neuse Riverkeeper and Sound Rivers Inc. Director of Advocacy Samantha Krop.

“We realized that how our cities approach land use practices is one of the most important indicators of water quality and flooding mitigation we have,” she said. “So, we’ve taken a very thoughtful pivot to focusing on land use policy because we see it as inextricably linked to our community health and safety in the future.”

The guide, created by Waterkeepers Carolina with support from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, provides an array of options local governments may consider implementing in land use rules, developers can offer as proffers or in conditional rezoning applications, and concerned residents may use as an advocacy tool.

Counties, cities and towns throughout North Carolina establish key land use regulations through a single, consolidated document called a unified development ordinance, or UDO.

A UDO governs land use, zoning, and development standards aimed at guiding growth and protecting natural resources.

Local governments use these ordinances to govern land use in ways tailored to their communities.

Down-zoning ban limits local governments

In 2024, the North Carolina General Assembly banned local governments from being able to initiate a process called down-zoning, which is when property is rezoned to less dense or less intense use.

The ban effectively restricts those governments’ ability to enforce land use rules because the law requires that they must get written permission from all affected property owners before amending zoning text or maps.

The down-zoning ban in Senate Bill 382, a 2024 disaster relief bill, one vetoed by then-Gov. Roy Cooper, has prompted cities like New Bern and Durham to pump the brakes on updating their UDOs because the law lacks clarity, Krop said.

“I think that is presenting a lot of challenges, both in what the letter of the law says and also in what municipalities are sort of perceiving it to say, or sort of worried it’s created this boogeyman that I think is creating a lot of fear in municipal governments around can we do anything at all,” she said. “There are a lot of things that we can still do, both in passing changes to local UDOs and also in asking for more in some of these rezoning cases as proffers to protect waterways and communities from some of the harms that we’ve been documenting associated with development practices.”

Waterkeepers Carolina and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice last week in Durham hosted an event, “Designing Communities that Protect our Waters,” to discuss development and zoning practices aimed at protecting water and building community flood resilience.

Counsel for Environmental Justice James Huey at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice explained that one tool local governments have is something called conditional zoning.

Conditional zoning is a process in which a property owner and local government negotiate conditions in a rezoning request.

Local governments, “can impose conditions that address lots of various potential issues that might come up with any sort of development,” he said. “A lot of times with development, there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all and I think that’s why this document is important to show that there is a path forward, especially for those local governments that are concerned about their authority and also a little bit confused about if they should always be implementing a certain system or what systems to implement.”

Tree retention protects water quality

The guide also highlights how local governments can implement overlay districts that identify and bolster protections specific to sensitive and important areas such as drinking watersheds.

“With water quality, it really boils down to silver bullets, and that starts with leaving more trees in the ground,” Krop said. “The single, best thing that we can do when developing a landscape, a forested landscape, is leaving as many trees in the ground as possible. That looks like tree retention instead of removal and replacement with young saplings.”

Targeting tree retention around waterways, expanding riparian buffers, making sure wetlands are protected and buffered and increasing overall tree connectivity on the landscape are crucial in protecting water quality.

In areas where multiple acres of trees are being removed at one time, it is crucial that exposed soil is stabilized as soon as possible to prevent erosion, sedimentation and pollution in waterways. Local governments can regulate timeframes for which developers must establish ground cover to avert erosion.

Waterkeepers Carolina continues to push for a change in state law that would require developers to monitor all discharges coming from their sediment basins to prove they’re not pumping dirty water into creeks and streams.

“We would argue that this is something that needs to happen, at least in all sensitive watersheds where there’s evidence of construction practices polluting waterways,” Krop said.

She encourages communities to look at those that are implementing forward-thinking rules and protections for waterways.

“I think we can learn from each other and try to create more universal, more consistent protections across the whole state,” she said.

Emerald Isle commissioners are expected to consider at their meeting later this month raising tenfold the town-imposed penalty for violations involving damage to primary dunes.

The proposal, one that would increase the fine from $1,000 to $10,000, was unanimously approved last Tuesday by the town’s planning board and comes on the heels of Emerald Isle’s issuance of a cease-and-desist order for construction on an oceanfront lot.

Remarque Home Builders LLC was slapped with a notice of violation and ordered to stop working at 3405 Ocean Drive until the dune destroyed at the property, as well as a designated natural area on the lot, have been fully restored.

“I’ve been working as a beach town manager for most of my career, nearly three decades, and this is the most egregious violation I have ever seen,” Emerald Isle Town Manager Frank Rush said by telephone late Wednesday.

Carving more than 5,600 square feet of primary dune that buffered the lot from the oceanfront beach is a violation of the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, minor permit the builder’s obtained May 1, 2024.

The developer also violated a town ordinance that requires 35% of a lot remain as undisturbed natural area.

The owners of the Cedar Point-based limited liability company did not respond to Coastal Review’s request for comment in time for publication, but in a statement to WCTI-TV, the owners said they were “cooperating fully” with the state and the town.

“We are working cooperatively with the regulators to finalize a remediation plan, to restore the dune in accordance with their directives, and to satisfy any lawful fines or penalties that may be assessed. We will continue to do what the Town and CAMA ask for us until this matter is fully resolved. Dune stewardship along the coast is a shared responsibility.”

It is unclear why the dune was leveled.

“The questions being examined at our property, such as how construction, landscaping and dune work interact with CAMA requirements, are not unique to 3405 Ocean Drive,” Remarque Home Builders said in the email. “We understand that similar work has been undertaken by other owners on Ocean Drive without triggering comparable regulatory action.”

“We raise this not to deflect responsibility, but to underscore that these are questions faced by many property owners along the coast, and by the regulators charged with applying the same standards to each of them,” the statement continues. “We welcome a regulatory process that produces clear, consistent guidance and even-handed enforcement across all similarly situated properties, and we are committed to helping that process succeed here.”

Rush said that sand from the dune was redistributed on the 0.43-acre lot and, in some cases, pushed onto adjacent properties.

“Essentially they have to put it back the way it was,” he said.

That entails restoring the dune to its original height of around 25 to 26 feet and planting it with vegetation commonly used for dune stabilization.

Under the terms of the notice of violation, the developer will also have to resubmit a new, separate pool permit so town staff “can judge that application on its own merits after this violation is completely resolved.”

The town’s notice of violation issued April 22 came with a $1,000 fine. The developer also faces an estimated $1,000 state-imposed fine, according to the town. If the limited liability company does not come into compliance within 60 days, the developer will be fined $1,000 a day until work is complete.

“They’ve indicated they intend to rectify it much sooner than that,” Rush said.

The town will not issue a certificate of occupancy for the 7,300-square-foot, 12-bedroom, 13 ½-bath house listed for $6 million until the repairs and restoration have been completed, he said.

Remarque, in its statement, reiterated that the property is privately owned and asked the media and public to stay off the lot where the conspicuously missing dune has drawn the ire of area residents and property owners who’ve taken to social media to express their outrage.

“If this is not escalated appropriately, it opens the door for others to push limits, take shortcuts, and deal with the consequences later. That is not a precedent we can afford to set in Emerald Isle,” Jamie Vogel, a former town commissioner, wrote in a social media post last month.

“The oceanfront dunes provide critical storm protection, aesthetic, and ecological value for Emerald Isle and the Town places the highest priority on a healthy beach strand and dune field,” Rush wrote in the May edition of the town’s newsletter Emerald Tidings. “Collectively, the community has invested tens of millions of dollars in beneficial beach nourishment projects over the past 23 years, and these sane placement efforts have resulted in the significant augmentation of existing dunes and the construction of new dunes to advance the Town’s goals. The Town’s existing dune protection regulation and State CAMA regulations are carefully crafted to balance dune protection, private property rights, and overall storm protection for the entire community and the violations at 3405 Ocean Drive were clear and obvious.”

The Emerald Isle Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing during its May 12 meeting at 7500 Emerald Drive before considering amending an ordinance to increase the penalty for violations that involve primary dunes. That meeting will begin at 6 p.m.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation announced Wednesday that its officials are considering new design options for the Carolina Bays Parkway Extension project in Brunswick County after feedback from the public.

NCDOT, in collaboration with the South Carolina Department of Transportation, is planning to extend S.C. Highway 31, aka the Carolina Bays Parkway, from S.C. Highway 9 in Horry County across the state line to U.S. Highway 17 in Brunswick County.

Proposed is a multilane highway that would use portions of the existing road in addition to building roadway in new areas. The total anticipated cost for the project is ​​$797 million. North Carolina’s share of the cost is estimated at $610.9 million. South Carolina anticipates construction commencing in 2029. North Carolina’s start date was listed as “TBD” on the project website.

In October 2025, the state highway departments jointly held two public hearings about the project. Seven different design alternatives were presented, including the departments’ preferred alternative known as Alternative 4.

NCDOT said Wednesday that, after reviewing public feedback and considering funding challenges, it’s not going to proceed with the North Carolina portion of Alternative 4, which builds on new location, tying in near the intersection of U.S. 17 and N.C. Highway 904.

Alternative 4 would also upgrade part of U.S. 17 to a fully controlled freeway from N.C. 904 to N.C. Highway 130 in Shallotte. 

The two state agencies and the Federal Highway Administration continue to collaborate and explore other alternatives and modified routes to minimize impacts and meet the purpose and need of the project, according to NCDOT’s announcement.

“NCDOT deeply values the input from this community and our stakeholders. We want to provide the region with the best possible roadway designs. We’ve listened to the feedback, and we’re working hard to prepare a new alternative,” said Division 3 Engineer Trevor Carroll in a statement.

Alternative 4 was preferred because of factors such as requiring the lowest number of residential displacements, estimated at 39, and the lowest number of identified noise effects. The impacts to wetlands and streams were also deemed moderate relative to other alternatives, despite a large amount of designated High-Quality Waters impacted.

A new alternative must include connectivity through the transportation network, increased mobility for the region and reduced travel time through the project corridor, officials noted in the announcement.

Additional information regarding the new design is to be presented to the public at a later date. 

NCDOT said it is “committed to transparency, innovative solutions and exploring community feedback regarding this project.” Its response to all comments received is available on the project webpage along with the most updated information regarding the project.

You can also follow NCDOT on social media for additional updates. 

Share your experiences and learn more about the issues surrounding shellfish aquaculture in Stump Sound and Topsail Sound next week during an informational presentation and listening session.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation and North Carolina Sea Grant are hosting the session from 1 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 14, in the town council’s chambers at the Surf City Municipal Complex, 214 W. Florence Way, Hampstead.

“Your feedback will help shape a balanced, informed path forward,” according to a promotional flier for the event.

The session will cover conflicts and perceived and actual problems regarding shellfish leases, such as those associated with viewshed and property values, navigation and safety, congestion and density.

“We know coastal waters mean different things to different people, and we want to hear from you,” according to the flier.

Coastal Federation Advocate Kerri Allen and Sea Grant Extension Director Frank Lopez are to facilitate the session, which is to be a scripted presentation and listening session, not a public hearing.

In April 2025, Rep. Carson Smith, R-Pender, introduced legislation to require a statewide study on shellfish leasing and current lease moratoriums. That measure, House Bill 841, was cleared by the House but stalled in the Senate, where it passed a first vote but was then referred on May 7, 2025, to the rules committee, where it remains.

Organizers of the listening session noted that space is limited and registration is required.

Those unable to attend but who wish to share their input may submit comments to https://forms.gle/sCJ1uLGCgbhig6Zr8.

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It’s been nearly a month since a video first aired of Wilmington’s mayor invoking residents to voice their opposition to one town’s plans to pull millions of gallons of water daily from the Cape Fear River.

“Today this vital resource is under threat from growing water-hungry communities upstream,” Mayor Bill Saffo says in the clip as he stands along the city’s downtown Riverwalk.

Fuquay-Varina, a town about 30 miles south of Raleigh, wants to move more than 6 million gallons of water each day from the Cape Fear River to the Neuse River, he explains in the video made in collaboration with the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority.

“That’s 6 million gallons gone, each day, forever. It is important that you make your voice heard now for your family and for future generations. Add your voice to those of your neighbors and friends who already are telling the state to say no to Fuquay-Varina’s permanent taking of our water,” Saffo concludes.

Only a couple of more weeks are left until the public comment period on Fuquay-Varina’s request for an interbasin transfer, or IBT, certificate closes.

Maya Holcomb, a Division of Water Resources representative, told members of the state Environmental Management Commission’s Water Allocation Committee last week that she anticipated receiving comments all the way through to the April 1 deadline.

In her presentation to the committee Thursday, Holcomb provided an update on the numbers of correspondence she’d received in the days since she initially crafted her report, when the email count was at 283.

Related: Opponents say river water transfer puts Cape Fear in peril

“But I just keep getting so many emails, which — we’re hearing from the public, that’s great — but I have received an additional 42 emails since this PowerPoint was created last week,” Holcomb said.

Holcomb said she had also received 41 resolutions from cities, towns, counties, homebuilders, substations and public utilities.

She did not say how many of those resolutions oppose the IBT, but instead highlighted what she described as the “newest” issues of concern: loss of water for agricultural purposes, nutrient concentration in the Neuse River Basin, such as those that cause algal blooms, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, hypoxia, drought vulnerability and chemical export of industrial pollutants from the Cape Fear River.

Those concerns mirror some of arguments made by dozens of people who spoke out against the transfer during a series of state-hosted public hearings in December.

Fuquay-Varina projects that the water supply, from which it currently buys from Raleigh and Harnett and Johnston counties, will fall short of demand by 2030.

Under the proposed preferred alternative identified in a draft environmental impact statement for the transfer, Fuquay-Varina would source its entire water supply from a water treatment plant in Sanford, which is in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Once water pulled from the Cape Fear River is used by residents and businesses in that town, the treated wastewater would then be discharged into the Neuse River Basin.

This would permanently subtract 6.17 million gallons each day from the river flow that currently serves about 900,000 residents of counties, cities, towns and communities from Fayetteville to Wilmington.

“Put in perspective, 6.17 (million gallons per day) of raw water from the river is enough to provide treated drinking water to more than 27,000 homes,” according to Cape Fear Public Utility Authority’s website.

In the weeks and months leading up to CFPUA’s campaign against Fuquay-Varina’s plan, several local governments and utilities adopted resolutions and sent letters of opposition to the state.

New Hanover County, Wilmington and Brunswick County and more than a dozen Brunswick County municipalities have officially gone on record opposing Fuquay-Varina’s request.

Holcomb explained last week that, after April 1, state environmental officials will respond to comments on the draft environmental impact statement and then formulate a hearing officers’ report, which will be finalized sometime between July and September.

After that, the Environmental Management Commission will determine whether the EIS is technically adequate. Following that determination, the Department of Environmental Quality will issue its record of decision.

Another round of public hearings will be held before the EMC makes its final determination.

If approved, the transfer would occur after 2031, according to the draft impact statement.

Comments may be submitted to Maya Holcomb, Division of Water Resources, 512 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC, 27604, or by email to maya.holcomb@deq.nc.gov.

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.

The nonprofit organization that aims to preserve Bath’s history has asked the corporation selling an about 1,768-acre tract of riverfront property to consider separating out what it considers historically significant section of the land, Washington Daily News reported Jan. 19.

Currently owned by Nutrien, a global fertilizer company formerly operating as PCS Phosphate or PotashCorp, the multiparcel property known as Archbell Point is listed for $17.5 million.

The Historic Bath Foundation believes remnants of both Native American villages and early colonial plantations are among the important pieces of the area’s history that are within the property located across the Pamlico River from Nutrien Aurora’s phosphate mine.

The foundation feels that the property has the potential to be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and wants Nutrien to consider separating out a historically significant part of the parcel that’s currently up for sale, Washington Daily News reported.

The land for sale has more than 3.4 miles of shoreline along the Pamlico River, Bath Creek and Duck Creek. Structures on the property include three houses, a workshop, around 180 tillable acres, 1,500 acres of timberland and freshwater ponds, the listing states.

The foundation sent a letter to Nutrien late last summer after learning the property was going to be sold asking the company to consider excluding the historic area from the sale, but has not received a response, Washington Daily News reported.

Foundation President Seth Effron told Washington Daily News that the group wants all parties to be aware of the “documented historic and archeological significance of portions of the site and have an opportunity to discuss ways to assure there is a full understanding on how to move ahead before these places are sold.”

The listing notes that the property “offers a variety of development possibilities — all subject to approval by Nutrien,” the current owners.

New Hanover County commissioners have approved the purchase of more than 28 acres along the Cape Fear River’s western bank across from downtown Wilmington.

Commissioners on Monday afternoon unanimously agreed to the $2.24 million land deal, one that includes two undeveloped tracts that will remain preserved once under county ownership.

The purchase signals the county’s commitment to protect land along the western bank, which has in the past several years been eyed by developers who have come to the county with proposals to build a hotel and spa and a luxury high-rise condominium complex.

All that remains before the purchase is finalized are the results of soil and groundwater samples taken on one of the properties where an oil storage facility was operated for roughly a decade until the mid- to late 1990s.

Soil found to have been contaminated by fuel leaks in an area of the 17.13-acre tract west of U.S. 421 was excavated more than a decade ago and stacked on the property, where it is being remediated onsite in bioreactors. A 2007 environmental study of the site concluded that contamination was not flowing into the river.

The county expects to receive the results of the latest soil and groundwater samples no later than next week. County staff have indicated they do not expect the results to give them cause for concern.

“We have heard the public tell us repeatedly how important preservation is in our community,” Commission Vice-Chair Dane Scalise said Monday. “This is another example of us doing it.”

He pointed out that County Manager Chris Coudriet recently emailed commissioners saying that, if they moved forward with the purchase, the county will have acquired more than 100 acres for preservation within the past seven months.

“We have heard the community over and over again tell us that they want preservation and particularly in that area and we are committed to doing that,” Commission Chair LeAnn Pierce said. “That is something that we’ve pivoted on and we have decided that that is what we want to do is preserve open space and green space and mitigate some of the building that’s going on in New Hanover County. And this is the only way we can do it is by buying that property when it becomes available to us.”

The latest purchase also includes an 11.42-acre riverfront tract just north of Point Peter, an undeveloped area that was a few years ago the subject of a highly controversial proposed development.

Look back: New Hanover Board denies new zoning district

Point Peter is a plot at the confluence of the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear rivers along an area already feeling the effects of sea level rise.

Environmental, historical and cultural preservation groups, and community members banded together in opposing a request by developers to rezone roughly 8 acres so that they could move forward with plans to build a complex of three high-rise condominiums overlooking the river and adjacent downtown Wilmington.

Commissioners ultimately denied the rezoning request in late 2021 and pursued revising an amendment to the county’s 2016 comprehensive land use plan to create a new conservation “placetype” specifically for the western bank at the confluence of the rivers. “Placetype” is a planning term used to describe the mix of compatible uses within an area.

The riverfront tract at 1450 Point Harbor Road that the county intends to buy includes a little more than six acres within the Cape Fear River waterline.

The plot was once used as a railroad terminal yard. The land has not been identified as having known environmental conditions by any regulatory agency, according to county staff.

The tract across the highway at 1209 N. U.S. 421, is adjacent to the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office’s target shooting range. This property would prevent encroachment to the shooting range and provide river access for the sheriff office’s marine unit.

Funding to buy the tracts will be pulled from reserves from the county’s revenue stabilization fund, which will be replenished through annual reimbursements of $266,130 from the county’s general fund for the next 10 years.

The purchase is expected to be complete by Dec. 31.

A Piedmont town’s request to permanently pull millions of gallons of water a day from the Cape Fear River would raise the risk of water shortages during periods of drought, undercut utilities’ ability to keep up with growing demand, and result in higher levels of contamination in the raw drinking water source for downstream communities, opponents of the plan say.

Of the dozen people who spoke Tuesday night during a public hearing in Raleigh, none supported Fuquay-Varina’s call for transferring 6.17 million gallons per day from the Cape Fear River Basin to the Neuse River Basin to meet that town’s projected water demands.

Similar opposition was expressed during a hearing held in Fayetteville last week by the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission and the state Division of Water Resources. A third hearing was scheduled to be held Thursday in Pittsboro.

Both elected officials and heads of public utilities in the lower Cape Fear region on Tuesday continued pressing the commission and division to host a public hearing in that area.

“None of the hearings for the Fuquay-Varina request are being held in the lower Cape Fear region, even though our communities will feel the downstream impacts,” said New Hanover County Commissioner Rob Zapple. “Residents in the city of Wilmington and the counties of New Hanover, Brunswick and Pender would have to spend four to five hours on the road just to attend the public hearing. Most residents simply cannot do that. Holding a hearing in the lower Cape Fear region in Wilmington would reduce frustration, encourage public trust, and allow our communities to be hearing in a constructive manner.”

As of Wednesday, more than 20 counties, municipalities, environmental organizations, businesses and drinking water providers have adopted resolutions opposing Fuquay-Varina’s request for an interbasin transfer certificate, or IBT.

Officials in Fuquay-Varina, which is about 30 miles south of Raleigh, project that the amount of water the town currently buys from the capital city, and Harnett and Johnston counties will fall short of demand by 2030.

Under the proposed preferred alternative identified in a draft environmental impact statement for the IBT, the town would source its entire water supply from a water treatment plant in Sanford, which is in the Cape Fear River Basin.

Once water pulled from the Cape Fear River is used by residents and businesses within the town, the treated wastewater would be discharged into the Neuse River Basin. This would permanently subtract more than 6 million gallons each day from the river flow that currently sources more than 500,000 residents with drinking water.

“We have absolutely no problem with Fuquay-Varina wanting to continue with their development,” Zapple said. “But if you take the water, just return it. That’s all. That’s the way the system works. And, if it costs more, well maybe that’s the price of doing business. We need our development down in the lower Cape Fear region as well and we can’t afford to lose 6.17 million gallons a day.”

The Cape Fear River is Brunswick County’s “primary and only reliable water source,” said Christopher Giesting, Brunswick County Public Utilities deputy director of water operations.

The utility supplies drinking water to 19 municipalities and serves more than 350,000 residents and seasonal visitors.

Giesting said that Brunswick County has invested more than $183 million to expand its Northwest Water Treatment Plant and upgrade to a reverse osmosis system designed to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, discharged into the river by upstream polluters.

“These investments were made with the expectation that the full safe yield of the Cape Fear River at the intake would remain available,” he said. “Any IBT that removes water without returning it means that safe yield volume is reduced, ultimately making these major infrastructure investments unable to function as planned and designed. Our county alone has more than 50,000 planned housing units already built, under construction, or in the works. Without reliable access to the full safe yield of the Cape Fear, we cannot meet future water demands for these communities.”

The IBT proposal also threatens water quality, Giesting continued, because the requested daily transfer would lessen the amount of water available to dilute contaminants, including PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, discharged by upstream polluters.

The Lower Cape Fear Water and Sewer Authority, which provides wholesale regional raw water to treatment facilities that serve more than 550,000 customers in a five-county area, has sourced from the Cape Fear River more than half a century.

Authority Executive Director Tim Holloman said the river is already being substantially used as a water resource in the region.

“For a river that’s already maxed, we just ask that that be considered. If the IBT is granted, that (water) be returned to the Cape Fear River Basin because the need is not going to go away. It’s only going to increase over time,” he said.

Fayetteville Public Works Commission Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Timothy Bryant said that the commission would be forced to spend millions more each year to ensure safe drinking water to its more than 250,000 customers.

“I would argue very strenuously that no one with any legitimacy can claim that removing over 6 million gallons of water per day isn’t a foreseeable detrimental effect on the river basin and the 900,000 downstream residents of North Carolina who depend on this water every day,” he said. “To be clear, growth in Fuquay-Varina should not come at the expense of other communities. There are multiple reasonable alternative options presented that are not only consistent with the intent and letter of North Carolina law, but also squarely place the cost burden on Fuquay-Varina and not the customers downstream of it.”

Cape Fear Public Utility Authority Executive Director Ken Waldroup asked that the Environmental Management Commission look into what he said are “critical technical shortcomings” associated with models presented by the town.

The commission will make the final determination on whether to grant Fuquay-Varina’s request.

If approved, the IBT would occur after 2031, according to the draft impact statement.

No announcement had been made at the time of this publication as to whether a public hearing will be held in the lower Cape Fear region.

NEWPORT — The 2025 hurricane season is the first since the state’s building code reinstated standards for residential docks and piers. In an effort to help local governments and coastal property owners better understand these new building codes, the North Carolina Coastal Federation has compiled a comprehensive guide, the first of its kind in the state.

Coastal Advocate Kerri Allen with the Coastal Federation explained the addition of these standards could help reduce harmful marine debris, since the majority of debris found post-storms has been attributed to poorly constructed docks and piers.

“The majority of the debris we see after storms comes from broken-up docks and piers that were never built to withstand serious weather,” Allen said. “These new codes give us a real opportunity to protect our coastlines, our wildlife, and our neighbors from the impacts of that debris.”

Building to code is essential for several reasons. First, it enhances safety by reducing the risk of injury and structural failure. Code-compliant structures are also designed for long-term durability, helping them better withstand high winds, storm surge, and sea level rise. Legal compliance is another critical factor, as adhering to building codes helps avoid costly fines or permit issues.

From a financial perspective, investing in a resilient dock can save homeowners up to $100,000 over 35 years by reducing the need for major repairs and replacements. Equally important, code-compliant construction demonstrates environmental responsibility by helping prevent marine debris and protect sensitive coastal ecosystems.

“If you’re investing in a dock, do it right the first time,” Allen added. “Work with a qualified marine contractor and engineer who knows the local conditions and can guide you through the permitting process. Cutting corners may save money up front, but it usually ends in expensive damage, not to mention environmental harm.”

Allen emphasized that most people don’t immediately think of their dock when they consider safety or environmental impact, but they should. “It’s easy to overlook, but your dock might be one of the most important things you can build responsibly. This is one of the best ways waterfront property owners can reduce their footprint and protect their community,” said Allen.

5 Steps to Build a Code-Compliant Dock

1. Hire Qualified Professionals Choose a licensed marine contractor and engineer with strong references and coastal experience. Jobs over $40,000 require licensed professionals in North Carolina
2. Design with Compliance in Mind Ensure your design complies with the North Carolina Building Code (Section R327) and the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) regulations, as well as any local requirements.
3. Select the Right Materials Use weather-resistant, marine-grade materials (e.g., composite decking, treated lumber, galvanized fasteners) and avoid cheap or untreated wood, especially near seawater.
4. Monitor Construction Have your engineer inspect progress to ensure the structure is built as designed and keep documentation of any changes or inspections.
5. Final Inspection & Certification Secure a final inspection from your local authority and keep copies of all permits, plans, and approvals for future reference.

This work was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program. You can read the full guide here or by visiting the Coastal Federation’s website, https://www.nccoast.org/resource/resilient-docks-piers-toolkit/.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

A development company proposing to build a neighborhood on land in New Hanover County that includes a forest of centuries-old trees will “continue to fight” to see its plans through, the company’s founder said.

Copper Builders founder Wade Miller earlier this week called out what he referred to as misconceptions about Hilton Bluffs, a neighborhood proposed within a 4,000-acre tract that includes a nationally threatened forest.

In front of a crowd of opponents of the proposed development, Miller stressed at a New Hanover County Board of Commissioners meeting that trees in Sledge Forest would not be cut, wetlands would not be developed, 1,000 acres would be reserved as open space, and he reiterated a desire to conserve more than 1,100 acres on the tract.

“This means over 60% of the property will be protected if we achieve this goal,” he said. “We know this path comes with tradeoffs. We lose some density. We lose our golf course. We will lose one home per acre conserved. This is our preferred plan. This is what we are trying to do. We’ve invested considerable time, resources and energy into all this and we will continue to fight for it.”

Miller, as well as several people opposed to the development proposed for Castle Hayne, addressed commissioners during the board’s public comment session Monday afternoon.

Prior to the meeting, nearly 150 people gathered outside of the county’s historic courthouse in downtown Wilmington for a Save Sledge Forest rally.

The board meeting came on the heels of an announcement late last week that the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources had rejected a nonprofit’s multimillion-dollar grant request to purchase hundreds of acres of wetlands in Sledge Forest.

Unique Places to Save, in partnership with the Charlotte-based development company, had applied for a $15 million North Carolina Land and Water Fund grant to purchase 1,160 acres.

Opponents of the proposed neighborhood argue that the entire tract should be spared from development.

Sledge Forest rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River in northern New Hanover County and is part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

More than 20 years ago, the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina identified the forest as a significant natural area, one that includes bald cypress trees up to 500 years old, longleaf and loblolly pines older than 300 years and some of the Southeast’s largest remaining Atlantic white cedar.

The forest was added to the Old-Growth Forest Network’s national list of threatened forests earlier this year.

“With abundant wetlands and rising waters, the entirety of this site, not just a portion, must be preserved to maintain the site as a nationally significant heritage area,” geologist Roger Shew said during the commissioner’s meeting.

Shew, a senior lecturer in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Ocean Sciences and Environmental Sciences department and a conservationist, warned that developing the upland area of the tract would impact adjacent wetlands with stormwater runoff “or subsurface flow that may exacerbate flooding and contaminant movement.”

“We already know that contaminants have moved off the GE site into the wetlands,” he said. “In fact, Copper Builders is petitioning to have a small brownfield site designated there.”

The tract being eyed for development is adjacent to a state-designated inactive hazardous site contaminated from drums of calcium fluoride and lubricants that were stored in unlined trenches during the 1960 and 1970s.

That contamination spread across two parcels, including one owned by General Electric, and the other owned by Nuclear Fuel Holding Co. Inc., a GE affiliate.

Miller did not address concerns raised about contamination. He did, however, point out that development would occur in areas that are farmed regularly for timber.

The current owners of the property have the right to clear cut all of the land, he said.

“We don’t want that to happen,” Miller said. “We want to save Sledge Forest through honest conversation efforts, not through an ask for legal or regulation changes. I’m an outdoorsman. I want to protect it. I care deeply about it.”

A petition of more than 13,000 signatures of those fighting the proposed development was presented to commissioners.

Because the proposed development is on land that does not have to be rezoned, the project does not require approval from a public body, effectively omitting the opportunity for public comment.

“It’s been a year since we learned about that project, since we learned that a developer had found a loophole in our ordinance that would allow him to build perhaps the largest residential project in the history of New Hanover County, while also allowing him to block any input or review by you, our elected officials, or by us, the community that will be impacted,” Castle Hayne resident and Director of Save Sledge Forest Kayne Darrel said Monday. “Due to this loophole, we were told by that developer that this massive project was a by-right development that gave us no voice in the decisions. Our ask is that you make a decision to join us in being part of the solution because we believe, and we want you to believe, that together we can fix this mistake and we can save Sledge Forest.”

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.”

MANTEO – The Dare County Board of Commissioners, in the face of strident pushback from residents and coastal advocates over a proposal to gut special protections for an area around the Buxton Woods Reserve, voted Monday to keep in place those development restrictions officials had previously called “unenforceable.”

The longstanding restrictions on multifamily dwellings within the half-mile buffer around the 1,007-acre Buxton Woods Reserve on Hatteras Island are part of a zoning ordinance that created the 1,868-acre special environmental district, also known as SED-1, which also includes protective areas around the island’s drinking water wellheads.

A company called OBX Timber Trail LLC in March had requested that the county remove the zone’s dwelling density limitation for multifamily development, townhouses, or condominium projects. The request from company manager and New Jersey resident Brian Suth was so he could add a fourth apartment for year-round occupancy to his commercial building in Frisco.

That request was ultimately granted in a unanimous vote Monday, but only after it had triggered questions among county officials about the validity of the 1988 zoning ordinance in place, and fears among Buxton residents and others that the special protections would be erased.

Dare County Planning Director Noah Gillam said during a meeting in April that the ordinance didn’t appear to meet state standards because it hadn’t been properly indexed or codified.

Others disagreed.

“The ordinance was properly adopted in 1988, “Southern Environmental Law Center attorneys Derb Carter and Julie Youngman wrote in a letter to Dare County Manager Bobby Outten dated Aug. 1.

When Suth submitted his request, Gillam found there had been no reference to the ordinance since the 1990s. Consequently, there had been no development that would have challenged its wording.

Concerned about confusion and possible legal challenges, Gillam proposed striking the ordinance entirely.

That’s not what happened Monday commissioners opted instead to approve a text amendment for the fourth apartment rather than remove the entire ordinance.

“Our original amendment for the text amendment was solely to lift the limitations on density, not to eliminate the entire ordinance,” said Joseph Anlauf, engineer for the project, during the commissioners’ discussion.

During a commissioners meeting May 6, the board, after hearing from Buxton residents who were vocal in support of the overlay district and a preliminary opinion from Outten that the county might lose a court challenge on the issue of improper indexing, postponed a vote to allow time for a firmer legal opinion.

Outten’s concern were confirmed by Outer Banks attorney John Leidy that it was likely the county would lose a court challenge. Outten was also worried about the implications of a state law passed late last year that prohibits downzoning, or placing a more restrictive use on a property after it has been purchased, as could be the case in enforcing SED-1 restrictions.

But the Southern Environmental Law Center pushed back in its letter, holding that, although state statutes require indexing, “it does not specifically state that an ordinance cannot be enforced if those requirements are not precisely satisfied.” Nor does the law provide a “definition of ‘indexing’ or any directions for how to do it properly.”

Other officials had submitted their written concerns about removing the development restrictions, including David Owens, who was with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management for a decade, notably serving as its director at the time the ordinance was adopted, an author, historian in land use law and retired professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina School of Government.

In his letter, Owens recalled that the “Dare County Board of Commissioners, the county planning staff, and the county attorney all strongly argued for local regulation, contending the standards the county would adopt would be comparable to the state standards being considered.”

John Taggert, who in the 1980s and 1990s was the Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Reserve manager, had urged in a letter that commissioners “retain the ordinance with consistent enforcement to permit development within the buffer that will reasonably protect Buxton Woods from significant loss of adjacent vegetative cover and allow sufficient natural infiltration for sustainable recharge of the underlying aquifer system.”

lan Weakley, professor of botany and conservation biology at UNC, also wrote to commissioners, noting that the county had approved the zoning regulations to bolster coastal protections.

“In the 1980s and early 1990s,” Weakley wrote, “the state Coastal Resources Commission relied on the Dare County zoning protections in deferring regulation of Buxton Woods as a CAMA (Coastal Area Management Act) Area of Environmental Concern. The decision was that the zoning regulations, as written and implemented, would maintain a buffer with sufficient natural character, including canopy closure, to protect the natural values of Buxton Woods.”

A proposal to strengthen and expand building rules in Leland’s flood zone will not be indefinitely sidelined, proponents of the changes say.

“I’m not going to let this die,” said Leland Councilmember Veronica Carter. “I will bring this up at every single meeting until we get some sort of ordinance.”

Carter, who also sits on the board of directors of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and fellow Councilmember Bill McHugh in telephone interviews last week expressed disappointment after a majority of the council on July 17 voted to table proposed updates to the town’s flood damage prevention ordinance.

Suggested amendments to the ordinance included extending building regulations to land within the 500-year flood zone, which includes nearly 280 acres, restricting residential construction fill to elevate property out of a flood zone, limiting density in a flood zone to two units per acre, and increasing freeboard, or the height added to base flood elevation, from 2 to 4 feet.

The town’s planning board unanimously supported the amendments, but the proposed changes were met with fierce pushback from pro-development groups, including builders and real estate agents.

The nonprofit Business Alliance for a Sound Economy in a letter reported in Port City Daily last month argued the proposed ordinance amendments would undermine property values, limit homeowners from making improvements to their houses, and impose “major new costs to home ownership in Leland” while doing “virtually nothing to reduce the impact of flooding.”

“Were one of them (houses) to be significantly or completely destroyed for any reason, the homeowner would be personally responsible for the major added expense of elevating the home to the new standard,” the letter states.

But building in a flood zone is in and of itself an inherent risk, one that is being exacerbated by the strings of coastal storms in recent years that have dumped historic levels of rainfall in the area, proponents of the measure say.

Next month will be the one-year anniversary of the unnamed storm that dumped up to 20 inches or so of rainfall in southern portions of New Hanover County down through Brunswick County over a two-day period.

That storm, widely called Potential Tropical Cyclone 8, surprised the area with flash flooding that washed out roads and inundated homes.

The National Weather Service said the storm approached an event expected to occur, on average, once every 1,000 years.

“It was ugly and if we’re seeing that kind of catastrophic event happening outside of a major hurricane, just some random summer day, I think we need to take a serious look at where and how we’re building and developing in this zone because, let’s not kid ourselves, the more impervious (surface) that you’re building, the more you push that water out,” McHugh said. “Not taking any action to mitigate that risk, to me, is just wildly irresponsible. The idea that these events are remote and rare and some sort of lottery occurrence is just disingenuous.”

As a result of the unnamed storm, areas outside of Leland’s flood zones were swamped, including Stoney Creek Plantation.

“We all know that the bottom line is things are flooding that have never flooded before,” Carter said. “Our flood maps from the federal government are woefully inadequate and outdated.”

Amendments proposed for the town’s flood prevention ordinance do not halt building in flood zones, she said.

“We’re just saying if you’re going to do it, you’re going to take into account it’s going to flood,” she said.

The coastal storm has been just one of a seemingly growing number of significant rain events hitting the state in recent years and exposing more and more flood-vulnerable areas.

Brunswick County officials are also taking notice. The county is commissioning a study on whether to create a stormwater utility. More than 28,000 structures are within the county’s flood zones.

Strengthening building rules within flood zones, McHugh said, is a moral issue, one where elected officials must ensure they are not creating a situation that puts everyone from property owners to emergency personnel in danger.

“When things flood, when things get damaged, the cost of everyone’s insurance goes up. So, if we limit development in danger zones we limit the risk in an area from hurricanes,” he said. “I remain hopeful that we’re going to pass some sort of meaningful change to flood zone development and I think that this is a matter of critical importance to public safety, to the safety of our first responders, to the insurability of the region, and to these folks who are making the largest investment of their lives, which are their homes. You should be able to trust that a home you buy in Leland is built somewhere safe.”

Both councilmembers said the town might benefit from hosting a workshop, one where residents and special interest groups may come together and share their suggestions.

The council is expected to discuss next steps on the proposed amendments during its Aug. 18 agenda meeting. The council’s regular meeting is scheduled Aug. 21.

A New Hanover County forest that includes centuries-old trees has been added to a national list of threatened forests.

Sledge Forest, where bald cypress trees up to 500 years old tower over the forest floor, longleaf and loblolly pines are more than 300 years old and some of the Southeast’s largest remaining Atlantic White Cedar stand, has been added to the Old-Growth Forest Network’s national list of threatened forests.

The forest, one advocates point out is the last of its kind in the region, has been making headlines in recent months because it is situated within a parcel currently eyed for development.

The designation, announced Wednesday by the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, or ACFT, and Save Sledge Forest, highlights “the urgency of preserving this irreplaceable ecological treasure,” according to a release.

“Once an old-growth forest is cleared, it cannot be replaced in our lifetimes or our children’s,” ACFT Executive Director Isabelle Shepherd stated in the release. “Sledge Forest is not just trees – it’s infrastructure. It absorbs millions of gallons of stormwater annually, reduces flooding, stabilizes soil, cools our county, and stores centuries of carbon. To degenerate and destroy it in such a way would be environmental malpractice.”

Sledge Forest rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River and sprawls thousands of acres across northern New Hanover County. It is part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

Last year, a Charlotte-based development company submitted proposed plans to build thousands of single-family houses, a golf course, trails and a horse farm on about 1,000 acres of the 4,000-acre site that includes the forest. Much of the remaining 3,000 or so acres includes protected wetlands.

The forest is designated a North Carolina Natural Heritage Program Nationally Significant Natural Area, sheltering 13 imperiled plant species and seven at-risk animal species, according to the release.

The Old-Growth Forest Network is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving ancient forests in the nation, where, on average, fewer than 5% of original forests remain standing in the West and 1% remain in the East.

Organizations based here fighting to save the forest hope to get it designated as an area of conservation so it becomes a place for research, education and low-impact recreation.

“Let’s not make the mistake of seeing this land only as acreage to be subdivided,” Save Sledge Forest Cofounder Kayne Darrell said in the release. “It’s time for our leaders to recognize that some places are simply too valuable to destroy for development.”

There was a time when the distinctive “kiki-do” call of eastern black rails were a common sound rising up from North Carolina marshes.

Masters of secrecy, these little birds are rarely, if ever, seen.

They prefer to skirt through the marsh using tunnels dug by rabbits and other small mammals rather than take to the sky. Their nests are typically well concealed close to the ground in the highest part of brackish, saltwater and inland freshwater marshes.

But the habitat that eastern black rails so skillfully use to maintain their privacy is under growing threat from rising ocean waters, more powerful storms, and development and, if their numbers continue to decline, projections are they’ll disappear altogether within 35 years.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission aims to help these birds, putting forth a management plan to improve the black rails’ habitat by permanently protecting coastal marshes and assisting private landowners with potential habitat creation.

That’s going to take hundreds of acres of additional inland, shallow marsh and high-elevation coastal marsh.

“We think there’s probably less than 40 breeding pairs in North Carolina right now,” said Kacy Cook, a coastal waterbird biologist with the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The commission is accepting public comment on the Black Rail Management Plan through July 11.

The eastern black rail was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2020. The commission lists it as a species of greatest conservation need.

Long gone are the days when eastern black rails were documented in freshwater marshes in the North Carolina mountains and Piedmont. No one has heard their “kiki-do” in the interior part of the state since 2005, Cook said.

Once abundant black rail habitat along the North Carolina has been crowded out by houses, roads and farmed land.

The last remaining pockets of coastal areas where the birds are heard in some places in the Outer Banks (exact locations are kept under wraps to prevent human disturbance) and Cedar Island, an unincorporated area of Carteret County. Even there, surveys reveal a dramatic population decline.

Surveys are conducted throughout the black rails’ breeding cycle by using something called a targeted call-response where biologists play a recording of the “kiki-do” sound and wait for a response from black rails in the survey area.

“You used to be able to hear 70 black rail calling from the causeway,” at Cedar Island, Cook said.

Now, fewer than 10 respond at any given time, she said.

And while that’s not good for the eastern black rail, it’s also indicative of a wider coastal problem.

“Black rails are our signal that our coastal marshes and freshwater wetlands are in trouble, and that makes a difference for a lot of species, and our own wellbeing,” Cook said.

Eastern black rails rely on very shallow water levels in marshes. They have legs that are typically just over one inch long. Their fledglings, roughly the size of cotton balls, are out of the nest within 24 hours of hatching, but they’re not able to fly until about 40 days later.

This is why coastal storm flooding, exacerbated by sea level rise, is a particular threat, because flood waters can wash away the nests, eggs and chicks. One big storm could wipe out the remaining population in North Carolina.

“Those are happening at a rate that is too high for their population to grow,” Cook said.

Lack of fire, which is crucial to maintaining that type of habitat, and agricultural practices that include cutting field borders where black rails like to settle among wet, tall, grassy habitat, are further degrading the birds’ habitat.

“I’m only finding black rails where we have high herbaceous plant diversity. They only use habitats that are very dense herbaceous cover, grasses and flowers with few shrubs and no trees,” Cook said.

The commission’s management plan for black rails includes the creation and restoration of 600 acres of freshwater marsh and 600 acres of additional high-elevation coastal march by 2056.

“What we do for black rails will benefit all of the marsh birds that we have now, including the egrets and the herons and the wood storks. So, working on restoring black rail habitat is going to benefit all of our coastal birds in some way and our seafood. Seventy-five percent of our seafood comes from coastal marshes,” Cook said.

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

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

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

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

That has Donovan and several of her neighbors worried.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regulatory flexibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Risky building

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NAGS HEAD — Jockey’s Ridge used to be known as the tallest natural sand dune on the East Coast, but now it’s described as its largest natural active sand dune system.

While it may not be as high as it was in 1973, the unique phenomenon of nature is still there — famously thanks to Carolista Baum, a young mother who that year physically blocked a developer’s bulldozer.

A celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jockey’s Ridge State Park held June 5-8 drew thousands of people, from folks who had rolled down the dune as children to tourists who climb it every summer to watch the sun set, to share in appreciation of the beloved Outer Banks landmark.

Festivities included a duneside performance last Friday by the popular indie band, the Connells — with a surprise appearance by North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein — followed by the Outer Banks’ first drone light show.

In his introduction to a documentary about “magical, awesome” Jockey’s Ridge screened at the park’s visitor center late that Saturday afternoon, park ranger Austin Paul said the 22-minute “collection of heartfelt stories” from the community and state officials about the site will continue to grow as more content is gathered.

“Jockey’s Ridge is kind of like the center point of the Outer Banks, Ann-Cabell Baum, Carolista Baum’s oldest daughter, says in the film. “Jockey’s Ridge is so many different things to so many different people … It’s part of our souls, it’s part of our hearts, it’s part of our families.”

Baum and her siblings used to play every day on Jockey’s Ridge, she recalled in a later interview with Coastal Review.

One day the children saw a bulldozer arrive to start digging on the backside of the dune, and Baum, then age 6 1/2, along with her sister Inglis, 5, and her brother Gibbs, 3 1/2, dashed back to their nearby home to tell their mother. Carolista immediately ran over to the spot and stood in front of the bulldozer, not moving until the operator gave up and left, Baum said. 

Her petite 33-year-old mother, a dark-haired Edenton farm girl who grew up with six brothers, then promptly removed the distributor cap, and went about rallying the community in what became the “Save our Sand Dune” campaign to get the state to preserve Jockey’s Ridge.

It wasn’t the first time that developers had raised the ire of the locals — by then the Villa Dunes subdivision was already built on the northern edges of the dunes, and plans for the new development had already been submitted to the town. But this time, the whole community got behind her mother, Baum remembered.

“She was sincere and loving and kind,” her daughter said about Carolista, remembering how people always would come by her jewelry shop to visit with her and chat.

A year after the bulldozer was banished, the dune was declared a National Natural Landmark, and the following year the state park was created.

As former Nags Head Mayor and Commissioner Renee Cahoon says in the documentary, the park is an asset to the town in multiple ways.

“No one else has a Jockey’s Ridge,” she says. “It’s not just cultural icon; it’s also a business icon.”

The park is routinely in the top five of the most-visited state parks in North Carolina.

Last year, 1.2 million people visited. But during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, visitation went through the roof, at 1.9 million and 1.8 million, respectively. Both years had the Nags Head park as the No. 1 most-visited state park. It is currently back to prepandemic visitation.

“It’s more than a fabulous sand pile,” Peggy Birkemeier, a member of the Friends of Jockey’s Ridge Board of Directors, says in the film.

As Birkemeier notes, Jockey’s Ridge has a bounty of natural resources that offer numerous “exciting experiences” for visitors.

The backside of the park abuts the Roanoke Sound, with its long shoreline meandering northward along brackish marshes and toward the ancient maritime forest of Nags Head Woods. It includes a sound beach access that is popular with families. There are also unpaved trails through shrub forest areas beyond the shoreline that lead to the lower expanse of the dunes.

And the night sky above the dunes presents some of the most dramatic scenes on the Outer Banks. In fact, any time of day or night, cloudy or starry, at sunrise or sunset, the sky from Jockey’s Ridge is a wonderment.

“It is certainly a place where many memories are made,” Birkemeier says about the park. 

Legacy projects for Jockey’s Ridge that are in the works include the creation of a trail that loops around the park with informational markers about 10 different significant areas — such as hang gliding and the sometimes-buried sand castle — and a time capsule with various artifacts that is tentatively planned to be kept on display at the visitor center museum.

When the park first opened on May 31, 1975, the big dune was 140 feet tall, Jockey’s Ridge State Park Superintendent Joy Cook explained to Coastal Review in an interview after the event. But shifting maritime winds continually rearranged its estimated 30 million tons of sand, mostly quartz blown in ages ago from the mountains, into different shapes, while surrounding development influenced sand travel. Now the dunes are a system of three smaller hills that are 60 to 80 feet tall. 

“It’s moving 1- to 6-feet to the south each year,” she said. “The prominent wind is out of the north. The dunes are north-south orientation, and the southeast corner is moving faster than the rest of it.”

About six years ago, she said, the park had to relocate the sides of the corner that were moving into the road, and it will probably have to be moved again in a few years.

But even at its decreased height, being on top of Jockey’s Ridge is close to a surreal experience, and it’s not only because of the panoramic view of sea, sound and landscape. The vast expanse of undulating sand at times feels nearly mystical. Depending on the time of day, as well as the weather conditions, the shadows cast by the light and the wind-carved designs in the sand can transform the dunes into art.

But as every local knows, Jockey’s Ridge is the last place a person would want to be in extremes of any weather: a blazing hot summer day, a very windy or rainy day, or any degree of thunderstorm. And sometimes being on top in the middle of all that sand can be disorienting — it’s not unusual for visitors to lose their bearings.

On the flipside, kids delight in rolling and leaping down the dune, and young adults love to slide down them on boogie boards — especially if there’s a rare snowfall. Not to mention that the hang-gliding and kite flying, if the wind cooperates, is extraordinary.

Carolista Baum, an artist and a jeweler, died at 50 from a brain tumor. She remains as one of the most admired personalities in Outer Banks history, not only for her vibrancy and strength of character, but for her courage to stand her ground and protest what she believed was wrong.

As many recognized during the anniversary celebration, without Carolista taking action at that moment, and creating the momentum and inspiration in the community for the preservation fight, it’s likely that Jockey’s Ridge would not have been here to celebrate its 50-year anniversary.

“In 1973, she stood in front of a bulldozer and probably wouldn’t have been arrested,” Baum said. “It was a different time then. But I think she still would have stood in front of a bulldozer if that happened today.”

Armed now with a petition of 10,000 signatures, a group fighting a proposed development in a forest that holds the last large expanse of old-growth trees in New Hanover County plans to host a rally June 21.

The Save Sledge Forest rally will include live music and food trucks. The rally is scheduled for 4-5 p.m. at Innes Park, 102 N. 3rd St., Wilmington.

An after-party will be held at Waterline Brewing Co., 721 Surry St.

Sledge Forest rises from the banks of the Northeast Cape Fear River and sprawls thousands of acres across northern New Hanover County. It is part of the river floodplain, one of the largest landscape corridors in the southeastern part of the state.

Some of the forest’s inhabitants include cypress and loblolly pine trees hundreds of years old and considered a “rare old-growth occurrence,” according to a biological survey published in May 2003 by the Natural Heritage Program of North Carolina, which identified the forest as a significant natural area.

Last year, a Charlotte-based development company submitted proposed plans to build thousands of single-family houses, a golf course, trails and a horse farm on about 1,000 acres of the 4,000-acre site. Much of the remaining 3,000 or so acres includes protected wetlands.

In case of inclement weather June 21, a rain date has been scheduled the following day from 1:30-3 p.m.

Just beyond a wooded area that marks Paws Place Dog Rescue’s east-facing property line, signs of neighbors to come dot the horizon.

Rooftops of two-story houses in various stages of construction peek over treetops in a new development cropping up on one side of the rescue’s land in Winnabow, an unincorporated area along U.S. Highway 17 in Brunswick County.

On a recent May afternoon, Paws Place President Lee VanOrmer looked in the direction from where the steady sounds of building filled the air and mustered up her best, glass-half-full shot of optimism.

“That’s more families that can come here and adopt dogs,” she said.

The reality is that the new neighborhood, like so much of the seemingly endless development occurring in Brunswick County, is not one welcomed by existing residents worried that too much building, too fast, is creating problems.

Here in North Carolina’s southernmost coastal county, it’s not uncommon to read local news stories about mounting traffic-related issues, concerns about flooding exacerbated by stormwater runoff and human run-ins with alligators being squeezed out of the once-secluded areas they prefer.

And, by all indications, development here is not going to slow down.

Years of building to come

Since June 1, 2015, the county has approved 123 developments that call for the construction of more than 45,900 housing units, according to information provided on Brunswick County Planning and Community Enforcement’s website.

Only 13 of those developments are 100% complete. Construction of residences in more than half – 75 to be exact – has not begun.

“It is so much,” Brunswick County resident Christie Marek said. “When I started this I didn’t realize how much I was getting into. It’s like the more you try to change something you learn that we’re several years behind homebuilders. It’s like they almost planned on this.”

Marek founded Brunswick County Conservation Partnership, a nonprofit born out of a coalition of residents concerned about their county’s future. The aim of the partnership is to protect Brunswick’s natural resources and advocate for “responsible” development.

That can look like any variety of measures, be it creating wider buffers between a new development and wetlands or adjacent properties, limiting clearcutting, or implementing stormwater mitigation plans to ultimately keep runoff from flowing into and polluting streams and rivers, Marek said.

Marek lives in Ash, a rural, largely agricultural, unincorporated area along N.C. Highway 130 that she refers to as “the country side of the beach.”

“We don’t have a lot of growth out here,” Marek said.

So, when builders asked the county to approve a sprawling, multiuse development of thousands of homes and commercial space next to her small family farm, she took notice.

County officials in March 2024 approved Ashton Farms, a development that will include more than 2,700 single-family lots, 200 townhome lots and a little more than 20 acres of commercial space.

Early this year, the county planning board approved the 645-acre King Tract, an 1,800-home development through farm and forestland adjacent to Ashton Farms.

Residents persistently raised concerns about potential impacts these developments may have on what equate to hundreds of acres of wetlands in the area.

Months before the King Tract was approved, Marek began asking county leaders to adopt a temporary building moratorium.

“I would love to see a moratorium to just halt development until we get a flood study done and wildlife study done,” she said.

Brunswick County commissioners in a split vote last fall turned down that idea.

The county later posted an explanation on its website that local governments are barred from adopting temporary building moratoria.

“State law provides little to no ability for local governments to issue temporary moratoria on development projects within their jurisdiction,” the website states. “This aspect of state law is important to keep in mind whenever the County receives questions or suggestions to put a moratorium on residential development due to reasons like amending the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) or writing or updating plans.”

The website goes on to explain that proposed developments undergo “a thorough review process” and that impacts to infrastructure and water and wastewater systems are addressed before proposals go to the county planning board.

Several projects are either under construction or planned to expand capacity at wastewater treatment plants and the county has “dedicated significant time and resources” to updating its 20-year water and sewer master plans and five-year capital improvement plan, according to the county.

Brunswick County Conservation Partnership has applied for a $1 million grant to study the potential effects, including flooding, overdevelopment in the area may have on everything from wildlife to wetlands to trees.

But as the federal government guts grant programs, Marek said she’s not counting on those funds to come through. The partnership late last year launched an online donation campaign to raise funds to cover the cost of the study.

“It’s not that we want to stop all development,” Marek said. “It’s stopping irresponsible development and that’s what’s going on here.”

Wetter ground

There’s a patch of marsh on the grounds of where Paws Place Dog Rescue has operated the last eight years.

“We could count in the summer on it being dry,” VanOrmer said.

That’s no longer the case.

The kennel where dogs are housed in a sprawling building that sits at the end of a gravel road stretching hundreds of yards off N.C. Highway 87 is on 17 acres classified as being of minimal flood risk.

Yet, since the no-kill shelter opened in spring 2017, flooding and the threat of it has been on the uptick. VanOrmer is convinced that is due, at least in part, to encroaching development, despite assurances from officials that developers have to comply with the county’s stormwater management and discharge control ordinance.

Unprecedented rainfall from two coastal storms that swept the area within the span of less than a decade caused historic flooding.

Paws Place’s 7,000-square-foot building was inundated with 3 feet of water following Hurricane Florence’s record rainfall in September 2018.

U.S. National Guard troops were called in to help evacuate the kennel’s inhabitants at the time to dry ground at a local gas station.

Last September, Potential Tropical Cyclone Eight, more commonly referred to in these parts as the “unnamed storm,” dumped more than 20 inches of rain, destroying dozens of homes, washing out roads and causing millions of dollars in damages.

“We had water come up to the door and we used dog food to keep the water out,” VanOrmer said.

But the two people who rode out the storm at the kennel were trapped by floodwaters that cut off the entrance to the property.

The unnamed storm amplified to the rescue’s board of directors the need for an on-site storm shelter, one a quick walk from the kennel that, as of May 20, housed some 35 dogs.

The rescue had just enough money to pay a contractor to pour an elevated concrete slab that will be the base of the storm shelter.

Now the rescue is racing to raise enough money to finish the shelter, the ground level of which will house lawn equipment and a van. Walls of the second level, which will be climate controlled, will be lined with crates ready for dogs that get moved from the main building during storms.

“Really, the situation has become, we need an evacuation-type scenario,” VanOrmer said.

She said $95,000 in pledges have been made to the rescue, closing in on its $150,000 goal. VanOrmer said she hopes construction will begin in early June with the building being finished before September.

Next door, homes will likely continue to be erected in the new neighborhood of Saltgrass Landing, plans of which call for nearly 260 residences.

Another large housing development is planned adjacent the Paws Place property across Town Creek, which winds to the Cape Fear River.

“Unfortunately, we can’t seem to stop development,” VanOrmer said.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

After two hours of testimony from county officials and public hearing comments, a visibly frustrated Dare County Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard presented a motion to table any decision on an environmental zone of influence that borders Buxton Woods for 90 days, “so that we can study this and try to iron out exactly what we’ve been discussing.” The motion passed unanimously.

The discussion at the Monday meeting followed a recommendation from the Dare County Planning Board that the zone of influence in the SED-1 district should be removed from the county ordinances “based on consistency with the Dare County Land Use Plan.”

Created in 1988, the zone of influence includes an eight-mile-long area on the soundside of N.C. 12 from Frisco to the north end of Buxton. Written soon after Buxton Woods Reserve was founded in 1988, the zone of influence was an attempt to provide a “buffer to the core area of the forest that was protected under the SED-1 (Special Environmental District),” Derb Carter, Southern Environmental Law Center senior adviser and attorney, said.

The SED-1 “is Dare County’s most restrictive zoning ordinance right as it pertains to the land,” County Planner Noah Gillam told the commissioners.

The controversy over the ordinance originated earlier this year when New Jersey resident Brian Suth, who owns a building in Frisco located in the zone of influence, asked Gillam what would be involved in converting retail space in a building he owned and creating a fourth apartment. At that time, Gillam came across the 1988 language in the SED-1 amendment that defined the zone of influence.

“No multi-family development, townhouses, or condominium project located with ½ mile of any SED-1 zoning district shall exceed a dwelling density of three single family units (whether contained under one or more roofs) per acre,” the amendment reads.

A number of Buxton and Frisco residents recalled the language in the amendment was specifically designed to stop a 40-unit condominium from being developed. The amendment did, in fact, prevent the construction of the condominium. But Gillam pointed out at the meeting that if the intent was to stop intensive development of a lot, it failed.

“It doesn’t apply to a duplex. It doesn’t apply to group developments, where you put ten single family structures on one property,” he said. “You could build a hotel on it.”

That amendment, tacked on to the end of the SED-1 zoning language, was never properly indexed or referenced in county zoning documents, and that has created the dilemma for the county.

The zone of influence was not, it is important to note, a zoning district. Rather it would overlay any zones that were created in the future.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten said “There’s law that says that if you don’t properly index it, then it’s not enforceable. And so it’s clear that it was not properly indexed. You can’t go into zoning and look it up.”

What has happened in the 37 years since the zone of influence was established is that the soundside of Hatteras Island parallel to Buxton Woods has been zoned for a number of uses, such as residential, commercial and industrial, and none of those zones reference the zone-of-influence language. Because that has been the case, there are numerous nonconforming land uses in the district.

After identifying the zone of influence amendment, Gillam advised Suth that he could not “continue moving forward creating nonconformities.”

“I advise him that he couldn’t do this,” but he could have “the language (in the amendment) removed so he could have the four dwelling units,” Gillam said.

Much of the discussion at the May 5 meeting focused on whether the amendment is enforceable and whether it does protect Buxton Woods.

Asked by Commissioner Rob Ross to comment on the language prohibiting four living units under one roof, Carter noted the amendment was more comprehensive and had robust protections for land disturbance.

“There’s a pretty substantive requirement, if it were followed, to minimize the disturbance for every type of development that occurs in every zoning district within that influence area, and that’s important,” he said.

Carter also felt the county had met the minimal standard in indexing the amendment.

“The requirement in state law on indexing is you’ve got to have a file ordinance with an index that’s readily available to the public. That’s the basic legal requirement. And in our view, all that’s been met, on indexing a zoning amendment,” he said.

The confusion about what to do was reflected in the public’s comments. Although Hatteras Island residents were overwhelmingly in favor of retaining the protections of the amendment, there was an acknowledgment that it was a complex issue.

“It feels a bit rushed, like every angle has not been fully explored. I’m reminded of the Jodi Mitchell line,” said Buxton resident Aida Havel, paraphrasing the composer’s song Big Yellow Taxi. “They came to paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Complicating any effort to enforce the zone of influence is state law SB 382 passed last year that requires written permission from every property owner in a zoning district if the district is downzoned. Since the zones covered by the zone of influence allow more development than would be permitted by the language of the amendment, it would constitute downzoning, and that Outten said, means the ordinance may not even be relevant any longer.

“You can get rid of it or if you leave it in place, we can’t enforce it,” he said.

After listening to Buxton residents, in particular, voice strong support for keeping the zone of influence in place, Woodard said, “Those (1988) commissioners had a valid reason for doing what they were doing, and they were honoring what the citizens of Hatteras Island wanted. I understand what’s before us, and there’s too much gray there for me, way too much gray for me to say, ‘let’s move forward.’ I would prefer to table it.”

This story is provided courtesy of The Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with The Voice to provide readers with more stories of interest about our coast.

Coastal towns and large homeowner associations representing beachfront properties now have the choice to install a controversial alternative to sand fencing on ocean-facing shores.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission last week amended a rule to allow those entities to apply for a permit to place wheat straw bales on ocean shorelines as a means to protect and build up beachfront dunes.

The rule, which will now go to the state Rules Review Commission for final approval, limits the use of wheat straw bales to government organizations and HOAs with more than 1 mile of oceanfront shoreline.

Use of wheat hay bales is restricted to those groups until the state gains a better understanding of their impacts to wildlife, including sea turtles, shoreline environment, and their efficacy.

In a 7-5 vote in favor of the rule, some on the Coastal Resources Commission, or CRC, reiterated concerns that have been repeatedly raised in recent years by wildlife officials and environmental organizations.

Those groups, including the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, N.C. Audubon, North Carolina Wildlife Federation and Southern Environmental Law Center, argue additional studies need to be done to understand the potential impacts of wheat straw bales to shoreline habitat and the animals that rely on that habitat.

“I just would like to say I think we’re opening ourselves up to a lawsuit,” Commissioner Lauren Salter said during the CRC’s April 30 meeting in Manteo. “I think Southern Environmental Law Center is going to definitely pursue it based on the comments that we received.”

The effectiveness of wheat straw bales on an oceanfront shore was initially tested as an alternative to wooden sand fencing in 2015 on Figure Eight Island, a privately owned island north of Wilmington.

The North Carolina Division of Coastal Management issued a Coastal Area Management Act permit to two properties to initial a pilot study on the New Hanover County island.

The bales eventually became covered with sand, but, within a few months, they were washed away in a storm, according to the division.

Wheat straw bales were not allowed on a North Carolina beach again until 2023, after Ocean Isle Beach officials requested approval to place them on a portion of the town’s oceanfront shore.

Ocean Isle Town Administrator Justin Whiteside reminded commissioners last week that the town made the request because sand fencing was hard to acquire in the months following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Town officials noted the pilot project on Figure Eight Island and wanted to mimic it, he said.

“It was successful in some areas,” on Ocean Isle, Whiteside said. “Then we did have a storm and some of it washed away. Others, it’s still covered up and, as far as I’m aware, it’s still there just all covered up with sand.”

Division officials have said they do not expect a significant uptick in the use of straw bales because they tend to cost more than traditional sand fencing and they would need to be replaced more frequently than fencing.

Coastal Resources Commissioner Jordan Hennessy last week said that his position on the rule amendment remained the same as those he had expressed during a previous meeting.

Hennessy questioned whether the rule, by omitting private property owners from being able to apply for a permit to install wheat straw bales, is constitutional.

“I’ll be voting against the rule because I don’t believe it’s constitutional,” he said.

The CRC’s legal counsel, Mary Lucasse, advised that the rule amendment is not unconstitutional.

“I don’t see anything unconstitutional that’s jumping out on me, and I don’t actually understand your argument, commissioner, as to why you think it’s unconstitutional,” she said. “We do a lot of rulemaking that focuses on situational things, and we sometimes try things, as we did with (wheelchair-accessible) mats, with local governments being able to do it first, and we have not drawn any challenges to that based on constitutionality or other things, and I don’t see an issue in that.”

Under the amended rule, wheat straw bales cannot impede public or emergency vehicle access or be installed in a manner that endangers nesting sea turtles, which is similar the sand fencing rule.

Installation of wheat straw bales will require consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Wildlife Resources Commission through permit application review. Ties or bindings on bales must be removed to reduce debris and the possibility of wildlife entanglement.

Straw bales will be limited to 10-foot-long sections, which is the same requirement for sand fencing, and can be no wider than 2 feet or higher than 3 feet. Bales can not be more than 10 feet waterward of the first line of stable, natural vegetation, erosion scarp or toe of a frontal dune.

Sections of straw bales, sand fencing, or Christmas trees, which may also be used to trap sand, must be spaced 7 feet apart. Nonfunctioning, damaged bales or stakes that have moved from their alignment must be repaired or removed from the shore.

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice

Speaking April 16 to a room of more than 40 concerned residents gathered in the former Buxton Volunteer Fire Station, Dare County Planning Director Noah Gillam addressed community concerns over the fate of a zone of influence district designed to protect Buxton Woods Reserve.

The zone of influence is an area on the soundside of N.C. Highway 12 from Billy Mitchell Airport Road north to the Buxton and Cape Hatteras National Seashore boundary. The zone may have been written to give extra protection to the maritime forest when it was established as a reserve site in 1988 by the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, a land protection program under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

But based on what came to light during the meeting organized by the Buxton Civic Association, the zone of influence was not referenced in Buxton or Frisco zoning ordinances for at least 30 years, and apparently the Dare County Planning Department was not aware of it.

In April, a request for a text amendment for a fourth apartment in a three-apartment building in Frisco brought the zone of influence language to Gillam’s attention. Based on that, the variance would not be a permitted use. But there are legal questions about whether the 1988 ordinance can be applied and is enforceable, and whether anything can or should be done about apparent nonconforming uses within the zone of influence.

Gillam said he learned of the zone of influence ordinance when researching a request from New Jersey resident Brian Suth, who owns an office building in Frisco that is part of the S-1 zoning district, requested information on converting the offices to four apartments.

“The language that’s in the (zone of influence) ordinance prohibits him from doing that,” Gillam said “So he has requested (removing) the density limitation for multi-family housing that was established in September of 1988.”

The S-1 district is defined as allowing “broad flexibility of services and uses while establishing certain density limitations, setbacks, parking requirements and other general requirements.” Based on that description, Suth’s request would have been allowed. However, based on the language in the zone of influence, the additional apartment could not be permitted.

The zone of influence ordinance was apparently designed to stop a proposed 40-unit condominium project according to Alyson Flynn, coastal advocate and environmental economist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

“There are minutes that point to a 40-unit development that was denied originally,” Flynn said. Gillam agreed, noting, “That was the triggering point of what created the language in ’88,” he said. The zone of influence language is very specific, reading, “No multi-family development, townhouses, or condominium project located with ½ mile of any SED-1 zoning district shall exceed a dwelling density of three single family units…per acre or usable land area.”

The SED-1 district is the special environmental district that includes Buxton Woods in Buxton and Frisco and contains the most restrictive language of any county zone. The zone of influence borders the SED-1 zone, but it is not part of it.

The ordinance was written in 1988, but references to the zone of influence were not included in zoning language for either Frisco or Buxton. Because some of the provisions in the zone of influence are more restrictive than the zoning requirements in those communities, state law requires a reference to the additional zoning language, Gillam explained.

As it stands right now, the zone of influence ordinance may not meet the legal standards of the state.

“There’s a (North Carolina) general statute that establishes that if you make an amendment ordinance and you don’t codify it throughout the ordinance to the lands it affects, that ordinance is not legal…That’s what we’re investigating now with the county attorney. Is this language even enforceable?” Gillam said.

Whether or not it is enforceable, Gillam said, the ordinance is flawed. He pointed out that if the purpose was to restrict high-impact development, it failed to do so.

Flynn agreed with Gillam, noting that “It seems like this ordinance was put into place to stop a specific development that the county didn’t want…so in that sense it has worked because there aren’t 40-unit condominiums in Buxton or Frisco,” she said. “But Noah is exactly right. There could be a hotel there, and that’s where it starts to get hairy, because on one hand, it seems like it did its job, but on the other hand, it very clearly has not.”

There are other concerns as well. Asked if, based on the zone of influence language, there are nonconforming uses, Gillam answered, “When you look at Buxton, or just in the zone of influence area, I think I counted seven campgrounds that have a density way surpassing three units per acre.”

Pressed by The Voice to address what would happen to the zone of influence language if it were successfully challenged in court, Gillam answered, “It would be struck from the ordinance.”

“And that is what (county manager) Bobby Outten is investigating right now,” Commissioner Mary Ellon Ballance added.

It is unclear what, if any, effect removing the zone of influence ordinance would have. The zoning language has not been applied since it stopped the 40-unit condominium in 1988, and monitoring of the 1,007-acre Buxton Woods, which is the “largest remaining contiguous tract of Maritime Evergreen Forest on the Atlantic coast,” according to the Buxton Woods website, has shown it to be a healthy maritime forest.

Asked by the Voice what she felt the next steps should be to address concerns about the zone of influence ordinance, Ballance noted “There’s a lot of unknowns at this point, other than our first step has got to be a determination of whether this is even enforceable.”

She wondered if there could be “a 30-day freeze on building and on any new permitting within the zone of influence.” And in suggesting a moratorium on new permitting, Ballance’s position was similar to comments Flynn made during the meeting.

“I think we need to just take a step back and look at what removal of this ordinance would look like. Find more information so we can make an informed decision,” she said.

This story is provided courtesy of The Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with The Voice to provide readers with more stories of interest about our coast.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Morty Gaskill is a member of the North Carolina Coastal Federation Board of Directors. The nonprofit advocacy organization publishes Coastal Review, which remains editorially independent.

In 1976, a North Carolina Sea Grant newsletter sounded the alarm: large-scale land drainage was wiping out wetlands that protect our coastal fisheries. Fishermen saw their livelihoods at risk and 3,000 of them pleaded for action.

“We, the undersigned, being commercial and sport fishermen who use the creeks, rivers, and bays adjacent to Pamlico Sound and the waters of Pamlico Sound, petition the Marine Fisheries Commission and state officials as follows: … to investigate the effect of changing salinity in said waters upon the economy of Pamlico Drainage areas and to initiate proper controls to insure the continued health of commercial and sport fishing in this area.”

They saw it coming. But there was hope — state and federal leaders acted. For decades, farming, forestry, development, and fisheries co-existed under federal and state wetland safeguards — rules that carefully balanced economic growth and environmental protection. These safeguards didn’t create unbearable hardships; they provided stability for all.

Yet here we are again, nearly 50 years later, facing the same crisis — not just for our fisheries, but for our homes, businesses, and communities. Given the changing economic and environmental conditions of many coastal communities across North Carolina, it could not come at a worse time.

This time, the rollback of wetland protections isn’t coming from local drainage operations. It’s happening due to recent federal and state government actions. The Supreme Court’s Sackett v. EPA decision has dramatically narrowed the definition of federally protected wetlands. The North Carolina General Assembly followed suit, choosing to adopt the weaker federal standard instead of maintaining the stronger state level protections that had been in place for years. And now, under new leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is further diluting the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, stripping even more protections from wetlands and streams that feed our coastal estuaries.

The consequences? More wetlands drained. More freshwater rushing unchecked into saltwater nurseries. More flooding. More property damage.

Costly gamble

History has already shown us what happens when we fail to protect our wetlands. In 1976, Rose Bay fisherman Troy W. Mayo spoke out as catches dwindled.

“Twenty-five years ago, I owned a 26-foot shad boat. We used to go out in Rose Bay, two people, for five or six hours and we’d catch 35 to 40 tubs of oysters—that was two men pulling by hand,” said Mayo. “Today you go out in this same area with a power winder and all modern equipment, and I’d be surprised if you catch 10 tubs of oysters.”

Scientists confirmed what fishermen already knew. “Salinity is a major ingredient for survival in the estuaries”; reported the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. Preston Pate, who studied juvenile shrimp in Rose Bay, found that freshwater intrusion “definitely disrupted the salinity of small creeks in the area. The result was a smaller shrimp harvest by fishermen.”

But wetland loss isn’t just bad for fisheries. Wetlands absorb floodwaters, buffer storm surges, and keep pollution out of our waterways. Every acre lost means more homes and businesses at risk.

In North Carolina, our coastal communities have already been battered by hurricanes, rising insurance costs, rising property taxes, lack of affordable housing, and an aging drainage infrastructure that can’t keep up with heavier rains. Weakening wetland protections only adds fuel to the fire. It shifts costs onto property owners, local governments, and taxpayers — many of whom will be left paying for flood damage that could have been prevented.

Commonsense approach to conservation

Those lessons from the 1970s helped shape policies that kept North Carolina’s wetlands intact for decades. But now, history is repeating itself. The rollback of WOTUS protections and the state’s decision to weaken its own rules mean more wetlands will be drained, increasing flooding, pollution, and economic losses.

This shouldn’t be a divisive political issue. Wetland protections aren’t just about environmental policy — they’re about practical economics, public safety, and community well-being. They help prevent costly flood damage, safeguard private property, and support the resilience of coastal economies that depend on fisheries, tourism, and clean water.

Jim Brown of the Division of Marine Fisheries put it best nearly 50 years ago:

“We love beans and beef, and we have a serious need to extend agricultural operations. At the same time, we dearly love shrimp and oysters. There exists a very serious need for imposing compatibility between the two. Can it be done? That’s the question. Or do we just keep plodding along with our fingers crossed?”

If we ignore history, we aren’t just crossing our fingers — we are guaranteeing a grim future for our coastal communities. The fishermen of Rose Bay warned us decades ago. Will we listen this time? Or will we, once again, pay the price for failing to protect the wetlands that sustain our way of life?

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation. See our guidelines for submitting guest columns.

WILMINGTON — A proposal to limit commercial fishers’ harvest of blue crabs treads rough waters after advisory committees to the state Marine Fisheries Commission agreed the rule should not move forward.

The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries’ recommendation targets catch of mature female crabs. The proposed move comes as fisheries officials are looking to manage a species they say has been on a decline in the state’s coastal waters.

Earlier this month, the commission’s northern and southern regional advisory committees and the shellfish/crustacean advisory committee, voted in separate meetings to keep the current rules detailed in Amendment 3 of the Blue Crab Fishery Management Plan.

Each committee also agreed the commission should wait until its August meeting to take final action on the draft Amendment 3 revision. The plan calls for setting a 10-bushel limit for mature female blue crabs from June through December and restrict any harvest of mature female crabs from January through May. Adult crabs have shells at least 5 inches wide.

The proposal, in conjunction with existing blue crab season closures and other management measures, would reduce harvest by an estimated 21.7%, compared to average landings between 2019 and 2023, according to division officials. That harvest reduction should increase the total weight of blue crabs that are capable of reproducing and boost the numbers of young crabs entering the fishable population, officials say.

But critics of the proposed limits question how the division can propose a revision to the state’s blue crab management plan based on a benchmark stock assessment that uses data from 1995 to 2016. Results of that assessment showed blue crab stock was overfished, and overfishing was occurring in 2016.

In early 2020, the fisheries commission adopted Amendment 3, which included several management strategies to try and end overfishing of blue crab.

Those strategies have been in place since January 2021. But fisheries monitoring programs since then continued to show historically low commercial landings and low abundance in stock, according the division.

Fisheries officials began updating the stock assessment using data through 2022, but the division, with the strong recommendation of peer reviewers, decided against using the 2023 assessment update, citing concerns about its results.

“That to me, as a scientist, that would cause me to retract and say, ‘Man, there’s something missing here,’” said Sam Romano, co-owner of Seaview Crab Co. in Wilmington. “Why not try to figure out a way to get better data? I know you guys have your own set of data and you feel confident about it. I’m not trying to push down anybody’s data, but there has to be some outreach to some of these crabbers where they’re not see it. It affects their lives and they’re not feeling heard.”

Romano was one of roughly 15 people who attended the Southern Regional Advisory Committee’s March 19 meeting in Wilmington, where attendees and some members of the committee argued that, without an updated stock assessment, the division should not further limit blue crab catch for commercial harvest.

Speakers at the meeting also said officials can’t point solely to overfishing as the reason the state’s blue crab stock is in decline. Some challenged the division’s conclusion that the stock is still declining.

Shelby Lewis, 22, whose father has fished commercially for 40 years, said the division needs to look at more than commercial fishing in trying to determine what’s behind the declining numbers of blue crabs.

“I think the environment’s changing,” he said. “I think that there’s runoff from all this building and development. There’s crop wash. All these factors are contributing. I mean, every species we have in the state has basically seen a decline and I don’t think that’s just because of fishing. Some of them are already heavily regulated, but are still declining.”

Southern Regional Advisory Committee member Glenn Skinner said that, without an updated stock assessment, he did not feel comfortable recommending amending the management plan. Skinner is the executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association.

“What we want is the whole story,” he said. “We want the uncertainty. We want the certainty. We want all of it. We don’t want y’all to come in here and defend your position. We want you to come in here and educate us as advisers so we can make an educated decision. I’m just struggling without a stock assessment. We need to do better and I know y’all want to do better. We need that information before we take stuff away from people. I can’t get over the lack of data and the high degree of uncertainty we keep talking about over and over again.”

Robert Corbett, blue crab species lead in the division’s Elizabeth City office, said his fellow officials share similar concerns about the data they’re using to base their recommendation.

“However, we’re looking at the long-term trends and we just see the declines,” Corbett said. “There’s a lot of things that are outside of our ability to manage. As fisheries managers, our tool bags are very thin. Pretty much all we have is just reducing harvest, just reducing the number of crabs that we’re taking out of the population.”

Blue crab stock declines are not occurring just in North Carolina waters, he said. A January 2023 status report for the fishery in South Carolina concluded stock there had been in decline for almost two decades. And, in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay, juvenile abundance of blue crabs remained low, through that stock was not depleted or overfished.

This story has been updated.

A judge has ordered that more than two dozen longstanding rules used to guide coastal development and protect resources be placed back into the North Carolina Administrative Code.

All 30 rules removed from the code in fall 2023, shortly after the N.C. Rules Review Commission kicked them back to the Coastal Resources Commission, must be plugged back into the code, Wake County Superior Court Judge William Pittman ruled last week.

Pittman also affirmed that the Coastal Resources Commission and Department of Environmental Quality have the authority to, through rulemaking, create enforceable guidelines and policies, adopt rules that give context to or aid in understanding those and other rules, and that “adverse environmental impact” is not an ambiguous term used in rulemaking.

“The NC Coastal Resources Commission is pleased that the trial court has agreed with its position that the Rules Review Commission’s objections to thirty of the CRC’s rules were without foundation,” the CRC stated in an email Tuesday afternoon. “The CRC looks forward to a return of its rules to the North Carolina Administrative Code as these rules are important components of this State’s coastal management program.”

Related: Process to restore Jockey’s Ridge protections continues

Should the Rules Review Commission appeal, the state codifier of rules may “prominently notate and identify as ‘Under Appeal’” the 30 rules “or words to that effect,” Pittman wrote in his Feb. 12 decision.

Pittman’s ruling comes more than a year after the coastal commission and the state’s lead environmental agency filed a complaint asking the court to resolve a deadlock over legal interpretations between the two commissions and restore the rules.

The coastal commission adopts rules for the state’s Coastal Area Management Act and Dredge and Fill Act, and establishes policies for the North Carolina Coastal Management Program.

The Rules Review Commission’s objections to the rules in 2023 were largely based on technical wording.

After filing the lawsuit, the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management and the coastal commission worked to temporarily restore 16 of the rules division officials described as critical to day-to-day operations.

Some of those rules pertain to enforcing protections for coastal landmarks including Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head and Permuda Island off the shores of North Topsail Beach in Onslow County.

Last November, the 13-member Coastal Resources Commission unanimously adopted a proposed permanent rule identifying Jockey’s Ridge, the tallest active sand dune on America’s eastern sea board, as a unique geological feature area of environmental concern, or AEC. The designation received overwhelming public support and protects the dune from, among other things, sand mining.

AECs are areas of natural importance that the division designates to protect from uncontrolled development.

The coastal commission submitted 132 readopted rules to the Rules Review Commission.

Historically, when the Rules Review Commission objected to a rule, the agency that submitted the rule had to request the rule be returned to make changes. If an agency did not make that request, the objection would be merely noted in the rule and that rule would remain in the Administrative Code.

That changed with the adoption Oct. 3, 2023, of the state budget that includes language giving the rules commission authority to send rules it objects back to agencies.

Shortly after the law went into effect, the Rules Review Commission voted in a special called meeting to return 30 of the Coastal Resources Commission-approved 132 rules.

The 10-member rules commission reviews and approves state agency-created rules. The North Carolina General Assembly appoints commission members, half of which are on the recommendation of the Senate pro tem, and the other half on the recommendation of the House speaker.

“The court did the right thing in reserving the legislatively-controlled Rules Review Commission’s arbitrary repeal of long-standing, common-sense rules that are essential to North Carolina’s coastal communities as they face increasingly intense storms and sea level rise from climate change,” Southern Environmental Law Center Senior Attorney Julie Youngman stated Monday afternoon in response to a request for comment.

The law center filed an amicus brief on behalf of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which supported restoration of the rules. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

In addition to protecting Jockey’s Ridge State Park and archaeological remains on Permuda Island, the rules the judge ordered to be returned to the code designate and manage categories of coastal resources, dictate policies for shoreline erosion control and development of ocean-based energy facilities, and guide permitting for coastal development.

For the first time in more than 10 years, North Carolina land donors may be eligible to receive a tax credit for gifting property to conservation.

But there’s a catch. A few, actually.

The law that went into effect Jan. 1 includes caveats that were not in the original one that legislators repealed in 2013.

This time around, there is a credit cap for qualifying properties, which means donors will not know how much of a credit they will receive at closing. Conservation easements, or those where the landowner can permanently protect the environmental value of his or her land while continuing to own it, no longer qualify. And the program ends after two years.

The law isn’t likely to raise the brows of landowners wanting to donate solely in the name of conservation. But proponents are concerned the law might not be enough to entice property owners who may be looking for more incentive to donate.

Land trusts across the state are working to get at least some of the language in the North Carolina Farm Act of 2024 changed to reflect that of prior guidelines when the legislative session convenes late this month.

“I would say, although it’s not what we would most prefer getting started, having the tax credit reinstated at all is certainly an accomplishment, and we’re pleased for that,” said Harrison Marks, Coastal Land Trust executive director. “I think until a couple of things are addressed it will be somewhat limited. I think it’s a reward for people who probably want to do the right thing for the right reasons anyway. But I would think somebody who is mostly motivated by the tax credit may wait and see what happens in the future.”

Under the old law, landowners would receive a tax credit of up to 25% of the fair market value of their donated property.

Now, a statewide cap of $5 million must be divided between donors with qualifying tracts of land.

Land owners will not be notified until after the close of the tax year, after the state Department of Revenue tallies the year’s donations, how much of a tax credit they will receive.

“If they don’t hit the cap, then every landowner will get the full 25% of the donated value and that’s fantastic, but I can’t tell a landowner that,” explained Rusty Painter, Conservation Trust for North Carolina’s land protection director. “I have to tell the landowner you might get as little as 5% or less, who knows, of the donated value. That’s going to make it hard for them to factor that in, or make that a significant factor in their decision.”

The message he’s likely to relay to prospective land donors is to remind them that a federal tax deduction for conservation easement donations stands. Whatever the landowner may get in a state conservation tax credit would be the “gravy on top.”

“You’re likely to get some kind of state tax credit, but I can’t tell you how much,” Painter said. “Nobody can tell you how much right now. Just wait and hope for good news and enjoy the windfall, however big or small it might be.”

North Carolina was the first in the nation to enact a conservation income tax credit.

Between the time the credit was rolled out in 1983 until its repeal 30 years later, donations and bargain sales of land and easements for conservation purposes led to the protection of more than 230,000 acres of forests, farms, waterways, wildlife habitat, wetlands and other natural areas.

Proponents of the credit point out that neighboring states, including South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, implemented similar conservation tax credits after seeing the success of North Carolina’s program.

Land donations for conservation “really dropped off” after North Carolina lawmakers repealed the tax credit, Marks said.

Under the current law, eligible lands include those used for forestland or farmland preservation, fish and wildlife conservation, buffers around military installations and training areas, historic landscape conservation, for public trails or access to public trails, and for floodplain protection in counties where a gubernatorial disaster declaration as a result of a natural disaster that occurred five years before the donation.

The law expires Jan. 1, 2027.

“We’re definitely hoping for an update because we need all the help we can get,” Painter said. “The window is closing on the best of the best properties to conserve. Development is rampant now and it’s going to continue to increase and funding for our work is pretty limited. Our hope is that this is the first step toward revamping and improving the program based on what we’ve learned in this two-year period.”

MANTEO – Members of the Dare County Board of Commissioners vowed a fight Wednesday during a special meeting called to discuss the county’s interest in purchasing land in Wanchese, where residents remain vehemently opposed to a planned densely built residential development and where work has already begun.

Wanchese residents opposed to the cluster home development say it is incompatible with the village’s residential zoning district rules. The board voted unanimously to again attempt to negotiate purchasing the tract, this time making a more personal plea from the chairman.

Residents’ and commissioners’ anger erupted during the meeting over the landowner’s previously rising asking price, with one commissioner saying he wouldn’t rule out moves described by the county manager to condemn the property if negotiations remain at an impasse.

Bradford Alexander of Aria Construction Co. and Development of Cresswell, in Washington County, now seeks at least five times what he paid for the land last year.

“Mr. Alexander is now viewing this community response as a very, very good opportunity to extract an enormous amount of money for a piece of property purchased less than a year ago for a million dollars,” Commissioner Bob Ross said.

Commissioner Carson Creef, who lives in Wanchese, said he was “open to condemnation,” and added that if Alexander wants to fight, “he’ll get a fight. He is the one who needlessly raised the price every single time.”

Aria Construction had already started clearing land last week at the 10.5-acre cluster home site where the firm still plans to build as many as 48 homes, down from the 60 individual homes in the site plan when the county first approved it. Except for a thin buffer of remaining trees, the land has been clear cut.

Craig Parker lives immediately adjacent to the development site in Wanchese. He told the board the property was “really being trashed right now.”

During the meeting, County Manager Bobby Outten explained to commissioners and the roughly 60 others in attendance that Aria had purchased the property in July 2024 for $1 million. Outten recounted how commissioners, responding to Wanchese residents’ outrage over the project, authorized an offer of up to $3 million to buy the property.

“In the fall of 2024 I contacted Mr. Alexander at the board’s request to talk about a purchase, and at that time, he told us he wouldn’t take less than $5 million,” Outten said, adding that the amount was 16 times the assessed tax value. “And so those discussions ended.”

The special meeting was called, Chairman Bob Woodard said, because Commissioner Mike Burrus, who represents Wanchese on the board, indicated there was interest among village residents in creating a tax district to pay the difference between the $3 million the county offer and the $5 million Alexander had demanded.

The tax district would be similar to the county tax districts in place to pay for beach nourishment.

Outten had subsequently approached Alexander to propose that there may be a way to bridge the $2 million dollar gap between the county’s offer and Alexander’s price, but the developer then said $6 million was his firm price.

During the meeting Wednesday, Outten described how such a tax could be implemented and outlined the procedures for condemnation. Under eminent domain laws, the acquired land must be for public use. But, Outten said, if Alexander refused the county’s condemnation offer, a court would decide the fair price.

“Whatever a jury says after we have a trial is what we pay,” Outten said. “If it’s $6 million, we pay $6 million.”

Ross was said he was reluctant to enrich the developer at county expense.

Creef said he would not support the special use tax. He said the tract isn’t worth $6 million, and that he had campaigned on lowering taxes, not raising them.

Wanchese residents, when speaking during the meeting’s public comment period, were adamant that the cluster zoning was a mistake and that the county and therefore, commissioners, had a responsibility to correct it.

Parker, who lives next to the site, said he wants to be rid of the issue once and for all.

“A lot of times your best lesson learned is one that’s going to cost you the most,” he said, adding that he didn’t like the idea of paying off the developer, but, “if that’s what it costs to get rid of him once and forever, that’s what needs to be done.”

“Some mistakes cost more than others,” Mitchell Bateman of Wanchese said. “I don’t think the citizens and the residents of Wanchese should have to form their own special tax district to finance this. It’s not our responsibility to pay for this mistake. It’s yours.”

Bateman’s son, Justin Bateman, also spoke of his frustration.

“I don’t want to put money in that man’s pockets. Nobody in here does, but considering what we could do great with that piece of property is what we really need to focus on,” he said.

Woodard, the board chair, told his fellow commissioners that he was willing to meet with Alexander personally in the hope that, “he’s got a humane side to him that he might reconsider the value.”

Then, the board went into closed session to discuss terms of a potential deal.

In observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and in recognition of the continued struggle for civil rights, Coastal Review will not publish on Monday, Jan. 20.

Brunswick County Planning is hosting a series of community meetings this month to get residents’ opinions on updating and modernizing the county’s unified development ordinance.

The ordinance, referred to as an UDO, is a document that contains planning, zoning, and land use rules adopted by the county.

Each in-person community meeting will have an informal, open house-style format with planning staff on hand to talk with and answer questions from members of the public who attend.

Feedback received at the meetings will be incorporated into revisions to the UDO, which helps guide growth and development in the unincorporated areas of the county and supports the goals established in the Blueprint Brunswick Land Use Plan.

The county’s planning board and board of commissioners will consider updates to the UDO at a later date, according to a release.

The meetings will be held from 6-8 p.m. on the following dates and locations:

• Jan. 27: Town Creek Park Community Building, 6420 Ocean Highway E., Winnabow.
• Jan. 29: St. James Community Center, 4136 Southport-Supply Road SE, St. James.
• Jan. 30: The Brunswick Center at Shallotte, 3620 Express Drive, Shallotte.

Community members who have questions and cannot attend one of the meetings may Kirstie Dixon, the county’s planning and community enforcement director at 910-253-2027 or kirstie.dixon@brunswickcountync.gov or deputy director Marc Pages at 910-253-2056 or marc.pages@brunswickcountync.gov

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another major aspect of CAMA is permitting and enforcement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inactive hazardous site abuts tract

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave Hallac called it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The Great Wall of Carolina’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Debris ‘becomes part of the beach ecosystem’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brunswick County commissioners will not pause new development.

Instead, board members agreed during their Monday night meeting to further explore the possibility of creating a stormwater utility as a way to address mounting concerns about the county’s ongoing building boom.

“The stormwater utility would help solve the problem of increased growth, polluted stormwater, and improve the drainage capabilities of the county that are susceptible to flooding,” Commissioner Pat Sykes said. “Within this we should be able to designate certain areas as special protection areas. These areas would determine, should they be low, medium or high density.”

This utility is created to collect fees from property owners, which are then used to maintain and improve drainage systems.

Sykes eventually seconded a motion made by Chairman Randy Thompson to direct county staff to move forward with coming up with a plan to establish a temporary moratorium on new commercial, multifamily and single-family home construction. Thompson suggested a moratorium would span 120 days.

Commissioners voted down the motion 3-2.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not in favor of a moratorium,” Commissioner Marty Cooke said. “I don’t see legally we can do it.”

Thompson reiterated concerns he raised at the board’s Sept. 23 meeting as reasons for implementing a building pause, one he and supporters of a moratorium say is needed to give the county time to examine its water and wastewater service capacity, current fire service adequacy, impacts of pending construction, floodwater management, and update its unified development ordinance, or UDO.

“I honestly believe that all these things need to be addressed,” he said Monday night. “They need to be addressed quickly, but it takes time to address them properly and so that is why I am still firmly in the belief that we need to do a moratorium.”

Others agreed, arguing that the county can make the case a building moratorium is needed to address imminent public health and safety concerns.

Gene Vasile, president of the Alliance of Brunswick County Property Owners Association, said Thompson’s comments at the Sept. 23 meeting summarized the most serious consequences of “excessive development.”

“Ask yourself, how can developments the size of small towns be approved in areas that are served by volunteer fire departments?” Vasile said. “The consequences of rapid development without advanced planning for its ramifications are serious and irresponsible. In the interest of public health, safety and good order, a moratorium on the approval of certain new development is essential.”

Shallotte Mayor Walter Eccard shared those sentiments, saying he believed county commissioners have the authority to declare a moratorium “for the purpose of addressing public safety and adequacy of infrastructure.”

Eccard, who said he was speaking as a resident of the county, referenced widespread damage in the county caused by flooding from the unnamed storm that dumped more than 15 inches of rain onto the area last month.

“The impact of recent uncontrolled growth and its related clear-cutting raised, at a minimum, serious questions with respect to the adequacy of the county’s rules for stormwater control, flood mitigation and other matters,” he said. “As you know the recent storm resulted in local flooding, road closures, bridges destroyed, limitations of emergency vehicle access and inadequate evacuation routes. These present serious public health and safety concerns.”

Major new developments, Eccard said, have been approved without a review of whether existing fire and emergency services could adequately serve them.

“It’s clear to many of us that this is a recipe leading to catastrophe,” he said.

Rather than call for a building moratorium, St. James Mayor Jean Toner asked commissioners immediately approve text amendments to the county’s UDO that address trees and green space, transportation overlay zoning and transportation impact analysis.

Toner said rampant clear-cutting, high-density housing and inadequate requirements for developers to create open space, “have created a situation where development is neither well-managed nor responsible.”

“Since 2020 the county has approved 37,500 new housing units,” she said. “UDO text amendments are necessary to mitigate the problems that result from these changes. Revisions to mitigate flooding associated with stormwater runoff are overdue. How much more flooding, damaging homes, businesses and roads and bridges, must we experience before change is made?”

Rather than establish a building moratorium, County Manager Steve Stone recommended to commissioners amend the county’s stormwater ordinance and enhance the flood prevention ordinance.

Specifically, Stone suggests developers be required to include stormwater designs for a 100-year storm event rainfall. Currently, the ordinance requires plans for a 25-year event.

“It’s technically feasible to implement this change within 120 days of beginning the process,” he said, referring to a stormwater ordinance amendment.

Did you hear the one about the alligator?

An alligator walks into … a road, a pool, a miniature golf course, onto a beach, underneath a car, up to the front door of a storefront, by a back entrance of a police station.

Stop me if you read about this while perusing the headlines of your local newspaper, heard about it on the 6 o’clock news, or saw it plastered across social media platforms this past summer.

Alligators have made quite the splash (pun intended) in recent months here in southeastern North Carolina, where seemingly numerous public appearances by these living dinosaurs have produced dramatic headlines and videos shared not only across the state, but the country.

But these typically reclusive reptiles aren’t looking for all the attention they’ve been getting, experts say.

They just want to be left alone. Problem is, they’re being squeezed out of seclusion as housing developments and retail centers continue to crop up along the coast.

“The ever-growing population along the coast of North Carolina is the biggest threat to wildlife in general,” said John Harrelson, a wildlife biologist with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. “Habitat loss is the biggest threat to wildlife in general, not just alligators, and when people move in and we build communities in places that haven’t historically had people, then that leads to lots of interactions.”

And the more interactions that occur, the more comfortable alligators become around people.

Harrelson puts alligators into one of two categories: country alligators and city alligators.

Country alligators inhabit areas up the Northeast Cape Fear River. Those alligators generally try their best to steer clear of humans, he said.

But city alligators get used to seeing people and, just like squirrels, birds, deer and other animals, they become habituated, “realizing that people, for the most part, don’t mean them any harm and that there’s nothing to be worried about,” Harrelson said.

Think of it like a cost-benefit analysis where an alligator weighs the risk of being around people and decides whether the reward is worth the risk.

“And often times the reward is great enough,” Harrelson said.

While development strips away their natural habitat, it tends to provide pockets of prime real estate for alligators in the form of retention ponds.

Harrelson works in the commission’s District 4, which includes Brunswick County, and is home to a reported 30 scenic golf courses (think about all of the water hazards — well, not a hazard from a gator’s point of view — on just one of those courses).

Brunswick, Columbus, Craven, New Hanover, Onslow and Pender counties are home to the largest populations of American alligators in North Carolina and their turf runs from the state’s coastal plains to Texas.

With its barrier island beaches, proximity to Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and its numerous golf courses, Brunswick County has become a draw for retirees who, for many, move in from areas where there are no alligators.

Pair that with the influx of tourists who flock to the county each summer – Oak Island’s population more than quintuples between May and August – and odds are high people are going to encounter alligators.

Boiling Spring Lakes Police Capt. Windy Hager knows that when tourism season picks up, so too do the number of calls going in to the Brunswick County town’s law enforcement center about alligator sightings.

“When it’s warmer (alligators) become more active and, when you’ve got people who are not familiar with alligators they get a little excited about, ‘Oh, there’s one in the lake!’ Well, yes, that’s where they live and that’s what we have to tell them a lot of times,” Hager said.

Hager has lived in the area more than 10 years. She’s accustomed to seeing alligators pretty regularly in their own habitat.

But one had to be removed from a swimming pool a couple of weeks ago and the unnamed storm that pummeled Brunswick County with catastrophic rainfall Sept. 16 means there’s a lot of water in places that were previously dry.

“I know that there’s two (alligators) in what used to be somebody’s front yard right now in the city because their front yard is flooded,” Hager said. “But they’re just doing their thing and the people who live there are giving them their space. The people are not messing with them and the alligators aren’t messing with the people so they’re sharing space right now.”

Two days before he spoke in a telephone interview with Coastal Review, Sunset Beach Police Animal Control Officer Bill Arp had removed a small alligator hanging out underneath a car.

“They’ll wind up in people’s garages and on people’s porches, underneath decks, under cars. We find them all over the place,” he said. “Unfortunately, because of such huge development down here, their habitat is starting to shrink and that’s what’s happening. People are calling us and wondering, ‘Why’s it under my car? Why are they on my porch? Why are they in my garage?’ Well, that’s why because the development is robbing them of their other habitat.”

Alligator Do’s and Don’ts

If an alligator settles in an area near you, wildlife and law enforcement officials have tips on how to safely cohabitate.

“A lot of people think, even with birds and deer, it’s nice to feed them,” Arp said. “But alligators, you don’t. Everybody knows an alligator is an apex predator. They’re nice to watch. They’re nice to take pictures of, but to feed them, that’s not a good idea.”

Remember what Harrelson said earlier in the story about city alligators?

“Individual people feeding alligators is the worst thing you can do,” he said. “Alligators are wild animals and they’ve got to work for their food. An easy meal means, ‘hey I don’t have to continue to fail and fail and make all these attempts when I’m not successful. I can just wait for this person to walk over and, if I approach them, they’re going to give me chicken or bread or marshmallows, a fish scrap or whatever else they’ve got.’ We deal with this all the time, particularly with folks who aren’t locals.”

It is illegal to feed alligators. It is also illegal to kill them.

American alligators are protected by the Endangered Species Act as threatened. In North Carolina, a permit is required to hunt alligators. The monthlong season is limited to population control at the request of municipalities in Brunswick, Carteret, Columbus, Craven, Hyde, Jones, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, and Pender counties, according to the WRC website.

“The Commission does not plan to issue permits to take American alligators, outside of municipality requested population reduction hunts, until further research is conducted to determine the conditions under which alligator populations would be sustained while allowing limited harvest,” the site states.

Harrelson said that alligators are relocated only as a last resort because they, like other wildlife, have a propensity to travel long distances to return to where they were captured.

“This is something that we face ongoing and, as biologists, something that we have to figure out how to address going forward because our agency isn’t going to pick up and move animals,” Harrelson said. “We want to let wildlife be wildlife for as long as we can and maintain the ecosystems that are out there.”

As people build, alligators move. Males can occupy areas greater than 2 miles so, when they move, they’re crossing roads, ditches and yards.

An alligator may be removed from a property when it is considered a nuisance – at least 4 feet long and poses a threat to people, pets or property. To report a potential nuisance alligator, call the N.C. Wildlife Helpline at 866-318-2401.

Experts say simply spraying an alligator with a water hose usually prompts the animal to move away.

If you’re taking a walk and spot an alligator in or near your path, give the alligator a wide berth and go around it. Never walk up to one or try to touch one.

“When an alligator is on a sidewalk or up on a roadway, he’s not hunting, he’s not searching out food. If we give them an opportunity to make that move on their own, most of the time, they will,” Harrelson said. “Our biggest thing, of course, is to keep people safe and then let the animals be animals. That’s what we’re always striving toward.”

The second Rodanthe house to collapse into the ocean within 24 hours fell Friday night.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials announced that Dare County dispatch called at 9:18 p.m. Friday about the collapse at 23009 G A Kohler Court.

“Seashore law enforcement rangers arrived on scene and confirmed that the unoccupied, one-story house—the same house that sustained damages as a result of the first house collapse of the day—had collapsed and apparently washed out into the ocean before the bulk of it returned to the beach at the south end of G A Kohler Court,” officials said in a press release.

Related: Another house collapses in Rodanthe; 8th since 2020

Debris had apparently washed out into the ocean “before the bulk of it returned to the beach at the south end of G A Kohler Court.”

Park officials urge visitors to stay out of the water and wear hard-soled shoes when walking on the beach to avoid injuries from hazardous floating debris and nail-ridden wooden debris. Due to potentially dangerous debris on the beach and in the water to the north and south of the collapse site, temporary beach closures for public safety may be necessary.

Park officials said they are in communications with the property owner of 23009 G A Kohler Court and expect a contractor to be secured for debris cleanup.

National Park Service staff will be on the beach again today to assist with moving debris above the high tide line.

Debris has been seen for miles to the south of the collapse site.

The collapse of the house at 23009 G A Kohler Court was the ninth house to collapse on park beaches during the past four years.

Learn more about the threatened oceanfront structures that border the Seashore on its website.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

A large swath of property near Corolla, totaling about 177 acres, is up for sale, according to NAI Global, a commercial real estate brokerage firm handling the transaction.

In a Sept. 16 release, NAI said the five parcels involved “are approved for a by-right development which allows for 1,250 hotel rooms, as many as 782 single-family homes and nearly 428,000 square feet of commercial development.”

In a brief Sept. 17 interview with the Voice, an NAI Global official said the property went on the market about a week earlier. In response to a Voice inquiry, Currituck County Public Information Office Randall Edwards said that “the County Manager is aware that this property is for sale but does not have any comment since the property is still for sale and there are no definite plans in place.”

NAI Globe did not release the identity of the seller, but in a Sept. 17 story, the Triangle Business Journal  “the owner is listed as Coastland Properties of Virginia Beach, Virginia.”

Excerpts from Sept. 16 NAI release

NAI Global announces a rare land listing of 177+ acres for sale in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a region known to millions of Americans as a destination getaway that is largely comprised of multi-million-dollar homes, residential condominiums, resort hotels and supporting commercial development.

The unimproved land spans approximately 177+ acres on five parcels of varying sizes, two of which face the Atlantic Ocean providing direct beach access. Located near Corolla in Currituck County, the parcels are approved for a by-right development which allows for 1,250 hotel rooms, as many as 782 single-family homes and nearly 428,000 square feet of commercial development. Municipal water and sewer are provided for each parcel.

Section T has the highestbuilding height permitted in the Outer Banks. All of these sections have the right to rearrange density on a pre-approved basis. One of the parcels has the potential to build a marina/boat launch facility with water access to Currituck Sound, which is an allowed use under the development agreement with Currituck County.

The waterfront parcels are 82.6 acres and 44 acres respectively. The option exists for a buyer to develop one or more exclusive family compounds, or pursue a larger development as currently permitted.

“We don’t see many properties like this come to market, especially for a remarkable resort area of the U.S. The buyer will have numerous options to build estate properties, exclusive resorts and income-producing commercial properties. Normally with lands sales, one of these options may exist, but it is rare that all three options exist within a single acquisition,” said Alex Waddey, President and CEO of NAI Global.

The for-sale listing is unpriced. It is believed to be the largest land listing of unimproved property with direct-Atlantic Ocean access in the Eastern U.S.

Approval has been obtained and plans are in process to build an additional bridge to serve the northern Outer Banks – called the Mid-Currituck Bridge, that would stretch across Currituck Sound. The bridge would be a 7-mile span connecting the mainland with the Outer Banks near Corolla, a short distance from Ocean Sands. This would substantially reduce travel time and improve access.

This story was first published by the Outer Banks Voice, an online newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review partners with the Voice and other publications to provide our readers a broad spectrum of coastal news.

EDENTON — Town council members this week tabled a decision on a requested special use permit related to plans to renovate a long-vacant, nearly century-old hotel in the historic district, the Outer Banks Voice reported.

SAGA Realty and Construction’s estimated $9 million plans for the four-story building include two stories of apartments, a floor of hotel suites and ground-floor retail space with work performed “in accordance with approvals” by the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers and the National Park Service, according to the Hotel Hotel permit request.

The unanimous decision to table action came during a quasi-judicial hearing held Monday. The board was unconvinced that, after almost 10 years of frustration and delays, that SAGA would deliver on their plans for the hotel, the Voice reported.

SAGA acquired the property in 2015. The hotel was built in 1926 and had been vacant since 2012.

Council members expressed frustration with the lack of progress in renovating the structure, and residents and business owners said the building was unsafe.

RODANTHE — It’s as awesome as it is awful to watch the ocean take down a house, as happened again last week on an eroded beach in Rodanthe.

Once again, the ocean’s power was pumped up by a storm, this time Hurricane Ernesto churning far offshore, and once again, the stunning image of the otherwise sturdy looking house swaying on its pilings before collapsing into the surf was caught on video and shared with national media.

It’s the seventh house within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore to be taken by the sea over the last four years. But it undoubtably will not be the last.

“I’m so disappointed in what happened,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review Monday. “But I’m not the least bit surprised.”

Related: Cleanup continues after beach house collapses in Rodanthe

Hallac said he received a phone call at about 5:30 p.m. Friday informing him that the unoccupied house at 23214 Corbina Drive, which was teetering in the surf for days, had fallen.

State and federal laws currently seem powerless to prevent houses on eroded beaches from continuing to fall into the ocean and spreading debris for miles over public and private lands. Homeowners cannot collect on their National Flood Insurance Program policy until the house is destroyed, and even then, only up to a maximum of $250,000.

Last year, the National Park Service, through a pilot program, was able to buy out two threatened oceanfront homes that it later demolished, but the grant program is limited.

So for now, homeowners who can’t afford to move their houses from the ocean, or those who don’t have the land to move it to, have few if any options to get it off the beach.

In addition to correspondence from Dare County, the National Park Service had sent letters of concern to the owners on June 5 and again on Aug. 14, Hallac said.

After the collapse, the superintendent said, the owners hired contractor Mike Dunn of W.M. Dunn Construction, LLC, of Powells Point, who has handled numerous cleanup operations on seashore property. Even though the contractors were limited by the heavy surf conditions from doing the heaviest work, they began gathering large pieces on Saturday and making piles on the beach.

“We appreciate that the owners have moved quickly to begin cleanup,” Hallac said.

Typically, the longshore current carries everything to the south, but in this instance the hurricane swell was moving to the north, Hallac said. By Sunday, the chunks of wood and nails, siding, insulation, PVC piping and other construction debris had traveled about 11 miles to near the N.C. Highway 12 Canal Zone. The majority of debris washed up by the north entrance to the new Rodanthe Bridge.

Beaches are closed from the northern boundary of Rodanthe to the northern end of the Rodanthe Bridge, or “jug handle bridge.” The park service and officials at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge are also warning swimmers and beachgoers to avoid the beaches and stay out of the water around all areas of the beaches and surf in Rodanthe.

Purchased in 2019

According to Dare County records, the 1,516-square-foot house, which had four bedrooms and two bathrooms, was built in 1973. It was purchased in 2019 for $339,000 by David M. Kern and Teresa T. Kern of Hershey, Pennsylvania. The deed lists the lot at the time as 10,018 square feet.

Coincidentally, Hallac had displayed the rapid rate of erosion on the section of beach in front of the Corbina Drive house as part of a broader, more general presentation about the national seashore on Aug. 12 in Buxton.

In a photo dated July 30 included in the presentation, the house was shown up against a dune, with all its pilings in dry sand and numerous feet of beach between it and the ocean. But in another photo taken Aug. 12, the pilings were in the surf, the dune was gone and the house was listing toward the ocean.

“You can see how dramatic the change was,” Hallac told Coastal Review, referring to the photo comparison. “And just a few days later it collapsed.”

Five other houses in the area of GA Kohler Drive in Rodanthe are also now sometimes standing in surf, even at low tide, he said. Some have various damages, including pilings that sway back and forth, and broken pools, beach accesses, decks and stairs.

Dare County Planning Department Director Noah Gilliam said that two septic systems in Rodanthe and one in Buxton were at least partially compromised as a result of Ernesto. Also, he said, about 23 structures had minor damage from the storm. In addition, there were about a dozen houses that had previously been characterized as threatened oceanfront structures.

Gilliam said that ocean water sitting, or even surging, under a house is not in and of itself a rationale to suspend occupancy certificates — properties are decertified only if aspects of damage is covered in the North Carolina building code, such as nonfunctional septic systems, compromised electrical systems, and lack of egress and ingress.

The Corbina Drive house, he said, was decertified Aug. 8. The house was also decertified on April 1 after showing signs of structural failures of some pilings, stairs and the septic. The house was recertified July 16, he said.

Gilliam said that the owners had another lot across the road and he believed they had been investigating moving their house there at the time it collapsed. Although he has no details, Gilliam said he knows from permits for other houses that were moved that it is expensive to move a house even to the other side of a lot. Moving it across a road requires additional permits.

A larger house that was moved about 100 feet back from the ocean on the same lot, for instance, was estimated in its permit to cost about $350,000 to move, he said.

The owner of the house at 23214 Corbina Drive requested that his name not be used but told Coastal Review that marine engineers who were consulted before the house was purchased said it would be fine for a while, and the other lot was purchased as a contingency for later years.

“We really weren’t aware (then) of the erosion rate,” the owner said, adding that the real estate agent did not raise any concerns about the issue.

Although the house was damaged earlier this year, he was caught off guard with how fast the beach disappeared this month.

“This was just way unexpected,” he said.

Although the house is gone, he said he appreciated the help and kindness of the people of Rodanthe.

“It’s a beautiful community,” he said. “We enjoyed our time there — we enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, the amount of beach erosion is far more than we ever considered.

“We’re heartbroken at the loss of our home,” he said.

Land once eyed for major development proposals on the riverfront across from downtown Wilmington should be conserved, New Hanover County commissioners agreed earlier this week.

Following a public hearing Monday afternoon, the board approved a motion to continue the hearing and allow staff to draft a revised amendment to the county’s 2016 comprehensive land use plan to create a new conservation “placetype” specifically for the western bank at the confluence of the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear rivers. “Placetype” is a planning term used to describe the mix of compatible uses within an area.

A conservation placetype is intended to protect significant natural areas by minimizing land disturbance.

The designation would articulate “our vision this area be conserved in its current state,” Commissioner Rob Zapple said as he made the motion, one that also includes adding a provision in the proposed revised amendment that the county will not agree to extend water and sewer utilities to the area.

Commissioners also agreed to direct county staff to search for state, federal and nonprofit funding and grants to help pay for the cleanup of brownfields and restore and preserve wetlands and estuaries on the western bank. That includes seeking out funding for the county to buy private properties along the river bank.

“What I’m in favor of is finding resources to purchase the property and compensate them justly,” Commissioner Jonathan Barfield Jr. said. “I’m hoping we can tap into some of the federal dollars that’s come down to our state and hopefully those property owners would be amenable to selling the property to the county and then, once we own it, then we could deem it as conservation land.”

Barfield was referring to the federal Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, which is disbursing nearly $5 billion to states, local governments, tribes and territories to reduce carbon emissions and boost climate change resiliency efforts.

The Atlantic Conservation Coalition, which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and The Nature Conservancy, has been tapped to receive $421 million from the program to work in conjunction with nonprofit organizations for conservation and restoration projects.

The commissioners’ unanimous vote was met with applause from people who are among what has become an overwhelmingly unified force in opposition to development on the western bank, a movement that began a few years ago when the county was presented with development proposals for a riverfront multistory hotel and a pair of luxury condominium towers.

Opponents have raised a host of concerns about development on the river bank, where flooding is exacerbated by the rising sea, raising concerns about safety, potential economic impacts and the effects of stormwater runoff on surrounding properties, including the National Historic Landmark USS North Carolina.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, maps indicate that by 2050, between 75% and 80% of land along the western bank will be anywhere from 6 inches to several feet underwater, Zapple said.

“Everywhere you look on there in developing the western bank it is problematic and, in my opinion, it’s not a good idea,” he said.

Almost all of those who submitted the nearly 3,000 public comments to the county earlier this summer agreed.

New Hanover County Manager Chris Coudriet made clear that the commissioners’ decision on Monday does not change the current zoning of the land, which is I-2 Industrial District, one that allows minor industrial uses and uses on a more extensive scale. It does not allow residential development.

“And so, if a development were to proceed that is consistent with the existing zoning … those are projects that if they can meet the technical standards of the ordinance, in fact can go vertical,” he said. “So, this has been a discussion around what the vision should be, not exactly what the zoning on the ground is and so there is, by right, zoning, largely I-2, on that side of the river.”

Wilmington resident Logan Secord, the first of several who spoke at the public hearing, said the county cannot allow the current zoning to be reflected in the comprehensive land use plan.

“We must find a way to protect this land within the authority given to us since conservation, notwithstanding any resources available to us, to see what we can do to protect us,” he said. “We cannot have on the record messages to developers to say yeah, you can put a five-story building there that’s going to be underwater, you can build residences there, you can pay for the initial expansion of utilities and resources and then we foot the bill. This amendment to the comprehensive plan moves us in that direction. It is a step and one that should be of many.”

Isabelle Shepherd, representing the Historic Wilmington Foundation and speaking on behalf of a number of organizations, including Cape Fear River Watch, Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, League of Women Voters of the Lower Cape Fear, Cape Fear Historical Society, North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, said those groups agree all western bank parcels should be in the conservation placetype.

This “best preserves the historical integrity, cultural significance and natural environment of the area compared to creating a low intensity riverfront placetype as proposed,” she said.

Shepherd rattled off a list of considerations commissioners should take into account: Parcels on the western bank are part of a dynamic compound floodplain subjected to high tides, river flooding, and storm surge; the county’s unified development ordinance mandates development should not be risked in hazardous floodplains; development in flood-prone areas can lead to tax increases for county residents; developing the area would threaten historic and culturally significant lands; and that the land on the western bank is home to diverse ecosystems.

“The conservation development scenario would protect these critical habitats from the detrimental effects of urban development, such as pollution, habitat fragmentation and increased flooding,” she said. “Maintaining these natural assets ensures the sustainability of the local environment and its ability to provide essential ecological services. Our coalition understands the desire for development and that there are property rights concerns. We believe the hazardous condition of the area argues against the mixed use and low intensity development that are outlined as possibilities.”

BEAUFORT – Residents here are outraged that town officials are negotiating behind closed doors a possibly decades-long contract to operate the town-owned docks that many say is already decided in favor of a giant conglomerate with operations already in Beaufort and in coastal South Carolina.

But the number of marina operators available with the needed expertise and financial heft to invest what Beaufort officials say would be $10-15 million in a needed rehabilitation of the town’s “iconic boardwalk” is likely finite. And, town officials say, grant funding could likely only result in about $3 million for the project.

Beaufort Waterfront Enterprises Inc. is the current operator of the Beaufort waterfront marina and has been for 46 years. Haywood Weeks, the corporation’s president, has told the town he no longer wishes to continue operating the docks after Dec. 31 when the current agreement expires.

The town has been planning for this inevitability for at least three years. Beaufort Waterfront Enterprises is a small corporation formed in 1979 with Weeks and Secretary Joseph “Jeb” Breary as the only agents on file with the state. A study committee was appointed in July 2021, but town residents say they’re not getting much information on such a high-profile, potentially environmentally sensitive deal that they worry will change Beaufort but not for the better. The entire waterfront infrastructure, including the boardwalk and fuel storage, are at the end of their useful life, with eyesores and environmental risks, according to the town.

Breary told Coastal Review Tuesday that Beaufort Waterfront Enterprises knows nothing about any negotiations because the town has essentially shut him and Weeks out of the deal, even in an advisory capacity.

“Nobody’s talking to nobody,” Breary said. “All we hear is what we’re hearing from the people who are screaming.”

Numerous townsfolk have told Coastal Review that the little they have been able to glean about the deal in the works, an apparent 50-year contract with a 50-year extension option, is deeply concerning because it has huge potential ramifications for Beaufort’s future.

Some have accused the town’s board of commissioners, which has put out a request for proposals and received responses, of using the cover of confidential “economic development” discussions to skirt public records law and advance their own personal business interests, rather than the town’s best interests. They say the fix is already in for Beaufort to contract with a company called Safe Harbor.

Town officials recently attempted to address those concerns in a detailed press release, saying they were “cognizant of the issues” and “taking into consideration the use of taxpayer dollars.”

The release noted the town’s financial position and the importance of considering “the level of service delivered” by whomever is selected as the contracted operator of the docks.

“Additionally, the character and charm of Beaufort must be preserved while meeting the public’s expectation to ensure the existing vistas of Rachel Carson Reserve. As a functional consideration, the Town must consider the availability of dock space for day boaters, the continuance of existing commercial activities, and the creation of mooring space in the harbor. Each of these issues is being considered by the Board of Commissioners along with the public feedback received throughout the process including the charrette conducted in May of this year. This is not an easy decision.”

But the announcement from the town doesn’t satisfy the Beaufort residents who have contacted Coastal Review in the past two weeks.

“It’s not a conspiracy theory to say downtown Beaufort will be different,” a town resident who wished to remain unnamed told Coastal Review last week.

Safe Harbor

Several Coastal Review readers have shared news reports from South Carolina, where Safe Harbor has operations and has made decisions that didn’t sit well with the folks in coastal towns down there.

Earlier this year, the Beaufort, South Carolina, City Council told Safe Harbor it wasn’t interested in the corporation’s proposed $27 million dock expansion.

“All the council members agreed that they think that expanding the dock will not only obstruct the view of the water that is so important to many who live in the city, but it will change the charm and feel that makes the city of Beaufort special,” reported the Island News of Beaufort, South Carolina, on April 4.

In February, the Hilton Head Island Packet reported that Safe Harbor Marina was “on the verge of beginning construction of what was originally billed as a megayacht marina” at its 317-acre site on Battery Creek in Port Royal, South Carolina. While the definition of a megayacht varies, the Island Packet report defined it as being between 130 and 590 feet in length. Residents here say it’s generally any vessel longer than 200 feet, and that worries them.

Breary, the dockmaster here, said the longest vessel capable of docking at the Beaufort waterfront is about 250 feet, essentially a mini-megayacht, he said. But the constant shoaling and necessary dredging required to keep the entrance channel to Beaufort Harbor clear is enough to likely keep the largest yachts away.

“A 250-foot boat doesn’t need to stop here unless something bad has happened,” Breary said, adding that the channel sometimes shoals to as shallow as 7 to 8 feet.

Breary also noted how Weeks had been instrumental over the years in raising and providing local funding to bring in the Army Corps of Engineers for periodic dredging.

In March, Port Royal took legal action to stop Safe Harbor from using part of the property there for dock manufacturing, allegedly for use at a different Safe Harbor property.

Safe Harbor Marinas was a limited liability company purchased in 2020 by Michigan-based Sun Communities Inc. As part of that roughly $2 billion deal, Sun acquired 99 marinas owned and operated by Safe Harbor and eight marinas Safe Harbor manages on behalf of third parties.

In 2022, Sun purchased Beaufort-based Jarrett Bay Boatworks — the entire 175-acre enchilada: manufacturing, marina, business park and all — for $51 million. Randy Ramsey, founder and then-president of Jarrett Bay Boatworks, has been vice president of operations with Safe Harbor Marinas since February 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Ramsey, who was until recently also chairman of the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors, did not respond to Coastal Review’s request for comment on Beaufort’s pending decision.

Marina expansion worries

Obstructed views of Taylors Creek and the Rachel Carson Reserve, and expansion of the marina here are among the concerns from outspoken residents who have reached out to Coastal Review. But the secrecy is perhaps a chief concern, along with what they say is the town’s handling of contracts in the past.

No one in attendance spoke favorably of the alleged lack of transparency during the public comment portion of the July 22 Beaufort Board of Commissioners’ work session. As seen in the video of the meeting, Beaufort resident Robert Harper said the town has a sorry track record in holding its contractors accountable.

“The history of this town in enforcing its contracts is abysmal,” Harper told the board during his allotted three minutes. “And if you want an example of that I can give you plenty.”

He said the town had not litigated contractual shortcomings or enforced its rules or ordinances in the past. He asked for assurances that residents get to review any finalized contract before it’s executed and that it would be enforced once it’s in effect.

“If you can assure us that you will stand up and you will enforce the agreement that you hammer out, then we’ll feel a lot better about that, but we have no information. It’s all a void. There’s this mysterious black box where all this conversation is going on, but the public has no idea, and what we are afraid of is that you guys will come out one day and say, ‘Well, this is our decision, vote, done,’ and we will have no recourse.”

Harper also reminded the board of its accountability to voters.

“After all, y’all represent us. You’re not there for your own good. You’re there for us. We put you there for that reason so we would like to see what you’re doing on our behalf,” he said.

Others in town have echoed concerns about the lack of transparency or questioned the apparent urgency. They’ve asked, why not temporarily extend the contract with the current operator to allow a more public process? Others have asked, why, if the town cannot afford the needed dock upgrades, were grants and other funding opportunities not pursued more diligently? Still others have said it appeared the board was secretly selling out the town in a way that will drastically change its character.

Resident J.P. Gooch, during the public comment portion of the meeting, said two of three residents he’d spoken with knew nothing of what the board was deciding. He called for a more public process and more examination of public funding options. He said it appeared the commissioners were pressing “the easy button” by bringing in Safe Harbor, a publicly traded corporation.

“I don’t even know if it’s Safe Harbor that you’re talking to because there’s a lack of transparency,” said Gooch, who added that because the firm is publicly traded, “They’re beholden to their stockholders. They’re not interested in what Beaufort has to say.”

Resident Dr. Jud Kenworthy said the board had simply failed to ask the public what it wanted for the waterfront, “a valuable asset,” he said. “I’m a biologist so I look through the lens of biology when I look at things like this, and what I see here is a classic predator-prey relationship, and what we are, the town of Beaufort, what you are as our representatives, you know what the entire community is, it is the prey.”

Mayor Sharon Harker, during the meeting, offered assurances that the board would not approve a contract behind closed doors, which would be counter to open meeting laws. Harker is a board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

“This board would not make any decisions to sign any contract behind closed doors. I don’t even know why we’d even think that,” said Harker during the meeting, referring to the town board. “And yes, it will come to public light, and then yes, you will be able to have your opportunity to talk about it. So, I want you to take that to the streets.”

With that, the mayor then asked for a motion to enter into closed session. But before that happened, Commissioner Bucky Oliver, owner of the Beaufort Hotel, said he was confident that the board was doing right by the town. He said the board was listening and had already considered and was still considering many of the concerns expressed.

“I have to step back and reflect on the fact of where we are in our country and in our times, and we are in uncertain times, and we are anxious, and I am,” Oliver said. “And I’m not speaking about national issues, and I’m not speaking about dock issues. This is something that is right here in the midst of our thing, and our goal is to try to do the best job we can for the town of Beaufort. And I’m comfortable in looking anybody in the face, and I can tell you that I feel that confidence across this commission.”

Study committee recommendations

The town-appointed Harbor & Waterways Master Planning Advisory Committee began its work in summer 2021, “to evaluate needed improvements” to the docks, according to a town news release dated July 22. “After considerable review,” the committee presented its recommendations in September 2022.

“Armed with these recommendations, the Board decided to investigate whether a private market exists for a third-party operator with sufficient capital to invest in and manage the Town’s docks. Consequently, the Town set forth to explore these questions in the context of a long-term lease or in the form of a public-private partnership,” according to the news release.

The recommendations include $9.8 million in necessary improvements to the bulkhead, boardwalk and dock infrastructure and $4.1 million in “desired improvements, such as extending the boardwalk, a mooring field, replacing vessel fueling and storage tanks, creating more aesthetic and pedestrian-friendly features and adding other amenities.

Town officials determined that a private market does exist, but the town was “not financially positioned to invest $10-15 million in the rehabilitation of the waterfront.”

“With this understanding, the town investigated the possibility of financing the improvements through commercial lending as an alternative to a third party,” the town said in the release. “In consultation with First Tryon Advisors, the Town’s financial consultant, it was determined that commercial lending would be very difficult given collateral required for a loan requires the pledge of Town-owned assets other than the waterfront assets themselves. As such, a comprehensive review was conducted to determine what other fixed assets of the Town could be used as collateral. Unfortunately, the fixed assets that have an appreciable value are obligated. As such, they represent encumbrances and therefore cannot be used as collateral for a loan to improve the docks.”

Town officials said they also considered a bond referendum. “This option, if approved by the voters, requires an increase in property tax rates to satisfy the associated debt service. The Board has not expressed an interest in pursuing this alternative as the tax burden for improvements would be distributed to all property owners, and not just those who use and/or enjoy the docks.”

A now-former Onslow County deputy has been arrested in connection with an altercation between residents and a group gathered for a Native American prayer ceremony in Cedar Point, but a group leader says the actions by law enforcement and media in the weeks after perpetuated a racist and biased narrative.

Last week, Carteret County Sheriff’s Office arrested James Gilbert De La O Jr. “for communicating threats, assault on a female and false police report” and was released on a written promise to appear.

“This case is still active and detectives are still in the process of reviewing new evidence and interviewing individuals that were present during the incident. Further charges may be obtained once all the evidence is reviewed and all interviews have taken place,” the Carteret sheriff’s office said in a statement.

De La O was employed at the time of the incident as a deputy for the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office. He has resigned from the position and his last day was July 12, according to Onslow County.

The incident took place June 23 where the Bridge View development had been on pause for several months because the site contains numerous human remains, which were disturbed during construction. Likely from the before European contact, the Office of State Archaeology believes it to be “a highly significant archaeological site.”

After the ceremonial prayer, American Indian women, children and elders “faced intimidation and hate-induced brutalization during an unarmed, peaceful prayer to honor exposed and desecrated American Indian burial grounds at the Bridgeview housing development in Cedar Point,” 7 Directions of Service said Wednesday in a statement. The Indigenous-led environmental justice organization is based on Occaneechi-Saponi homelands in rural North Carolina.

Shortly after the incident, Carteret County released a statement that said the disturbance was between residents and a group from the Chapel Hill area and New York.

“Deputies arrived on scene and discovered a physical altercation had occurred and one of the residents from the Bridgeview community was stabbed in the arm with a small pocket knife, along with sustaining other minor injuries,” the June 25 release continues. “The person responsible for the stabbing fled the scene as deputies were arriving.”

Native American leaders associated with the ceremony have said from the start that the attendees were unarmed, having agreed on the tradition to forbid weapons during the prayer.

Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, cofounder of 7 Directions of Service, said earlier this month during one of a few press conferences that she is “outraged and speaking directly about the racism we are experiencing during and in the wake of the violence we experienced.”

Cavalier-Keck explained on July 3 that there was no protest during the prayer ceremony.

“An attack was made against American Indian women, children, and the elderly without provocation,” she said, adding that the dialogue “from the attackers constitutes ethnic intimidation and a hate crime,” and while those gathered were unarmed — no pocket knives were present and no stabbings occurred — the “attackers were armed and dangerous.”

She said that law enforcement had more than enough evidence to make an arrest, and is “delaying the process after issuing warrants for the victims without any delay, and announced this immediately in a press statement. Those warrants have now been recalled, but no press statement has been issued, which has contributed to a racist and biased narrative being perpetuated across media outlets.”

Members of 7 Directions of Service, 17 Rivers American Indian Movement Chapter of North Carolina and the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, which has claimed the cultural artifacts and ancestral remains discovered at the Cedar Point site, coordinated and attended the June 23 prayer ceremony.

“We celebrate the win of our innocence being declared two weeks too late after the media has already painted a biased and racist imagery of our culture with some imaginary stabbing and knife-carrier and ultimately protecting nonindigenous dignity and culture,” Cavalier-Keck said during a press conference Wednesday about the charges against the former deputy.

“We do not accept this display of justice as it belittles our value and experience. We take it as a current reflection of the status quo and move from this point on for further healing, accountability and a collective understanding that this horror should have never happened in the first place, and it should never happen again,” Cavalier-Keck continued. “I ask you not to forget the real history nor turn a blind eye to all of that continues to happen. We must seek to eliminate the frequent violence that plagues nations, tribal nations, and bridge our divides, but we must also be warriors for the truth, because without truth, there can be no healing.”

Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina Public Relations Officer Rahnàwakęw Donnie McDowell told Coastal Review on Thursday that the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina “continues to support the shift in the media tone and overall charges being placed in the right direction.”

The site on the mainland by the Emerald Isle Bridge began getting attention in recent months because it was associated with House Bill 385. The provision that would have changed the permitting process for environmentally and archaeologically significant lands was removed from the bill on the Senate floor June 26 and was sent back to the House, where it waits in committee.

Both 7 Directions of Service and the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina spoke out against the provision, which could come back up in the General Assembly during the long session expected to begin in January.

Related: Legislature to revisit significant archaeological resources

“From our review of not only UNDRIP (United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples) and our treaties, but also with NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) and several state laws protecting Native American remains, artifacts and sites the Tuscarora Nation reserves the right to be consulted, informed, and provided the opportunity to repatriate the remains of our ancestors and their cultural belongings,” McDowell explained.

“We are reviewing NAGPRA and these state laws in order to better understand how our rights as Tuscaroras are continuing to be violated by the lack of consultation with the TNNC (Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina),” he continued. “Development continues with legislators having the intent to possibly reduce regulations and undermine protections for sites.”

Cavalier-Keck said Wednesday that she was asked why the site in Cedar Point is important.

“A burial site and village are the most important connections to our past, especially here in North Carolina, as we are first-contact tribes, and any tribe that steps up to protect burial sites and incorporates our past into our future is vital, and that is why I’m supporting the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, because they have stepped up to protect this burial site,” she said.

A video of the altercation was shown during the press conference Wednesday.

Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina leaders said in a statement Thursday that the long-awaited video evidence “challenges the preconceived tendencies of non-Native media outlets to report before properly investigating all parties involved and general fact finding” and is one example of the oppression that Indigenous families such as the Tuscarora have experienced while fighting to remain a free, sovereign people since colonial contact.

“The Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina stands strong with our tribal citizens and other Native communities, and we will speak against violence of any kind in favor of our community’s tradition to gather in a peaceful, lawful manner to honor our ancestors,” leaders continued.

Sometimes it’s a puzzle why people don’t ask more questions, such as, “Has the river that’s down your road ever flooded your house, the house I’m thinking of buying?”

The maxim “buyer beware” is wise advice no matter where a house is situated, but it’s good to have rules in place to cover homebuyers’ backs for the things they overlook or wrongly assume.

As of July 1, prospective real estate buyers in North Carolina must now be provided the required North Carolina Real Estate Commission residential disclosure form by the seller that for the first time includes questions related to a property’s flood risk.

The change in the form was requested in a petition for rulemaking filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center in December 2022 on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, the North Carolina Justice Center, MDC Inc., the North Carolina Disaster Recovery and Resiliency School, Robeson County Church and Community Center, and NC Field.

“Most of those are small, local nonprofits that respond to disasters,” Brooks Rainey Pearson, senior attorney with the law center, told Coastal Review in an interview, referring to petitioners. “So we really wanted to give a voice to the people on the ground who deal with the fallout from flooding.”

Pearson said that the Real Estate Commission had quickly granted the petition at the time and agreed to add the questions proposed by petitioners. It was then delayed by mutual agreement, she said, to adjust the law to allow the commission to merely make changes in the form. That would avoid having to go through a lengthy rulemaking process.

“It was a longer journey than it should have been, but not because of any pushback,” she said. “I think everyone understands that homebuyers deserve to know if the property has flooded before.”

Questions about flooding that have been added to the disclosure statement include the following:

• Is the property located in a federal or other designated flood hazard zone?
• Has the property experienced damage due to flooding, water seepage or pooled water attributable to a natural event such as heavy rainfall, coastal storm surge, tidal inundation, or river overflow?
• Is there a current flood insurance policy covering the property?
• Is there a flood or Federal Emergency Management Agency elevation certificate for the property?
• Has (the property owner) ever filed a claim for flood damage to the property with any insurance provider, including the National Flood Insurance Program?

The form also notes that the requirement to obtain flood insurance passes down to all future owners for those properties that have received disaster assistance.

Joel Scata, senior attorney with the NRDC, a national environmental nonprofit organization that is one of the petitioners, said that in the past, the only flood information that had to be disclosed to homebuyers in North Carolina was whether the property was in a floodplain.

“Now with the changes, a buyer is going to have access to much more detailed information,” he told Coastal Review.

According to state law, residential property owners are required to complete the disclosure statement and provide it to a buyer before an offer is made to purchase the property.  New construction or never-occupied properties are exempted. Every question must be answered with “Y,” “N,” “NR” or “NA” for “Yes,” “No,” “No Representation,” and “Not Applicable,” respectively.

Despite stern language in the form about requirements, there is enough gray area to give pause to anyone with insight into human failings.

“An owner is not required to disclose any of the material facts that have a NR option, even if they have knowledge of them,” the statement says. Also: “If an owner selects NR, it could mean that the owner (1) has knowledge of an issue and chooses not to disclose it; or (2) simply does not know.”

The form does warn that failure to disclose hidden defects “may” result in civil liability. It also assures that if an owner selects “No,” it means that the owner is not aware of any problem. But if “the owner knows there is a problem or that the owner’s answer is not correct, the owner may be liable for making an intentional misstatement.”

If an owner selects NA, it means the property does not contain that particular item or feature.

Scata said that he believes that whatever remedies are available for enforcement are strictly civil, and do not include criminal charges in the case of fraud or misrepresentation.

“A buyer could file a civil suit, claim that the seller intentionally misled the buyer, make a fraud claim,” he said. But damages and other penalties would depend on the impact of what wasn’t disclosed, he added.

A buyer should take any “NR” answer as a cue to ask the owner about what they don’t want to disclose, Scata said, adding “it’s a good indication that something is wrong with the property.”

That choice could not be removed from the form unless it was done through a change in the legislation, he said.

“The buyer always has the right to go back and explicitly ask the seller the question,” he said. And don’t just push the question with the buyer, he said, but also go talk to neighbors about the situation with flooding episodes in the neighborhood.

Also, real estate brokers by law have a duty to disclose what they know, or reasonably should know, regardless of the seller’s response. “So if a seller says something like ‘No, there’s never been (flooding) on the property,’” Scata said, “but the Realtor knows that’s not true, there’s a duty on them to disclose. And they can be liable if they are complicit in that fraud.”

In that instance of potential fraud by a broker, the buyer can file a complaint with the Real Estate Commission.

According to an NRDC press release, homes in North Carolina with prior flood losses would be expected to average an annual loss of $1,211, compared to $61 for the average home. In 2021, there were 13,237 homes purchased that were estimated to have been previously flooded. The expected annual flood damage totals for those homes were estimated at about $16 million.

With climate change causing more intense rain and stronger storms, flooding is only going to become more of an issue, Pearson said.

“Before when you only had to disclose if the house was in a floodplain, well, that’s no longer a good indicator of whether your house might flood,” she said. “The best indicator of whether your house might flood is whether it’s flooded before. And so, we think, just for the sake of transparency, people deserve to know that. But they also deserve to know that because — I believe it’s called behavioral economics — when people have more information, they’ll make different and better decisions.”

Now that the mile extending from Southport’s incorporated limits is under Brunswick County’s jurisdiction, there are questions.

In June, the North Carolina General Assembly approved House Bill 911 that removed Southport’s extraterritorial planning jurisdiction, putting that land under Brunswick County’s control effective July 1.

To help residents and property owners in the former Southport ETJ navigate the initial zoning process, county planning staff scheduled an open house for 5:30 p.m. Thursday, July 25, at The Brunswick Center at Southport.

An ETJ is the land usually adjacent to a town’s incorporated limits and is regulated by the town’s zoning and planning rules.

Staff will give the same 30-minute presentation at 5:30 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. A recording of the presentation and materials will be available online after the open house. 

Also during the drop-in open house, residents will be able to offer their input and ideas concerning possible initial zoning for the area.

Planning staff will consider this input when drafting map amendments to the unified development ordinance that will go before the county planning board in August for consideration, the county said.  

Brunswick County Communications Director Meagan Kascsak​​​​ told Coastal Review in an email last week that the county and city continue to work together to identify and transfer impacted projects to the county’s jurisdiction.

“The County and the City will share more information on any directions and next steps with residents and the development community once everything is finalized. Until otherwise directed, all approved projects or projects currently in the application phase within the Southport ETJ area should continue to contact the City of Southport concerning any planning or permitting needs,” she said.

Individuals can contact the county’s planning team at 910-253-2025 or email Jeff Walton at jeff.walton@brunswickcountync.gov.

A contentious provision that would all but eliminate protections for archaeologically significant resources was stripped from an energy and environmental bill at the eleventh-hour last week, just days after an altercation at a site where Native American human remains were found during construction.

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, asked the Senate late Wednesday evening to approve the amendment for House Bill 385, “Various energy/environmental changes,” that removed a section dealing “with all the archaeological situations that we have in North Carolina that have kind of sprung up on us recently.” Sanderson also represents Carteret, Chowan, Dare, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Washington counties.

The bill first stirred up controversy when a provision was introduced June 6 during a Senate committee meeting that targeted the Coastal Area Management Act, which turned 50 this year. Among the changes were to restrict the Division of Coastal Management’s authority when issuing CAMA permits, including the division’s ability to consult other state agencies, such as the Office of State Archaeology.

The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, in a June 10 response after the provision became public, explained that the language was “associated with a subdivision in Carteret County that is currently under construction where extensive Native American human burials and an undisturbed Woodland period (1000 BC – AD 1600) village site have been found.”

The bill’s language was edited after the June 6 meeting. The proposed CAMA overhaul was removed June 19, and then the attempt to simplify the Office of State Archeology’s involvement in development was tweaked during committee meetings June 25 and 26.

Sanderson continued that striking the section would allow more time to work on the language and bring in more stakeholders, to ensure that “this is an adequate bill and a very good bill going forward. We’ll do that in the long session,” he said, referring to the North Carolina General Assembly’s odd-year session that begins in January.

The Senate voted 29-18 to send House Bill 385 back to committee in the lower chamber. The measure still included controversial points, including a proposed terminal groin for Bald Head Island, and it appears stalled for now.

“We appreciate that the Senate paused legislative changes related to the Office of State Archaeology. We will continue to work with legislators as we seek to protect our state’s invaluable archaeological resources,” Cultural Resources Communications Director Schorr Johnson said Thursday.

Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina Public Relations Officer Rahnàwakęw Donnie McDowell told Coastal Review that while Tuscarora Nation considers the removal of the archaeological provisions was “a giant win,” he said that knowing that the issue will return again next session, “continues to drive our concern that developers and their legal allies will use their money and clout to grow their support for completely removing archaeological protections from all sites across the state.”

McDowell expressed his concern that “HB 385 has gained so much attention no one is talking about our tribal reaffirmation bill, HB 970.”

Tuscarora leaders are concerned that the attention to the archaeological provision has undermined the bill that would grant state recognition to the Tuscarora of Eastern North Carolina, add two members of the Tuscarora to the State Commission of Indian Affairs, and make Tuscarora people eligible for federal benefits and services.

House Bill 970 has been stalled in the House appropriations committee since early May.

Sanderson didn’t mention a specific archaeological situation last week during the Senate meeting, but the move to strike the provision came just days after a confrontation at the Bridge View development.

Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, the Occaneechi Saponi and other extended Indigenous relatives, allies and supporters met in Cedar Point, “to peaceably honor the ancestors’ remains unearthed by construction and surveys,” Tuscarora leaders said in a June 24 statement.

Residents of the nearby development proclaimed that the 17 Rivers North Carolina American Indian Movement and Tuscarora participants “should get off the land across the road from the development, which is currently undeveloped,” the statement continues. “Tuscarora Nation members, witnessing this outrageous experience, report that a resident of the Cedar Point development physically assaulted a Native woman and her children.”

The Carteret County Sheriff’s Office issued a statement June 25 saying that when deputies arrived on scene, they discovered that an altercation had occurred and one resident had been stabbed in the arm with a small pocket knife. One suspect had been identified and warrants were obtained. The sheriff’s office said that this is an ongoing investigation and details would be released when appropriate.

Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck, a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation and co-founder of 7 Directions of Service, an Indigenous-led environmental justice and community, explained during a press conference June 26 that she was in Cedar Point for the prayer.

“I am personally traumatized as one of the participants who escaped and naively waited for the others only to be told by legal, political, and spiritual leaders I trust that I could not rely on law enforcement protection in that county and to get my victims to safety. Because we were afraid for our lives, we drove three hours until we arrived safely at a place we trusted and a physician could see and address their physical damages,” said Cavalier-Keck.

Bridge View residents issued a statement June 27 that “As a community, we respect the ongoing archaeological efforts and the preservation of history. We ask that our safety, privacy and property investment, as well as the laws regarding trespassing on private property, receive equal respect from stakeholders and citizens and that these priorities are taken into account in future words and actions because they are at the forefront of our minds,” WRAL reported.

“We are discouraged to see inaccuracies being reported about our neighbors and the beautiful place that we call home. Bridge View residents are largely learning about archaeological finds within our subdivision alongside the general public through the media. We have little to no prior knowledge of what has been unearthed and where, or the future of development within our gates,” the statement continues. “Those questions are best directed to the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology and the residential developer, not the Bridge View residents who have been the subjects of unsolicited attention and aggression and placed in the middle of a debate beyond our control.”

This story is part of a reporting partnership with The Outer Banks Voice.

With Dare County mandated to return $35 million in housing funds to the state, a suit filed last year by its six towns contesting the conditions attached to that money has been withdrawn.

Last October, the six municipalities filed the litigation after a special housing provision inserted into the state budget would have restricted their ability to regulate affordable housing projects funded by the $35 million in state money. Town officials vocally criticized the measure for eroding and encroaching on local authority over development and zoning, the Outer Banks Voice reported.

Related: Dare won’t use state budget provision on workforce housing

Ben Gallop, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, the town of Manteo, told the Voice that on Friday, June 7, the municipalities filed a voluntarily dismissal of that suit, “in recognition that the General Assembly’s recent repeal of the legislation provided the towns with the result sought by the lawsuit.”

The filing of the suit harkens back to one of the most divisive controversies that emerged during efforts to build more workforce housing in the county. It came only weeks after local officials expressed anger and surprise upon learning that the provision restricting town control over the housing regulation had been inserted into the state budget. The $35 million was intended to be used by Coastal Affordable Housing LLC, which was, at the time, one of the county’s two private housing development partners.

Coastal Affordable Housing LLC was formed in 2021 with Jordan Hennessy, an aide to former Sen. Bill Cook, a principal. Hennessey is also one of the newest members of the state Coastal Resources Commission and an officer in the company Dare County contracted to address shoaling in county waterways.

From the outset, Dare County officials insisted they had no knowledge of and no role in inserting that provision and Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, whose district covers part of Dare County, was subsequently identified as involved in inserting that provision. The Dare County commissioners also passed a resolution indicating they would not abide by the provision removing local control over affordable housing regulation.

In April, the Dare Board of Commissioners voted to end the county’s partnership with Coastal Affordable Housing and to seek to return the $35 million in housing money to state coffers.

The county’s Affordable Housing Task Force was hopeful the commissioners could delay returning that money. But a little over a month ago, the legislature passed a measure that removed the provision and also required the return of the $35 million to the state, in effect bringing this chapter of the county’s housing initiative to an end.

Related: CRC member Hennessy threatens to sue Dare candidate

Since 2013 Steve and Sally Gudas have been organizing and hosting a Flat Top Cottage tour in Southern Shores, giving people a chance to see and experience, if for a brief time, an iconic part of Outer Banks architectural history.

This year, that tour was Saturday, and more than 1,000 came out — a record attendance, the Gudases said. It was 1,013 to be exact, compared to 2022, “when we had 722,” Sally Gudas told Coastal Review Wednesday.

Built over a 15-year span beginning in the late 1940s, the houses were simple structures. Designed for a summer vacation, the homes were concrete block construction. There was no foundation really, just a concrete floor on sand. And there was no insulation.

“When, we come in here when it’s cold, it takes one full day to get it warm, including the fireplace. Thank God for that,” Steve Gudas said Sunday, having been too busy to chat during the tour.

The houses were designed by Frank Stick, an artist, real estate developer and, to many, a visionary with a knack for self-promotion. In 1946, Stick had just purchased the 2,600 acres that now comprise Southern Shores, and he had the idea that to sell each lot and home for one flat price.

But to do that, he needed something that was easy to build and used as much locally sourced material as he could get his hands on. The sand came from Outer Banks beaches, until the federal government made that illegal in 1955. The structural beams, the cabinets — any interior wood — were all juniper, which at the time was readily available and the cheapest wood to be had.

Frank Stick also, as his son, David, wrote, “… introduced a completely new cottage style for the Outer Banks … What he came up with was flat-top structures of varying sizes and shapes, using concrete blocks as the primary building material.”

Related: Frank Stick finds success, designs signature Banks cottage

Tours of the homes were held this past weekend and revealed just how varied the flat-top design could be, and how the structures – each uniquely named – evolved over the decades.

Sea Breezes, built in 1956, was originally a duplex, but the common wall was removed some time after it was built, and a sliding pocket wall was put into place. This modification allowed the house to be used as either two, two-bedroom cottages or a single, four-bedroom home.

Pink Perfection, built in 1952, is a rambling four-bedroom Flat Top. Unlike almost all of other Flat Tops, it was neither designed nor built by Frank Stick.

Aside from the obvious design element, there are among the Flat Tops several similarities. Among them, in almost every house, the original juniper beams and trim have been retained. Outside, almost all have wide soffits.

Very few are still in the original owners’ hands. Ashbel Falconer is an exception. The Falconer Cottage his parents purchased in 1955 when he was 4 is situated on a side street, atop a low rise that, at one time, had an unobstructed view of the ocean. Not anymore. Live oaks and other houses block that view now.

“The only thing that was here was sea oats and sand spurs,” Falconer told Coastal Review recently. “It was all sand.”

The tidy homes are a labor of love for the owners, as Falconer noted with a laugh.

“They are maintenance hogs.”

Steve Gudas shares that sentiment. “When you own it, you’re just invested in it,” he said.

Preserving a legacy

Matt Neal, owner of Neal Contracting of Kitty Hawk, has been in love with Flat Tops since his family lived in one when he was a child.

“In the late ’80s, early ’90s, we lived in one for a period of time in Kill Devil Hills, and so it’s always been a childhood memory of mine,” Neal said recently.

He now owns a Flat Top built in the 1950s in Southern Shores, although he describes it as “full-flat roof —  a low, sloped, single shed-style roof.”

His experience in restoring reflected the challenges other owners know from simply maintaining one. “It’s a challenge,” Neal said.

“It was fun in a way,” he said.

“I would take juniper out of the interior closets and use it to refurbish the cabinets. And I had to take the juniper off the wall in the bathroom to update the wiring and then put it back,” Neal explained. “That house had a slab (floor) that had no vapor barrier. We were able to get the old linoleum up, put a vapor barrier on top of the slab (and) put cork flooring down and keep … original doors and hardware. And it still has the original windows.”

The homes are also vanishing. While unclear how many there were originally, some estimate as many as 300, Sally Gudas told Coastal Review that number seems high.

“I don’t think it’s 300,” she said. “I’ve been asked that question. I just really don’t know. But I am working on it.”

She has a reasonable guess as to how many are still standing in Southern Shores.

“I think we’ve identified 25,” she said.

There are attempts to preserve the structures. The town of Southern Shores created a Historic Landmarks Commission that evaluates homes more than 50 years old. If a house meets the criteria, property owners get a reduction in their town property tax.

To date, there have been five Flat Tops added to the program, although additional property owners have submitted applications.

Tax incentives alone, however, are not enough to save the buildings. With property values in the millions along the oceanfront, the economics of preservation may not add up when a property is passed to two or three sibling heirs.

There is increasing concern that the Flat Top legacy will be lost.

Architect Chris Nason of the Kill Devil Hills-based Beacon Architecture and Design is a Southern Shores resident who has for the past seven or eight years been documenting Flat Tops in town.

“It was just a first impulse,” he told Coastal Review. “So we’ve got this moment in time. Let’s just measure it, take pictures.”

Initially Nason wasn’t sure what he would do with his documentation, but since he began the project, it has become a historic record and teaching tool for his interns.

“It was a good learning experience for them. You can learn to take measurements on a small house. It’s a perfect learning experience,” Nason said.

As an architect, Nason would like to see as many of the houses saved as possible, but he acknowledged that it can’t always happen.

“I am both realistic and aspirational about encouraging folks to keep them,” he said. “These things don’t meet any codes. They’re oftentimes too low. They don’t meet the flood zone. There’s all sorts of reasons not to keep them, but that doesn’t mean we don’t try, and where we can’t keep it, it’s great to come back with something that is inspired by what was there,” he said.

To date, Nason has measured and created elevations for 34 homes, many of them no longer exist. He has created a website documenting his work, and is hoping more can be done with it.

“Eventually our goal is to do a book on it and put these plans in a book and do some photography with it. That’s still in the works,” he said.

Neal, in addition to restoring the home he owns, is also working to preserve the legacy and has built three homes based on the Flat Top design.

He characterizes the concept as Usonian, which is a Frank Lloyd Wright term to describe a single-story, flat-roofed home with wide eaves using as many locally sourced building materials as possible.

Building a home for the 21st century meant taking the original concept and bringing it to modern standards and efficiency.

“It’s always astonishing to me what people were willing to accept back then, but they’re not willing to accept it this time,” he said. “But it works. I’s very functional and very utilitarian. It’s a throwback to the quietness in sort of a more out-there living of the Outer Banks.”

Post has been updated.

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

Original post 11:45 a.m. Tuesday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second in a series.

Maybe one North Carolina insurance provider should join the industry trend and advertise: “Hello Beach Plan policyholders! Do you need a new roof? Want to save on your property insurance? How about we help you out with as much as $8,000 toward a much stronger roof that is fortified to withstand storms? And don’t worry — we’re not asking you to pay it back.”

Even with those selling points, the North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or NCIUA, which runs the Beach Plan, has yet to reach the number of property owners who could benefit from the Strengthen Your Roof grant program it offers to its policyholders.

“The question was, how do we incentivize consumers so that they desire a new roof as much as they desire a beautiful countertop?” Gina Hardy, general manager and chief executive officer of N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association and N.C. Joint Underwriting Association, said in an interview.

“We had given credits to policyholders who installed fortified roofs, but in 2016, we started running pilot programs to motivate them to engage in mitigation,” Hardy said.

To be clear, that motivation is money in the form of a grant. To fund the grant program, Hardy said the insurance provider made a business case that the grants would help homeowners build more wind-resistant roofs, which would result in savings on future claims and reinsurance costs.

The North Carolina Joint Underwriting Association administers the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements, or FAIR, Plan is a tax-exempt organization of insurance companies that do property insurance in the state. The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or Beach Plan, is similar but is specifically for providing essential coverage in coastal and beach zones.

At a time when North Carolina’s coastal homeowners are more immediately worried about rising costs of property insurance and its availability than rising seas, insurance providers are looking askance at growing risks from climate change-related impacts and the ballooning costs of disaster claims.

Meanwhile, forecasters are predicting a very active hurricane season in 2024.

Proactive resilience measures such as N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association’s Strengthen Your Roof program, which provides the grants to install the trademarked Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, or IBHS, Fortified Roof are helping to decrease a significant part of that risk.

Data from IBHS, the South Carolina-based research nonprofit that developed the roof, shows that up to 90% of insured catastrophic residential property losses are related to roof failures.

As described by IBHS, Fortified is a voluntary re-roofing program, designed to be stronger in winds, hail and hurricanes based on field research of real houses after storms. Installation of a fortified roof involves removing the existing roof to the decking, sealing the deck, and using stronger nails and nail attachments, and roof mounted vents.

Recent research on the effectiveness of IBHS roofs by N.C. State University’s School of Data Analytics found a reduction of about 35% in reported claims and 23% in the amount of payment in filed claims for hurricanes Matthew in 2016, Florence in 2018, Dorian in 2019, and Isaias in 2020.

When the pilot program first launched, only four houses on the coast out of over 400,000 policyholders had participated in the program by December 2016, Hardy said. Still, it was innovative enough to inspire invitations to both the White House and the World Bank in late 2016.

But Strengthen Your Roof has grown steadily since its underwhelming start. In April 2019, 274 eligible houses had fortified roofs. As of September 2023, the grant program’s completed roofs and applications totaled 5,928.

“This is a great program!” 2023 grant participant Joseph Connolly Ely of New Bern said in feedback provided on the program’s website. “Homeowners get a cash grant, a reduction on their wind and hail insurance premium AND peace of mind from the reduced likelihood that their roof will fail in a hurricane.

“The NCIUA, in turn, has a reduced likelihood that they will have to pay a large claim due to such a roof failure,” he added, “so it really is a win-win program.”

Who is this program for?

Billed as one of the first efforts in the nation to help policyholders in hurricane zones to better protect their homes from the storms, the IBHS program is offered to its eligible policyholders on the Outer Banks and barrier islands.

The grants are available on a first-come, first-served basis until the end of this year, or when all funds are awarded. The program also expanded two years ago to the other 18 coastal counties the Insurance Underwriting Association serves.

Part of the slow response from the public to the program may be confusion about the requirements, which includes having an evaluator ensure qualification for the IBHS designation, and a contractor who is trained to build a fortified roof.

“So, it was definitely an uphill battle trying to get everyone to understand IBHS was doing fantastic science, but we were not getting that science implemented for the benefit of our coastal residents and our policyholders,” Hardy said.

Now known officially as the Coastal Property Insurance Pool, the Beach Plan, also referred to as the market of last resort, was created in 1969 by the North Carolina General Assembly to provide adequate property insurance for homeowners in the state who could not otherwise obtain coverage in the private market.

About 70% of homeowner policies in coastal North Carolina counties are insured for wind and other hazards under the Beach Plan. Separate flood insurance policies, required for mortgaged properties in flood zones, are provided by a Federal Emergency Management Agency program.

What is IBHS?

IBHS, which researches mitigation and resiliency across the country, is funded by insurers and re-insurers. First established in 1977 as the National Committee on Property Insurance, it has since changed its name and expanded its focus numerous times.

In 2010, the IBHS Research Center was created in South Carolina “to advance the scientific understanding of severe weather perils and their interaction with the homes and businesses at full scale,” according to its website, referring to wind, hail, rain and wildfire.

“We study those four primary perils as we conduct that research and we gain understanding of how buildings are interacting and how different systems like the roof, like windows and doors resist flying projectiles . . . how they interact with the wind,” said Fred Malik, managing director of Fortified. “We are charged by our member companies to reduce avoidable losses and financial hardship for their clients and our customers.”

Besides its roofs, IBHS offers Fortified construction techniques to strengthen the overall structure of a house as options for property owners.

In general, the institute claims that Fortified methods reduce emergency management and disaster recovery costs, decrease insurance losses, increase availability and affordability of insurance, and minimize disruptions and uninsured losses to homeowners.

The argument for fortified roofs

Data shows that fortified roofs work better than standard roofs, said Donald Hornstein. He is chair of the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association board of director’s mitigation committee and a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law who, among other subjects, specializes in insurance law, regulatory law and environmental law.

“It’s just a matter of whether or not the relatively modest additional costs of requiring fortified roofs should be adopted,” Hornstein told Coastal Review. “So that’s a straight-up political fight — it’s not an expertise fight.”

Hornstein explained that the insurance provider has spent $50 million of its own funds for the roof program “because we make money.” Estimates show that for every $50 million invested, within 10 years $65 million in avoided claims will be saved, as well as reduced reinsurance costs.

“These fortified roofs are definitely cost effective,” Hornstein said.

That’s why some states, like Alabama, require them, and others pay homeowners the additional cost, which averages about $2,300, to install a fortified roof when they’re re-roofing.

“So basically, if you don’t compel people to do it,” he said, “you bribe them to do it.”

Other states offer grants, and although the North Carolina legislature has provided funds, much of Strengthen Your Roof grant program has been paid for out of the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association surplus fund.

With the average cost of roof replacement at least $12,000 or more, depending on factors such as location and home size, people often put it off until the last minute. But the hope is that by offering policyholders the $8,000 grant, Hornstein said, they will see the advantage of applying for the stronger roof.

Using the fortified program, for instance, could make homeowners property insurance eligible for mitigation credits, according to the state Department of Insurance.

How is it funded?

The General Assembly allocated $7 million to match the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association’s allocation for grants for the expanded program. The 2023 Strengthen Your Roof Program was launched with a $20 million allocation from the insurance provider, which then increased the grant amount from $6,000 to $8,000 for the Outer Banks and Barrier Islands.

Legislators provided only $2 million of the $20 million requested last year for matching funds, but the spell of relatively minor hurricane seasons for North Carolina in recent years has allowed N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association to contribute more to the grant program than it would have if it had been paying high-damage claims for disasters.

Hornstein said that while the insurance provider appreciates the support from the legislature, it knows that the state’s funding — like the insurance provider’s surplus — is not guaranteed indefinitely into the future.

“So, we’re trying to make hay while the sun shines,” he said.

Legislative setbacks

One of the reasons the building method has become distinctive is because its standards go beyond building codes to strengthen structures against destructive winds and other storm damages.

Fortified roofs, in some way, are going in the opposite direction of North Carolina’s current regulatory approach.

A controversial bill, House Bill 488, that became law in North Carolina last year, froze old residential building and energy efficiency codes, and banned inspections of roof sheathing in areas exposed to winds 140 mph or below.

The North Carolina Home Builders Association objected to the upfront costs to meet standards in proposed new building codes, as well as the time builders say it would take for homebuyers to get a return on the investment, Tim Minton, executive vice president of North Carolina Home Builders Association, said in an interview.

Minton said the association went to the legislature and asked to pause implementation of the new proposed codes until 2031, or until a new residential code council is installed in 2025 and can look at, or possibly phase-in, potential updates and changes.

In a couple of years, he said, the costs for items such as insulation may cost less. Also, Minton said, the legislation included inspection for roof sheathing on the coast, where winds are typically highest.

“First and foremost,” Minton explained, “we have not seen any data that shows that houses are blowing down in North Carolina. Second, when you look at damage from a hurricane, the damage is not occurring from wind is actually occurring from water.”

Minton also disputed that the value of government grants related to resilient building and updated building codes outweighed what the association said would be an additional average $20,000 cost per house.

“So, you know, adding additional requirements just to make people feel good is not really a reason to do that,” he said. “Yeah, there’s the balance, and how do you create that balance that’s a reasonable balance? And the policy makers will decide the future in the sense of what happens next.”

One of the main sponsors of HB 488, Rep. Mark Brody, R-Anson, who is a construction contractor, defended the need to create separate code councils.

“The reason is that commercial construction in particular has become so complex, and there’s so many new products, methods, and designs that are coming forth that we felt that they needed their own council because they needed a certain expertise,” he said in an interview. While the councils do its work reviewing codes before the mandated 2031 update, he said, nothing is stopping home owners or contractors from building to stricter standards than the existing codes call for.

Brody also strongly disagreed with estimates from a research lab with the U.S. Department of Energy that estimated that the proposed code updates that HB 488 stopped from going into effect would have added only $4,700 to $6,000 to the average home cost, and that the energy savings would pay off the cost in a few years.

But Brody said that those estimates did not take into account the extra labor and cost of materials to install energy efficiency requirements such as specific insulation. He also said that the homeowner would not see the return on those costs during the life of a 30-year mortgage.

“They’re misleading people,” he said of the Energy Department.

In Malik’s observation over the last 15 years, he said it can take years to incorporate the latest science into building codes, which he called a “consensus process.” For that reason, he said that volunteer programs such as Fortified can help get the word out to homeowners and builders about new construction practices that can influence policy,

“And there are plenty of builders and roofing contractors who like the opportunity to offer to their customers something that goes beyond whatever the current building codes are,” he said.

More hurricane-prone states are responding to the risk with stricter codes. For instance, Alabama’s building codes require new and replacement roofs to be Fortified, and Florida in 2020 adopted a code requirement for sealed roof decks. But sometimes, an epiphany will happen only after a disaster, Malik said.

“People may see the value of resiliency when they’re paying for hotel rooms or see the costs from flood damage to their home,” he said.

“You know, what we’re starting to see is consumers really paying attention and saying that they want to see resilience,” Malik added. “And the more they do that, the more that will be an opportunity for builders to respond to that demand.”

Tell the public about a contract to buy land?

This isn’t business as usual for the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust.

But this time around, the prospective buy is a 150-acre tract of barrier island that has been written about in media outlets across the state and, on occasion, in national publications on and off for years. And it’s going to take some very public fundraising efforts to make the purchase possible.

So, pursuing the pristine, undeveloped expanse of land at the southern tip of Topsail Island affectionally named “The Point” has the Wilmington-based nonprofit established in 1992 breaking precedent.

“Our normal approach is we work privately with the sellers and we go through all our work and then, when it’s all done, we announce a deal. So, this is very different for us,” said Harrison Marks, the trust’s executive director. “This is a tight budget year for the state and we depend on state funds typically for projects. We don’t have a formula (for public fundraising) because this isn’t something we normally do.”

He’s hoping the state will come through on giving at least some money toward the purchase.

The Coastal Land Trust has a little less than a year to seal the deal. It has to close on the land on or before March 31, 2025.

Marks declined to reveal the actual price tag of the land, but said the appraisal is “somewhat more” than the purchase price.

All told, the organization expects to spend about $8 million on various expenses, surveys and title searches, and the land itself.

A little more than a week has passed since the trust announced that it had a contract with the four families who own different chunks of the land.

As of Thursday, more than 100 online donations approaching $50,000 in total had been made, Marks said. Substantial pledges, some in the range of six figures, have also been made.

Roy Costa, founder of the more-recently formed nonprofit, Conserve the Point-Topsail, said his organization is working with the Coastal Land Trust to figure out how to best support the fundraising efforts.

Costa said the contributions Conserve the Point has received have to date covered the organization’s operational costs.

“We really see that the Coastal Land Trust is a good place to do, in particular, major donations,” he said.

Conserve the Point was born out of a grassroots effort to raise public and private funds to buy the land at the south end of Topsail Beach, an opportunity that arose when a young, wealthy couple backed out of plans last November to build a family compound on the land.

Todd Olson, co-founder and CEO of Raleigh-based software company Pendo, and his wife Laura spent months trying to persuade Topsail Beach officials to rezone fewer than 30 acres of the property from C4: Conservation — Inlet Area to conditional use. The change would have allowed about a half dozen homes, a private marina, pool and beach and sound accesses to be built.

The property has steadily accreted over the years as the southern end of the island at New Topsail Inlet has gained sand, making it a favorite spot for island property owners and tourists who enjoy walking its beaches.

The Olsons’ proposal was met with fierce opposition from other area property owners, regular vacationers to the town, and environmentalists.

Thousands signed an online petition urging town officials to reject the rezoning request. People passionate about keeping the land as-is flooded town meetings whenever the request was up for discussion.

Months before pulling the plug on their contract with the property owners, a deal that was contingent upon getting their rezoning request approved, the Olsons signed a letter of intent with the Coastal Land Trust to grant the organization a conservation easement for a minimum of 80% of the land.

Attempts to buy the land, including those by the town to keep it free from development, have yet to pan out. Around 2005, the Coastal Land Trust tried to buy roughly 45 acres of the property, but a deal was not reached at the time.

This time around, supporters of conserving the land are hopeful the signed purchase and sales agreement between the Coastal Land Trust and the property owners will come through and end the threat of development.

“Everybody’s quite excited, including a lot of people in our community,” Costa said. “This is perfect timing, the perfect opportunity. I think there’s a groundswell of support for conservation efforts, particularly here in North Carolina, and so I think with all the conservation efforts that are going on that this is definitely something that can quite easily happen with the help of everybody.”

The Coastal Land Trust is looking to host a meeting in May in Topsail Beach to discuss its plans with town officials and answer questions from the public.

“We just are very grateful that (the property owners) gave us an opportunity to talk with them and I feel fairly confident that they could have done something with other people who had an intent to develop some of the property and, ultimately, think that would have occurred,” Marks said. “They were will to sell us the property at the price that they did because I think they care about seeing the property conserved as well.”

Once the Coastal Land Trust buys the land, it will be transferred to state ownership and managed by the N.C. Division of Coastal Management. That agency said it hopes to partner with the state Wildlife Resources Commission, which would help manage and monitor shorebird nesting areas.

Details about the upcoming public meeting are to be announced on the Coastal Land Trust’s website. Donations may be made online.

First of two parts.

When Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey met last month in Manteo for a brief overview and Q&A with community members worried about property insurance issues, he stressed that his office had limited power over building code changes and insurance company business decisions in North Carolina that have unnerved homeowners.

First of all, he said, billion-dollar losses from storms, wildfires, floods and other disasters are worldwide challenges. But the property insurance industry in the U.S., where population numbers and real estate values are often highest in the highest-risk areas, is approaching its own survival crisis.

“It’s a very hard market right now across the United States,” Causey said. “Companies just don’t want to write homeowners policies.”

Confronted with looming policy price hikes and feeling powerless to stop their insurance companies from pulling out of the state, frustrated homeowners are turning to the government for solutions.

“People say, ‘Why don’t you change the system?’” Causey said, responding to the audience’s questions about future insurance affordability and access. “The only group that can change that system is the legislature.”

Whether Causey, a Republican who is seeking reelection to the post he’s held since 2017, is shifting blame may be debatable, but it is evident from the last legislative session that focus on property insurance viability in the state was not a priority for the North Carolina General Assembly.

Rather than modernizing the state’s 15-year-old residential building codes, a step incentivized by lower property insurance costs, millions in government grants, and more resilient and efficient construction, North Carolina legislators passed a law, House Bill 488, that in much of the state banned inspection of exterior sheathing in structures exposed to winds of 140 mph or less.

The bill also removed authority from the North Carolina Building Code Council, a panel of industry specialists that had been working for months on updating codes, froze the old energy-efficiency standards until 2031 and directed creation in 2025 of a new separate residential council.

While the legislation is certain to deprive the state of available funds for climate resilience, it is also locking homebuyers into new housing that is built to outdated standards and thus more vulnerable to climate hazards. As a result, homebuyers will have increasingly higher utility bills, as well as structures more prone to damage in weather events, ultimately making their home more expensive to own.

“Everybody’s going to be paying quite a bit more for homeowners’ insurance because …  our building codes are hopelessly out of date when it comes to residential construction in some areas,” said Kim Wooten, a member of the Building Code Council and the chair of the council’s ad hoc energy committee. “The other piece of this is that North Carolina is now going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money from the federal government to increase our ability to withstand flooding from flood events, storm events, weather disaster events.”

The bill also allocated about $500,000 for staff members for the new residential council, which had been part of the existing Building Code Council, she said. Wooten, who was on the panel from 2008 to 2013 before rejoining about five years ago, is an engineer.

Anti-regulation sentiment in the legislature as well as persistent climate change skepticism, Wooten said, has contributed to lawmakers’ resistance to updating codes. The North Carolina Home Builders Association, which lobbied for the bill, had said that sheath inspection is unneeded and, along with energy-efficiency updates, would add an average of about $20,000 in costs to a new home.

But in an independent analysis Wooten conducted as part of her role with the energy committee while reaching out to green homebuilders, industry insiders and researchers, said that energy efficiency was consistently one of the five top things homebuyers want in a home — and the costs were “nowhere near” what the homebuilders claim.

“They just pulled a number out of a hat, which is the same number they pulled out of their hat five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Wooten said. “Yeah, it’s always $20,000.”

Zach Amittay, a Southeast advocate for E2, also known as Environmental Entrepreneurs, told Coastal Review that it’s understandable that the homebuilders’ group would want to protect their bottom line, but ultimately, the consumer and the taxpayer will be paying the piper.

“It’s going to become more and more financially untenable for folks to be able to have insurance, and then you’re dealing with more uninsured homes and then what happens after storm damage,” he said.

Less resilient construction often translates to more severe damage to both the interior and exterior, Amittay added. That leaves underinsured property owners unable to afford repairs or replacement of their home.

“That’s also the kind of thing that, in my opinion, the government should be taking steps to try and protect residents from these sort of outcomes,” Amittay said.

On its website, the North Carolina Home Builders Association said that “viable” code changes would have to be supported by data and follow proper processes.

“We work to develop and support cost-effective and affordable building codes, standards, regulations and state legislation in the construction area,” according to the website. “While safety is our priority, proposals also have to be examined for their cost-benefit and practicality.”

Typically, cities and towns in the U.S. base their building codes on recommendations that are updated every three years from the International Code Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

According to a Feb. 28 Swiss Re Institute report, at $97 billion, or 0.38% of gross domestic product, the U.S. suffers the highest economic cost “in absolute terms” from weather events in the world, mostly related to hurricanes. The Swiss Re Group is a leading global provider of reinsurance and insurance.

“The first step towards cutting losses is to reduce the loss potential through adaptation measures,” the report found. “Examples of adaptation actions include enforcing building codes, increasing flood protection, while keeping an eye on settlement in areas prone to natural perils.”

Each dollar invested in new building codes designed for construction that can better withstand storms can save $6 to $10 later, according to the report.

“Ultimately,” the report said, “losses as a share of GDP of each country will depend on future adaptation, loss reduction and prevention.”

Property owners on the Outer Banks and elsewhere on the North Carolina coast were shaken earlier this year by eye-popping proposed rate increases for homeowners insurance, averaging 42% statewide and as high as 99.4% in some coastal counties.

Rates in the state are set by the North Carolina Rate Bureau, which was established as a separate entity to represent insurance companies in the state, and operates independently of the insurance commissioner.

“It’s the largest rate request I’ve ever seen, (since 2017 when he took office) 42% state average, 99.4% in some counties. 25,000 letters and comments, including from associations and county boards, congressional delegations,” said Causey, who has challenged the Rate Bureau. But barring a negotiated agreement, Causey said he expects the rates will be adjudicated in court on Oct. 7.

“I haven’t seen the evidence to justify such a drastic rate increase on North Carolina consumers,” Causey said in a Feb. 6 press release.

Other insurance impacts weren’t as broad, but they can factor into future costs.

In February 2023, Nationwide insurance had notified the state that it would not be renewing 10,525 policies in North Carolina, about half of which were related to hurricane risk, spurring homeowners’ fears of more companies fleeing.

Then, in August, the legislature overturned Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of H.B. 488, allowing the building code bans to go into effect.

Causey’s office had opposed the bill, and he said that his office “weighs in” on insurance company actions in the state such as Nationwide’s decision.

At the same time, a volatile property insurance market can spook real estate investors, and eventually, economic stability.

“It’s not going to be, ‘Can you afford it?’” Tanner Coltrain, agency manager at Farm Bureau Insurance in Swan Quarter, told Causey at the Manteo meeting, referring to insurance availability. “It’ll be, ‘Can you even buy it?’”

There may be some comfort in that North Carolina has what many consider one of the most innovative programs in the nation that encompasses resilience, insurance and consumer incentives and costs in one fell swoop.

The North Carolina Insurance Underwriting Association, or NCIUA, offers grants up to $8,000 for eligible homeowners toward roof replacement with what’s known as a fortified roof through its Strengthen Your Roof pilot program.

Studies have shown that as much as 90% of catastrophic insurance claims from storm damage are related to roof failures, and the NCIUA program has shown the effectiveness of fortifying roof construction.

But despite its proven track record, funds for the program were decreased during the General Assembly’s last session.

“We’re looking for the legislature to put more money into resilience,” Causey said.

A North Topsail Beach couple and their contractor cited for damaging dunes hope to settle the alleged violation through mediation, a process allowed under a new state law.

The town’s zoning board of adjustment on Wednesday night agreed to push an evidentiary hearing on the case back by a month and, in the interim, try and resolve the matter in mediation.

The new law allows mediation “or other forms of alternative dispute resolution” on appeals to local boards of adjustment.

Steve Coggins, a Wilmington-based attorney representing the property owners, requested the mediation, noting that the law stipulates both parties had to agree to mediation in order to proceed.

That triggered a discussion on how the process of mediation should be navigated.

The state statute does not offer guidance as to which local government officials — town staff, members of the board of adjustment, or both — should be involved in mediation.

To avoid a quorum, the town’s attorney advised the board to appoint two of its members to sit through arbitration. North Topsail staff will also take part in the mediation.

The board appointed Chair Hannah McCloud and member Lisa Lee Kozlowski. Town staff, including North Topsail’s attorney Brian Edes, will also be involved in the mediation.

Property owners Philip and Kristen Buckley are appealing a citation they received Feb. 1 that alleges their contractor, Coastland Construction LLC, violated North Topsail Beach’s development ordinance by installing deck pilings within the town’s 5-foot dune buffer zone.

The citation included a $10,000 civil penalty and ordered that the natural area damaged or excavated be restored within one week.

Matthew Davis, the contractor the Buckleys hired to rebuild the two-story rear deck of their oceanfront home at North Permuda Wynd Drive, notified the state that the original layout of the stairs leading from the deck to the ground did not meet the current building code.

To meet the code, Davis said he would have to rotate a newly constructed staircase in a direction that would move the stairs into the frontal dune.

The N.C. Division of Coastal Management exempted the project from a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, minor permit, giving the contractor the greenlight to rotate the staircase so that it would be in compliance with the building code, according to information on the town’s website.

State coastal rules allow the repair of weather-related damage to oceanfront structures as long as the structure remains the same size, in the same location and the cost of the repairs does not exceed more than half of the market value of the existing structure.

State rules stipulate that “any and all necessary authorizations, approvals, or zoning and building permits” must be obtained at the local government level before work may begin on a project.

NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH — The town zoning board of adjustment is set to hold an evidentiary hearing later this month on a case of homeowners and their contractor cited for damaging dunes.

The hearing is to follow quasi-judicial procedures at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 27, at the town hall, 2008 Loggerhead Court, North Topsail Beach.

The meeting is to hear and decide Case No. AA24-000001, an application by Matthew Davis, to appeal Citation 23-00117 dated Feb. 1, issued to owners of 114 North Permuda Wynd Drive, Philip and Kristen Buckley. The town alleges that the Buckleys’ contractor, Coastland Construction LLC, violated a town development ordinance and assessed a penalty to cover the cost of rebuilding damaged dunes.

Those interested in information pertaining to the public hearing should visit the town hall during business hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Second in a series

In January 1972, Earl Slick purchased the Pine Island Hunt Club for $2.75 million.

It was in some ways a steal. The nearly 3,000-acre tract ran from the Atlantic Ocean to the Currituck Sound and included miles of oceanfront, pristine marsh, wooded uplands and interior ponds. A two-story white clapboard lodge straddled a sprawling grass field and freshwater pond built for migrating waterfowl. On blue sky days it was possible to see three miles across the shallow sound to the distant mainland towns of Coinjock and Moyock. Look to the east and the even darker blue ocean limned the sand dunes.

Slick was unsure what to do with the historic property now that he owned it – or if he even wanted to keep it. He wavered between developing it and preserving it. Between building a small arcadia of cottages and leaving the rest alone, a sanctuary.

In 1973, he asked William E. Hollan Jr., who had recently begun working for him, to see if the National Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy or the federal government might be interested in buying the tract. “He thought at the time he could flip it to a conservation entity,” Hollan recalled. “I spent about a year trying to find some type of nonprofit or government entity to acquire Pine Island at cost. … At that time there was no money or no interest.”

Slick didn’t want the Currituck Banks to be swamped by development the way Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head had been in the postwar building boom that transformed the Lower Banks into a vacation resort. Currituck County commissioners shared his concern and asked for Slick’s help as they scrambled to formulate a plan to manage the expected growth. In a controversial move, Slick agreed to restrict traffic through his property unless developers agreed to cluster-style resorts with centralized utilities. But slowing the wave of development was never going to be easy. Developers and speculators had already acquired 6,000 lots on the Currituck Banks, and another 5,000 were listed for sale. It seemed inevitable that a road would eventually be built.

And it was.

Unable to sell the property, Slick tried to develop it. For help, he turned to his first cousins, Joe and Rex Frates, real estate developers from Oklahoma, and their associate Devane Clarke from Dallas, Texas. The out-of-state trio entered into a partnership with Slick to design and market a modest resort. “They sent out a man and he did a lot of work,” Hollan said. “The idea was to build 50 to 100 cottages around the Pine Island Club House. They would leave the rest of the property open. It would have a low-density appearance.”

But the timing couldn’t have been worse. In 1973, the nation slipped into a lengthy recession after OPEC implemented an oil embargo. Real estate projects dried up everywhere and the Frates brothers and Devane Clark found themselves squeezed for cash. The plan for Pine Island stalled as well. The cousins met with Slick and it was decided to end the partnership. “I think they looked at the plan and said this is just not marketable. We’re not going to get our investment back. We would like to gracefully back out,” Hollan recalled.

Slick turned his attention to the southern portion of his Pine Island holdings, known as the South Mile, near the border of Dare County. He had sold a small tract to the Venture Management Group, which included John C. Whitaker Jr., the son of Slick’s Winston-Salem friend, John Whitaker Sr., the CEO of Reynolds Tobacco. The young developers modeled their Sanderling resort – named for the small, puffy sandpipers that skitter along the beaches – after the restrained, Nags Head style cottages of old, advertising Sanderling as “Life the way it was” on the Outer Banks. There were no pools or tennis courts but lots of trails and quiet, natural spaces.

The group developed two sections of Sanderling but then stopped. Once more, Slick faced a dilemma: find someone to continue building or sell and recoup some of his original investment. Hollan said Slick leaned toward selling but that he convinced his boss to allow him to take over the project. They finished six additional sections and in 1986 added an inn with 29 condominium-style rooms. Over time, more condominiums were added, a spa and tennis facility, and two restaurants, one basically a coffee shop, the other for fine dining. A copy of Audubon’s “Birds of America” was placed in the lobby of the inn.

“Mr. Slick wanted it to resemble a hunting lodge,” Hollan said.

~

Earl Slick didn’t run Pine Island like other hunting clubs. There were no memberships, meaning you couldn’t buy your way in. You had to be invited. Slick kept a close group of friends from his Yale days and business dealings. Many were from the Winston-Salem area. But there were also friends from Nova Scotia and a “flying preacher” who likely landed his plane on an airstrip Slick built near the marsh. There was a men’s only trip, trips with wives, a dove-hunting trip in September, trips to fish, and of course opening day of duck hunting season in December – maybe a dozen trips a year, said Hollan.

The guests might hunt for an hour or two, have lunch at Pine Island or The Narrows, play cards (Slick loved to bet and to win), and enjoy a drink before supper. The bar was fully stocked and there was usually a bottle of Aquavit in the freezer. Slick stuck with vodka, gin or light rum, depending on the season and his mood. The upstairs bedrooms were small and spare but comfortable enough. Later, Slick built several cabin-style houses for his wife and family in the upland woods overlooking the fields and marsh. His daughter Phyllis and Paul Mickey Sr., the Steptoe & Johnson attorney, also built cabins nearby.

One of Slick’s favorite guests was Donal O’Brien, a prominent New York City attorney for the Rockefellers and a board member of the Audubon Society. He came every year with his wife Kate. O’Brien was a legendary fundraiser and likely met Slick that way. Slick donated to Audubon and was the recipient of various conservation awards. The duo got along famously. O’Brien was a natural storyteller, discreet, humble, and he could shoot. He quickly saw the value of the Pine Island marshes as a refuge for birds and in March 1977 wrote an impassioned memo to his board following a solitary morning hike.

“There must have been 2,000 birds, mostly Pintails and Canada Geese, but there were others as well – Blacks, Ducks, Mallards and Green-Winged Teal. I was stunned by this spectacle. I know I had never seen so many waterfowl in one place at one time … and in those magical moments of that March sunrise, I knew that this was a property that had to be saved for the ages.”

A year later, in August 1978, Earl Slick agreed to donate half of Pine Island to Audubon and help to endow a fund for the planned sanctuary. As part of the agreement, Slick continued to manage the property for a decade, while also earning a generous tax break, spread over several years. Initially. Audubon agreed to pay Currituck County property taxes on the tract but then reversed itself, fearing the nonprofit was setting a precedent that could affect its other land holdings.

~

A decade later, in 1989, Donal O’Brien approached Slick with a new idea. According to Hollan, O’Brien proposed to Slick that Audubon give back most of the oceanfront it had received as part of the original donation. In return, Slick would give Audubon the remaining marsh he owned. Audubon officials described the deal as a win-win. The marsh held more value for migrating birds; it was a safe place for the birds to rest and feed. Slick, on the other hand, would add prized oceanfront. This at a time ocean property was doubling and tripling in value.   

Slick saw the value of the swap. But Hollan said he was concerned how the trade would look. “He didn’t want to be thought of as a slick (no pun intended) real estate developer.” There had to be a net gain to Audubon, so Slick decided to also give the nonprofit the 1,000 acres of mainland marsh he owned as part of The Narrows Hunting Club. After the trade, Audubon controlled about 3,000-acres of marsh, while Slick owned most of the oceanfront from Sanderling to Pine Island.

Slick, now nearly 70, wanted to move quickly. The market for oceanfront real estate had begun to veer toward larger, more luxurious houses from the more restrained cottages that John Whitaker Jr. built as part of the original Sanderling. Instead of passing second homes across generations, investors saw the bigger homes as money machines — a way to generate both sizable tax breaks and profits by renting them to vacationers for up to $10,000 a week. An investor could pay off his or her mortgage in less than a decade and use the profits to buy another house, and then maybe another. Currituck, once a lonely outpost, was fast becoming a source of vast wealth for developers, investors, and county officials.

Slick owned the land. But Hollan turned to a popular local builder, Bob DeGabrielle, to develop and market Pine Island. In a bio, DeGabrielle writes that he developed and sold over $1 Billion worth of real estate on the Outer Banks. After he retired in the 2000’s, he became one of the early entrepreneurs in the emerging cannabis industry, founding the largest outdoor cannabis farm in North America. In 2001, he sold the farm for $67 million.

“Bob is a force of nature, very enthusiastic, the most efficient person I’ve ever met in my life,” Hollan said. “He started at 5 in the morning … and he carried two Dictaphones with him.” 

DeGabrielle built to the new luxury market – houses with six to 10 bedrooms, HGTV-style kitchens, entertainments centers, and pocket pools fronting the sand dunes. On weekends, it wasn’t uncommon to see a dozen cars parked in driveways. But where the oceanfront narrowed along the South Mile, the long rows of houses appeared crowded together. Not everyone was happy. Stories and letters to the editor appeared in local newspapers. The writers complained that Pine Island changed the aesthetics and economics of the Banks. They weren’t wrong. But it was too late to pine for the old days. The Outer Banks were now driven by wealth and that wasn’t about to change. 

Hollan told me that Slick, who passed away in 2007, at the age of 86, was pleased with the houses. “I think the Audubon thing worked out well,” he said. “I think it was what he wanted to see happen and I helped to bring it to fruition.

“Yeah, those are bigger lots than typical lots, but those are bigger houses,” he continued. “They are what they are. It’s not Sanderling. It is a nice community.”

In June 2022, I arranged to visit the Pine Island sanctuary, just a stone’s toss from the oceanfront mega houses. Robbie Fearn, the manager of the sanctuary the last decade, took me on a tour of the century-old lodge before we picked our way through the nearby woods to a pocket beach where brackish water has crept ever higher and created a ghost forest.

In the distance, a car speeding past the mansions left a contrail of noise but then was gone. At one point, Fearn, medium-built and thoughtful, raised his hands as if addressing the sky. “Isn’t it amazing,” he said, meaning the road, the cars, the mansions, and this startling refuge for thousands of migrating birds. “In the summer all of these cars fly by and I don’t think any of them even know we are here. It’s as if we don’t exist.”       

First of two parts

In 1972, between 50 and 100 people called the Currituck Banks home. The actual number isn’t important. It could have been a little more or even a little less. The point is no one really knew or cared. The miles of scrubby sand dunes, low-lying interior flats, and sprawling brackish marsh was largely empty except for birds and fish, and that was how the natives preferred it. 

That it couldn’t stay unspoiled was more or less a given. Currituck, a poor, centuries-old economy based on agriculture, needed money, and developing its 23 miles of unspoiled oceanfront seemed to be the answer. Developers had already purchased thousands of acres and were busy laying out designs for resorts from Duck to Corolla. The county had a rough plan to manage what was coming but needed time and help to pull it off. It was, in a way, an existential moment. No less than the future of the Currituck Banks, so bright yet also so perilous, stood in the balance.

One night that year, Earl Slick, a multimillionaire developer from Winston-Salem, took a surprising phone call from a Currituck duck hunting guide. Carl P. White knew every inch of the sound, sure. But more than that he was a savvy investor who listened closely to the wealthy industrialists who hunted the Banks and used that knowledge to buy stocks and land. A few years earlier, White had steered Slick to purchase the Narrows Island Club, a 1,000-acre strip of rich mainland marsh south of Poplar Branch Landing. Now, White proposed another deal. The longtime owners of the Pine Island Hunt Club, the Barney family from Hartford, Connecticut, were looking for a buyer. The property included nearly five miles of unblemished marsh and oceanfront stretching from the Dare County border north.

Slick knew the property. He had been a guest at the club and enjoyed shooting there. But he already owned The Narrows and planned to build a larger, more accommodating family lodge there. His answer was no. Still, the idea of owning Pine Island nagged at him and over the course of several days, Slick found himself wavering back and forth. Finally, he asked White to find out how much the Widow Barney wanted.

Slick’s decision would have an outsized impact on the future direction of the Currituck Banks, both dramatically preserving and altering its landscape, reshaping the architecture, even helping to shift the economics from an economy based on second homes to an investment-driven market. Not that many of the visitors teeming onto the Northern Banks would recognize these impacts. Most have never heard of Earl Slick or know his history. And for Slick, who died in 2007 at the age of 86, that would have been just fine.

When asked his profession, Slick jokingly called himself a “dog-trainer.” Yet here was a maverick, instinctual investor who owned airlines, cattle farms, wineries, and television stations, among his many and varied interests. And while Slick rarely sought publicity, he built two of the most talked-about resorts on the Currituck Banks – Sanderling, a rustic, nature-themed community, and the sprawling Pine Island resort, with more than 300 luxury-styled beach mansions. In a way, Earl Slick’s story mirrors the larger, complicated story of the Banks themselves, a mix of breathtaking natural reserves, waterways and maritime forests, interposed with a conveyor belt of ever-larger, more exclusive vacation resorts — a cultural and environmental drift that has been playing out now for decades.

~

Earl Frates Slick was born in 1920 in western Pennsylvania but grew up in Oklahoma City, where his father moved the family to hunt for oil. Tom Baker Slick was a man of the American moment: independent, hard-charging, seemingly tireless. But he was so luckless at first, locals took to calling him “Dry Hole Slick.” That changed in a heartbeat when Tom B. struck oil at the No. 4 Eakin well, producing 10,000 barrels a day. Another well produced a staggering 43,000 barrels a day. Soon, the same locals were calling Tom B. the luckiest wildcatter around — hell, “The King of all wildcatters,” the most famous wildcatter in the world!

Money spilled all around. Millions and millions of dollars. Earl and his older brother, Tom Jr., grew up in wealth and privilege, boarding at Exeter and attending Yale, with a $10,000-a-year living stipend. But life wasn’t always easy. They lost their father to a stroke at the age of 46. The boys were only 14 and 10. Their mother remarried Tom B.’s partner, Charles Urschel, who continued running the oil business. Years later, Tom Jr., considered a brilliantly esoteric student, became obsessed with hunting the Yeti. He, too, died at 46 when a plane he was piloting crashed returning from a Canadian adventure. Those who knew Earl Slick said he was haunted by the deaths and worried that he was destined to die young as well.

After Yale, Slick flew cargo transports in the war and saw the business possibilities of using planes to haul food and cargo from coast to coast. Shortly after being discharged, in December 1945, he learned that the military planned to auction nine surplus Army Curtus Commandos and headed to Washington. According to a short profile in Time Magazine, he walked into the surplus plane division at 1 p.m. and came out 15 minutes later owning the planes. “After that, things really began to move fast,” he told the reporter.

Slick was all of 25. Clearly, he wouldn’t have been able to buy the planes, which cost $247,000, without family money. Yet, like his father, he was relentless, impatient, and endlessly creative. Over the years, he would build Slick Airways into one of the two-largest air transport businesses in the nation, hauling fresh fruit and vegetables in refrigerated cargo planes from California to the East Coast, later contracting to transport military equipment back and forth to Southeast Asia.

While building Slick Airways, Earl was also on the prowl for other business opportunities. In 1948, he sold two cotton ranches to Lloyd Bentsen Sr., father of the future U.S. senator and candidate for vice president. He also bought a 16,000-acre quail-hunting farm, Mossy Dell, in Georgia, where the boyishly handsome six-footer would shoot from the saddle, and invested in a sprawling cattle ranch in southwestern Australia with the television host Art Linkletter and other celebrities. In time, he would expand into commercial real estate development, building one of the first Thruway Shopping Centers in North Carolina, invest in a vineyard, renovate historic buildings, buy stakes in radio and television stations, build nursing homes, fund a Formula 1 racing team, Slick Racers Inc., collect expensive artwork, and exhibit show horses, including Beau Black, a solid black gelding that, according to newspaper stories, “seldom tasted defeat in the show ring.”

“Earl loved the adventure,” recalled Paul Mickey Jr., an attorney and family friend. “I think he kind of liked the life of Ernest Hemingway. I never got the sense he was a deep thinker so much as a resourceful, canny businessman. Whenever I saw him, he was in fatigues. He was a sportsman.” 

In 1952, Earl moved the operations of Slick Airways to Los Angeles while relocating his family to Winston-Salem, a small but prosperous center of textile and tobacco industries. William E. Hollan Jr., a family friend and longtime business colleague, explained that it was probably so Slick could be closer to Washington, D.C., where he and his air transport business were represented by the powerful regulatory law firm, Steptoe & Johnson. “This was before jets. It was propeller-driven planes … and it was a long flight from San Antonio to Washington. Winston-Salem was a lot closer. He could get up and back in a day,” Hollan said.

Slick also liked the close-knit, genteel culture of Winston-Salem. He quickly became friends with CEOs from Hanes textiles, Chatham Manufacturing, Reynolds Tobacco, as well as Paul Mickey Sr., a managing partner at Steptoe & Johnson, who also was from Winston-Salem. Earl and his wife Jane built a retreat at Roaring Gap, a small, exclusive mountain resort where corporate elites from Winston-Salem socialized. There, they fell into a comfortable rhythm among a small group of friends who valued their privacy and privilege.

“There was a lot of money, yes,” said Hollan, who acted as a spokesman for the family for this article, “but it was not showy wealth, like the Yankees up North. Earl admired that. There was a lot of Southern charm. It was much more his style of things.”

Earlier in his career, Slick spoke to the press and even seemed to enjoy it. But as he aged, he became more discreet, even publicity shy. Pictures rarely appeared in the papers and he avoided interviews. His philanthropy, often generous, wasn’t broadcast. When different rumors and stories circulated, he instructed his employees not to respond. A code of behavior was evolving. His approach extended to hunting on the Currituck Banks, which Slick first appears to have visited in 1952 as a guest of Steptoe & Johnson. When he purchased his own club and had guests down, they discovered there were strict rules. Guests never shot before dawn and once they were given a blind, they weren’t allowed to change. They were provided one box of shells – always copper, never lead because lead was poisonous – and when they were gone, that was it. For Slick, hunting was about the experience and the camaraderie, not how many birds a hunter put in his bag.

There is another possible explanation for Slick’s penchant for privacy. In the 1930s, his stepfather Charles Urschel was kidnapped from their Oklahoma City mansion while playing bridge with friends. The kidnappers were led by the infamous George “Machine Gun” Kelly and his wife Kathryn. Urschel was returned home after nine days. But the family was never the same, withdrawing from public life and hiring armed guards to surround their house.

Now, as he debated whether to buy the Pine Island Club, Slick wavered between his roles as a conservationist who loved the outdoors, and as a developer who made millions buying and selling land. How could he balance these seemingly opposing forces? Should he even try? Or should he just walk away from the deal?

Next in the series: The story of Pine Island

Nature-based infrastructure and new understanding of flooding and sea level rise must be considered in designs for all new state construction projects, according to a set of standards the North Carolina Department of Administration released Tuesday.

This includes higher elevation requirements for state construction in coastal areas and other provisions to make state government and university buildings more resilient.

Officials said the new Uniform Floodplain Management Policy updates design and construction requirements for flood-prone areas for the first time in more than 30 years. The policy will increase climate resiliency for public buildings and structures, save taxpayer money, protect public investments and promote nature-based design solutions, officials said.

Nature-based designs are those that incorporate into construction features that mimic processes or effects seen in nature, such as natural hydrology. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says such designs use sustainable planning, design, environmental management and engineering practices that weave natural features or processes into the built environment.

State construction officials said the policy promotes sustainable flood risk-management measures such as green roofs, constructed wetlands, rain gardens, permeable pavement, and vegetated swales. These design features are to help minimize or negate the effects that state-owned buildings have on drainage in surrounding areas.

“This policy makes North Carolina a national leader in protecting state government assets from the threats of climate change,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “Constructing new state-buildings out of harm’s way from sea-level rise and flooding is the smart thing to do and will save taxpayer money for decades to come.”

It was Cooper’s Executive Order No. 266 issued in July 2022 that directed the department’s State Construction Office to update the floodplain policy with stakeholder input. The state departments of Environmental Quality, Transportation, and Emergency Management and the Office of Recovery and Resiliency were consultants and numerous design professionals, academic researchers and nature-based design proponents provided input and expertise.

The new rules apply only to the development of new state government-owned buildings.

Department of Administration officials said the goal was not only to protect state-owned assets and increase flood resiliency, but also to create a policy that could serve as a model for state, local and regional governments.

The new policy features provisions that officials described as “proactive and innovative” and that in some cases exceed National Flood Insurance Program-based regulations.

In addition to increasing elevation requirements for construction in coastal areas to account for increasing storm severity, frequency and anticipated sea level rise, the policy calls for preventing, with narrow exceptions, state-owned construction in what is known as the “100-year” and “500-year” floodplains. The state floodplain management policy had not been updated since 1990 during Gov. James Martin’s administration.

“In the three plus decades since North Carolina’s floodplain policy went into effect, research and real-life events have improved our understanding of floods, flooding, sea level rise, and hydrological best practices,” said Administration Secretary Pamela Cashwell. “In fact, four of North Carolina’s costliest and deadliest storms – Hurricanes Florence, Matthew, Floyd and Fran – have occurred since our flood policy was last updated. It’s imperative that North Carolina establish best practice guidance for smart development that also helps to preserve our environment and resources.”

Groups supporting the move have included the Southern Environmental Law Center, which submitted comments during the public process.

“While we understand that requiring all state construction to integrate nature-based
standards will require some state agencies to build technical expertise and capacity, now is the time for North Carolina to embrace the potential of nature-based solutions for unavoidable construction in floodplains,” the organization said in its comments.

In 1976, Walter Davis purchased 4 miles of oceanfront near Kitty Hawk for $2.1 million. It was not his first foray on the Outer Banks. The colorful oilman turned land speculator had been gobbling up large chunks of the Banks for the better part of a decade, with an eye toward controlling the oceanfront from Kitty Hawk to Corolla. 

Davis, who grew up on a soybean farm near Elizabeth City, worked as a stockboy for $9.50 a week at F.W. Woolworth’s, then built a billion-dollar empire stretching from Texas to New York, wasn’t interested in building beach houses. He saw the sandy tract as an investment and one day hoped to sell it at a hefty profit. After all, he was a speculator and that’s what speculators do. They don’t get rich by betting small. They bet big. Which is what Walter Davis had been doing for decades, sometimes rashly, but almost always without regret.

Still, this latest purchase was different. Southern Shores was an actual development with hundreds of houses and at least that many empty lots waiting to be built. Davis was like a dog chasing a car. Now that he had finally caught the car, he didn’t know what to do. He needed help.

He turned to Charles Hayes Jr., better known as Mickey, a talented young landscape architect who had grown up in Virginia Beach and spent part of his youth frolicking on the Banks. Davis called Hayes to come visit him at an upstate office in Cary. When Hayes arrived, Davis was nowhere to be found. So, he plopped down in a chair to wait. And wait. When Davis finally emerged from an interior office, Mickey Hayes saw that he was wrapped in a spider’s web of telephone wires.

“He had three telephones going at once. It was a Sunday and he had $350,000 bet on pro football games. He was in there managing his bets,” Hayes recalled.

It is unclear if Davis won or lost that day. He bet so much, and so often, it was hard to keep score. It was a different story for Mickey Hayes. Not only did he win a job, Davis gave him “full autonomy” to finish designing and building Southern Shores, today considered one of the more attractive communities on the Outer Banks. Walter Davis’ bet on Southern Shores eventually paid off as well. In 1985, he agreed to sell the development for $6 million – or about three times his original investment.

~

How do you begin to describe someone who in many ways is indescribable?

Walter Royal Davis was a singular, larger-than-life American: self-possessed, enigmatic, impulsive, quick-tempered, yet wildly, even rashly, generous. Booted from several high schools for his indifference to classroom schooling, he nonetheless prized learning and later gave away millions for scholarships and libraries and was invited to sit on the boards of prestigious universities. But his philanthropy wasn’t limited to slapping his name on buildings. Stories abound in Eastern North Carolina of Davis leaving $100 tips for $1 cups of coffee. A rare raconteur who also listened closely, Davis would lean into a waitress and ask about her life and goals. If she dreamed of going to college, Davis would make it happen.

According to a family biography written by North Carolina journalist Ned Cline, Davis once paid to bring the comedian Bill Cosby to a school in Manteo as a reward to the children. By the time he died in 2008, at the age of 88, it is estimated that Davis had given away over $100 million. His generosity included his ex-wives. Davis was married six times to four different women (two, twice). Cline recounts that Davis agreed to settle one divorce for $1 million but insisted that the money be delivered in $1 bills by armored truck. That was also Davis: an unrepentant rogue. But not one you wanted to rub the wrong way.

Davis’s politics veered from Democrat to Republican, depending which party happened to be in office. He gave generously to all, millions by his count, not necessarily expecting anything in return except that the politicians would pick up the telephone when he called, which they did. Walter Davis could make or break careers and legislation. He knew everyone and, if he didn’t know someone, he quickly found a way to befriend him. When he returned to his native North Carolina from the Texas oil fields, he kept a suite at the Radisson Inn in Raleigh Triangle Park, where politicians paraded by for his drinks, advice and money. In the late 1960s, he bought a shabby motel in Kitty Hawk and spruced up one of the rooms to host all-night poker parties. Among his guests were Sen. William J. Fulbright of Arkansas and House Speaker Thomas “Tip” O’Neill. He also knew Henry Kissinger and Dean Rusk, and once socialized with French President Charles de Gaulle, according to his biographical sketch.

When young Marc Basnight was considering a run for the North Carolina Senate in the 1980s, Davis pulled him aside and told him he wasn’t ready. Still, he saw something. Like Davis, Basnight had barely escaped high school yet was preternaturally smart and good around people. Davis bought Basnight a subscription to The Economist magazine and quizzed him weekly while they tooled around Manteo in his Lincoln Town Car. When it appeared Basnight wasn’t keeping up, Davis called him stupid and advised the would-be politician to pick up the pace. Basnight won his election and went on to serve as Senate pro tempore, the second-most important position in North Carolina politics. Visitors to his Raleigh office recalled it being filled with magazines of all stripes — many of which were dogeared or marked-up. Clearly, he had gotten the message. Dumb wasn’t going to cut it.

~

After quitting Woolworth’s, Davis rotated through different jobs, working as a long-haul trucker, office manager and restauranteur. He spent three months in federal prison for failing to pay business taxes, then relocated to Salinas, California, where he met another rebellious entrepreneur, Fred Rumbley, who quickly recognized Davis’s innate business savvy. The pair worked profitably together for a quarter-century. In the 1950s, Rumbley backed Davis on a new venture: hauling oil from wells to refineries in the booming Texas Panhandle. Davis moved to Midland, the hard-driving, hard-drinking center of the oil fields, and began buying tanker trucks and making friends, including the future president, George H.W. Bush. The flamboyant Davis became so popular, bartenders named a drink for him at the Midland Petroleum Club – the “Walter Davis,” straight Seagram’s VO over ice, according to Cline’s biography.

After a number of years, Davis was hauling a half-million barrels of crude a day and making millions for the Rumbley-Davis partnership. In time, he would branch out, adding real estate and manufacturing businesses, and his wealth would grow to preposterous levels. But the Texas Panhandle was brutally hot in summer and Davis decided to split his time at a Nags Head bungalow he bought. In the late ’60s, he began to invest in Outer Banks real estate, picking up a home here and there, the old Sea Ranch Motel, even a fishing pier.

Davis had more stories than a dog. One that stands out is how, one summer day in 1968, he was looking for a bottle of Orange Crush soda on a Kitty Hawk pier. When he couldn’t find one, he complained to the pier manager, who apparently didn’t recognize Davis and told him, “Tough,” and if he didn’t like it, he should buy the pier. Which Davis did, writing a check on the spot for $96,000. A decade later, he sold the pier for $2.5 million – a testament to Davis’s skill, luck, and the soaring real estate values on the Outer Banks.

About this time, Davis was introduced to Armand Hammer, volatile chairman of the board of Occidental Petroleum. The meeting was arranged by North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford and took place at an Outer Banks marina, where Hammer’s yacht docked beside Davis’s prized boat, Gemel 1. Initially, Davis liked Hammer. He was an impulsive gambler, like him. Two years later, he merged his oil business with Occidental. It would prove to be a horrible mistake, Davis would later say. The worst decision he ever made.

In the late ’60s, Davis began to buy large tracts along the pristine Currituck Banks, including 4 miles of oceanfront for $1.2 million from the members of the Currituck Shooting Club. He used Carl P. White, a legendary waterfowl guide and hunt lodge manager who speculated in land on the side, as his proxy. White acquired an option and then sold it back to Davis.

A year later, Davis turned to White again, this time to buy the Pine Island Hunt Club, which had been owned since the 1930s by the Barney family from Connecticut. The tract included roughly 5 miles of gently rolling sand dunes, interior forests and sprawling salt marsh from the Atlantic Ocean to the Currituck Sound. Davis, then a vice president of Occidental, used a company subsidiary to pay for the $2.5 million option on the land. According to legend, when Hammer learned about the deal, he quickly canceled the payment. Not long after, an embittered Davis left Occidental.

With his plans to control the Currituck Banks scuttled, Davis sold the Currituck Shooting Club land to James Johnson and Coastland Realty, which developed the popular Ocean Sands resort. But Davis wasn’t quite done. In 1976, he purchased the 2,700-acre Southern Shores property from David Stick, the local historian and developer, who was having money issues. Davis and Stick had become friends while working together on the initial Coastal Resources Commission Advisory Committee a few years earlier. Stick was divorced and in debt and wanted to devote more time to his writing. According to Mickey Hayes, “Mr. Davis thought a lot of David. He had no interest in the real estate. He wanted to help David and that is what he did.”

Davis left Hayes to finish Southern Shores. Hayes said he worked tirelessly during the day laying out the undeveloped lots, “trying to make the houses fit the land,” and his nights designing houses on the side. One house he designed was for Davis along the northern oceanfront in Southern Shores. Hayes laid it out horizontally, not vertically, like most beach houses today. “It was a huge house and had everything you could put in there,” he said. “It didn’t matter what it cost. Mr. Davis said: `Do what you can do.’ And I did.”

In the early 1970s, the Outer Banks were still rough enough around the edges that it was possible to confuse the rolling sand dunes and pounding surf with the rugged coast of England. At least, that is what Lilias J. Morrison thought the first time she saw Nags Head.

It was sometime around 1970, she thinks. She was cruising along the interstate in a turquoise VW Bug with her good friend, Jennifer Frost. They were on holiday, heading back to New York City, where they were graduate students at Columbia University. It was 4 or 5 in the afternoon. The sun was sinking. Rounding a bend in the road, a sign for the then-modest resort appeared. “It sounded like a place back home in England,” Morrison recalled. “I said to Jennifer, ‘Let’s go see.’”

Morrison had grown up in Lancashire, on the edge of the Lake district of the United Kingdom, earned degrees in theology at Sheffield and Oxford, then spent three years teaching Latin at a girl’s high school in Nairobi, before moving to the United States to continue studies for her doctorate.

She never collected the advanced degree.

The Outer Banks got in the way.  

~

Most of the visitors who crowd onto the Outer Banks probably have never heard of Lilias Morrison, let alone know her remarkable backstory: A theology student who became one of the Outer Banks’s most influential designers — not to mention, the first woman builder of consequence along the Northern Banks. Like one of her mentors, the late Earl Slick, she is proud yet quiet, comfortable yet humble. But don’t ever confuse her with lacking ambition. Morrison helped to design and market Sanderling and Palmer’s Island, two of the more admired developments north of Duck. She later formed her own company, Real Escapes, focusing on environmentally friendly and energy efficient builds, remodels, and sales – or as she likes to say, “houses that blend into the land” instead of overwhelming it. Along the way, there were forays into local politics, a campaign to protect the quaint, village-like nature of Duck, even a drive to fend off big-box stores and keep the skies dark.

Morrison, who describes herself as “over 75” and still has a pleasing lilt in her voice, never wanted to be an ordinary developer. “I became a builder because local builders wouldn’t do anything except beach boxes,” she said “We didn’t want to turn the oceanfront into suburbia by the sea. We placed a great emphasis on preservation and conservation.”

Which isn’t surprising when you learn a bit about Morrison’s past. Growing up in the Lake District in Northwest England, she was surrounded by botanical gardens and historic buildings. “I grew up with these wonderful landscapes. There were living gardens. Land for parks and museums. In the old industrial steel towns, historic factory buildings with abstract strength I admired. All of this had a great influence, you see.”

Morrison had always wanted to travel in Africa and after university got her chance. With a family friend’s help, she landed a job teaching at The Kenya High School for Girls, one of the best schools in the British Commonwealth. “My job other than teaching some biblical stuff to train people to think, I taught Greek and Latin as well. It was high academics with a goal of getting the girls to take the Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams.”

During breaks, Morrison and the other young teachers explored the continent, visiting wildlife parks and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. One of her favorite places was Kampala, the capital of Uganda. “Those days, Kampala was the Athens of Africa, (home to) writers and artists,” she said.

In the mid-1960s, Morrison moved to the United States to continue graduate studies in theology at Union Theological Seminary, affiliated with Columbia University. She landed there amid wrenching cultural shifts and student protests. “We were rebels,” she laughed. “I remember climbing a gate.”

She met Jennifer Frost at Columbia, an older student from Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, who liked to travel and surf. They planned adventures, moved to Germany to learn the language, drove to Atlanta, and then tumbled into Nags Head, where they fell in love with the locals and the coast. “We didn’t have much time. We spent the days walking the beach, swimming, walking the upper ridge of Jockey’s Ridge, which was bigger in those days. We both said we would come back to this wonderful place,” Morrison said. And they did.

They returned the following fall. Then again that spring. The owners of a Nags Head bakery invited them for drinks, recalling how they had moved to the Banks from the Midwest. The idea for a bakery evolved slowly but once it did, it stuck. They opened on Memorial Day and closed on Labor Day, and made just enough to get through their first winter and reopen the following spring. Lilias and Jennifer were enthralled and decided they should do a business, too. But what kind of business? And where?

They wound up in Manteo where they discovered the history of “The Lost Colony” and met a helpful real estate agent named Phil Quidley. They had no money, they explained, but wanted to start a small business. Somehow, Quidley negotiated a modest down payment and they became the owners of the Fort Raleigh Hotel. During season they could count on overnight guests coming to see “The Lost Colony.” They also became agents for Western Union. Lilias used her botanical skills to turn a garden into a local attraction, naming it for Sir Richard Granville, the daring naval commander from Cornwall.

Lilias and Jennifer ran the hotel for two seasons. Like many Bankers they scrambled in the off-season, working as waitresses at the Sea Ranch Motel and studying in their spare time for their real estate licenses. “We weren’t too proud to be waitresses. Our main financial goal was survival, you see,” said Morrison.

By now, it was the mid-1970s. Lilias and Jennifer began to sell houses and lots in Hatteras, Nags Head, and Collington. They eventually found their way north, to the Village of Duck, which wasn’t much more than a few dozen houses, a surf shop, post office, and a grocery store. Still, they saw the potential and wanted a piece of the action.

One day, Jennifer saw an advertisement for a project called Sanderling and, on a hunch, phoned. She soon found herself speaking with John C. Whitaker Jr., a talented young builder with a vision for a quaint, natural community built in the old Nags Head style – no tennis courts, no swimming pools, but lots of nature trails and unpretentious houses meant to be passed from generation to generation.

In 1977, Lilias and Jennifer began working for Whitaker as sales agents and landscape designers. Morrison gives credit to Whitaker for creating one of the more unique resort communities on the Northern Banks. But without Lilias and Jennifer, their boundless energy and creativity, Sanderling may never have thrived. “They turned out to be super salespeople,” said William E. Hollan Jr., who continued developing Sanderling after Whitaker and his partners stepped away in the early 1980s. “I give them 100% of the credit for carrying through on the mission.”

Hollan and Earl Slick, the owner of the property, finished six additional sections of Sanderling and then built the Sanderling Inn. Jennifer left to start a radio station in Duck and take up other real estate ventures. Lilias continued to work closely with Hollan and Slick at Sanderling. Later, when Hollan acquired a small tract of land just north of the Dare County border, Morrison joined him in developing the exclusive gated community known as Palmer’s Island. There was only enough room for a dozen houses – but what houses! They were outsized, New England-style beach homes, with spectacular views of the ocean and the sound.

 “It was zoned for multifamily and could have been condominiums. It would have changed the whole character and Sanderling. And so, we decided to build large summer homes rather like Newport for extended families,” Morrison said. “In a way, Sanderling and Palmer’s Island was more old money and old beach atmosphere. Pine Island was more new money: fortunes from the computer industry and Wall Street. Owners who wanted the latest thing. The character of those houses changed.”

At Palmer’s Island, Morrison designed a house for an executive of General Motors. Another house sold to heirs of the DuPont fortune. “Their goal was to be very peaceful and incognito. They were very cautious of their privacy,” Morrison said.

Around 1993, Morrison moved out of Sanderling and set up a new business, the Real Escapes Group, in a historic building in the center of Duck. Her focus shifted from building to designing and remodeling, with a strong focus on preservation and conservation. Today, she runs her business out of a commercial outlet in Harbinger but lives near the sound in Southern Shores in a house she purchased from David Stick, the late historian, politician, and developer.

Related: Frank Stick: A Maverick Who Helped Shape the Outer Banks

She owns other property but doesn’t think she will develop it. “Let’s face it,” she said, “if you are in real estate … you are interested in acquiring property the way (other) people acquire a good overcoat or a pair of shoes.”

Morrison has now lived on the Outer Banks for a half-century. During that time, she has witnessed incalculable changes yet hasn’t lost the sense of surprise or awe she felt that late afternoon she landed in Nags Head years ago. “As far as I am concerned, the Outer Banks are world class,” she said. “There is still a pristine quality I hope will remain in spite of development.”

More than a dozen longstanding coastal rules now part of a lawsuit between two state-appointed commissions will be temporarily reinstated.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission during a special called meeting Wednesday morning adopted 16 emergency rules that, by being classified “emergency,” will be entered into the state Administrative Code by early January and without public input, a concern raised by at least one member of the commission.

Mary Lucasse, the commission’s legal counsel, and North Carolina Division of Coastal Management staff explained that, without the rules in place, vulnerable coastal cultural resources lose certain protections and the commission is limited in how it can fulfill its legislatively charged duties.

The Coastal Resources Commission adopts rules for the state’s Coastal Area Management Act and the Dredge and Fill Act, and establishes policies for the North Carolina Coastal Management Program.

“What we have is a situation that the Division of Coastal Management cannot rely on those rules to issue permits for development for coasts, for development in the coastal counties and to make enforcement decisions,” Lucasse said. “You can’t comment on federal consistency, or DCM on your behalf, based on these rules so what’s happened is that we have lost rules and the loss of those rules seriously impacts the system’s ability to manage the Coastal Management Program, which is given to the commission by the legislature at your purview.”

The removal of these rules, which have been around for many years, strips protections for coastal lands and waters and is a threat to public safety, she said.

The emergency rules are among 30 rules the Rules Review Commission objected to based predominately on technical wording and kicked back to the Coastal Resources Commission in early October. Shortly after the Rules Review Commission’s decision, the state’s Codifier of Rules Ashley Snyder pulled the rules from the Administrative Code.

Lawsuit seeks rules restoration, resolution

The Coastal Resources Commission and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality responded by filing a lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court in early November.

The Nov. 3 complaint asks the court to resolve the deadlock over legal interpretations between the two commissions and restore the 30 rules.

“DCM receives permit applications almost daily, and the lack of these thirty regulations will immediately cause an impact to any applications relying on these rules,” the lawsuit states.

Lucasse on Wednesday said that she and DEQ officials selected the 30 rules to be placed back on the books as soon as possible based on the division’s use of them on a day-to-day basis.

“These 16 rules are the ones that staff feels there’s public safety reasons that you need to move forward immediately and get these back in the code so they can use them,” she said. “The other 14 will be resolved through the litigation.”

She and Division of Coastal Management Deputy Director Mike Lopazanski specifically pointed out that the emergency rules are needed to continue to protect places of significant cultural and ecological resources, including two places unique to North Carolina – Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Dare County and Permuda Island Reserve in Onslow County.

The Coastal Resources Commission submitted 132 readopted rules for the Rules Review Commission to review.

Lopazanski said that division staff had worked through many of the technical changes the Rules Review Commission requested, but that the rules commission continued to object to 30 of the rules.

The objections hinge on what the rules panel considers to be vague and ambiguous language, a need to clarify procedures and definitions, and references addressing statutory authority, according to Lopazanski.

Objections to rulemaking authority

The Rules Review Commission is a legislature-appointed, 10-member body created by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1986 that could object to, but not veto, proposed rules. A series of amendments made to the North Carolina Administrative Procedure Act in the mid-1990s shifted more power to the commission.

In 2003, rulemaking agencies were granted the right to file for court-issued judgments in cases where the commission vetoed proposed rules.

If the rules commission rejected a rule, the agency that submitted the rule had to request the rule be returned to make changes. That changed on Oct. 3 of this year with the adoption of the state budget. Language in the budget gave the rules commission additional powers, and now it’s essentially challenging the Coastal Resources Commission’s rulemaking authority.

During a special called meeting two days after the state budget went into effect, the Rules Review Commission voted to return the 30 rules to the Coastal Resources Commission. The Rules Review Commission argued that language in the proposed rules did not meet the definition of a “rule” per state statute.

DEQ and the Coastal Resources Commission argue that the rules do meet the definition because “they establish guidelines, objectives, standards and policies” for defined areas of environmental concern, or AECs, as set forth by the General Assembly.

“These rules are not newly adopted and since the 1970s and 1980s have been part of the Code pursuant to the very same statutory authority,” according to the lawsuit.

The structure of the Rules Review Commission has, for years, been subject to lengthy legal debates, and its decisions have been challenged numerous times over the years. Since the turn of the century, both the Environmental Management Commission and North Carolina State Board of Education have sued the Rules Review Commission.

In August 2020, Gov. Roy Cooper filed a lawsuit challenging legislative control of the rules commission. The governor dropped his lawsuit in October 2022.

Public hearings set on ‘stopgap’ rules

The Coastal Resources Commission will consider adopting the 16 rules as “temporary” during its Feb. 22, 2024, meeting. If approved, the temporary rules will be forwarded to the Rules Review Commission for reconsideration.

Coastal Resources Commission member Lauren Salter explained to fellow commission members that the emergency rules are a “stopgap” until the board can push temporary rules through to the Rules Review Commission and that the public is not being shortchanged in being allowed to comment on the rules.

The emergency rules have “been in place for a very long time,” she said. “This is just the most expedient, fastest way to bridge the gap between those things and I’m having trouble understanding the concern with public review since (the rules) did go through a great deal of public review. That’s how we got here.”

Public hearings on the proposed temporary rules will be hosted Jan. 9 and Jan. 10 in Onslow and Dare counties and in Morehead City.

Once the emergency rules are codified, they may be in place for up to 60 days.

TOPSAIL BEACH – After more than a year of emotionally charged meetings, negotiations and renegotiations, a Raleigh couple has pulled the plug on their plans to build a family compound on the southern tip of Topsail Island.

Software entrepreneur Todd Olson and his wife Laura informed Topsail Beach officials Monday that they were withdrawing their application seeking to conditionally rezone about a third of the southernmost end of town.

Todd Olson confirmed in an email to Coastal Review Online Wednesday that he and his wife no longer intend to buy the undeveloped property.

During a short meeting Wednesday morning, the town planning board accepted the Olson’s withdrawal.

The couple in a statement to Coastal Review said they “hope the best” for the property, which has long been referred to as “The Point,” and explained their decision to withdraw their application.

“Despite our repeated requests for time to discuss the details of our rezoning request and come up with solutions together, the Commissioners refused to meet with us one-on-one and routinely passed us off to the Town’s staff and external planning consultant,” the statement reads. “Meanwhile, we understand the Commissioners directly conversed with members of the community who opposed our plans. This one-sided behavior has let to confusion and an unending set of proposed conditions.”

The Olsons also said town commissioners had sent mixed messages, asking the couple and their representatives to quickly respond to complicated requests, “while also regularly reminding us of the generational nature of those decisions.”

“For example, suggesting a two-week deadline to determine the 50-year impact of our plan on the surrounding wetlands was unrealistic,” the statement reads. “While the intent of conditional zoning is to provide guardrails for development, we often felt pulled between making these decisions quickly and alone or ceding full control to a group of elected officials. Neither of these options is good for the Town.”

The Olsons had been under contract for more than two years to buy the land, a deal that depended on whether the town would approve a conditional rezoning request for fewer than 30 acres from conservation to conditional use.

That request was denied earlier this year by the planning board.

Laura Olson and representatives for the family last met with Topsail Beach commissioners Nov. 7 in a special-called meeting to discuss a host of conditions in which the Olsons and town could agree before commissioners cast a final vote on the rezoning request.

Commissioners warned then that if the couple did not keep in writing an agreement to permanently conserve about 80% of the property, the board would not likely approve the rezoning request.

Earlier this year, the Olsons signed a letter of intent with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to grant the organization a conservation easement for a minimum of 80% of the property. Citing “some potential tax implications,” Laura Olson informed commissioners at the Nov. 7 meeting that the couple wanted to remove any written agreement with the Coastal Land Trust from the list of proposed conditions.

Throughout the process, the Olsons said they wanted to preserve much of the property.

Their decision to withdraw the rezoning application means the undeveloped south end of Topsail Island could once again be up for grabs.

The property has steadily accreted over the years as the southern end of the island at New Topsail Inlet has gained sand, making it a favorite for town property owners and tourists who enjoy walking its beaches.

The property has been owned by members of the McLeod family for decades. The family has allowed the public to freely access the land during that time and leases a parking lot on the land to the town.

The property has been routinely on and off the market for the past two or so decades.

Attempts to buy the land, including those by the town to keep it free from development, have yet to pan out.

People who’ve spoken at numerous meetings about the Olson’s plans for the property – seven houses, a pool and pool house, decking, beach and sound accesses and a small, private marina – overwhelmingly opposed building of any kind on the property.

Thousands have signed an online petition opposing the Olson’s rezoning request and, earlier this year, a grassroots effort calling itself Conserve The Point – Topsail officially became a nonprofit organization.

Conserve The Point – Topsail “stands ready” to enter into a public-private partnership to buy the property and place it into permanent conservation, according to a release.

“It’s an exciting opportunity to conserve one of the last undeveloped tracts of land on a North Carolina coastal barrier island and protect the wildlife habitat for the endangered birds and species who all this island their home,” Conserve The Point – Topsail Board of Directors President Roy Costa said in a statement. “We will continue to keep you posted as the plans unfold to conserve The Point forever.”

Costa said in a telephone interview that the organization has not yet engaged with any particular group to pursue buying the property, pending the outcome of the Olson’s request.

The property is within a state-designated Inlet Hazard Area, one in which shorelines face a higher threat of erosion and flooding at inlets that can suddenly and dramatically shift. The land is also in a Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS, zone.

Congress created the system in the early 1980s to discourage building on relatively undeveloped barrier islands by barring federal funding and financial assistance in hurricane-prone, biologically rich areas.

The property is also designated critical habitat to threatened and endangered piping plovers and loggerhead sea turtles.

The aspiring owners of nearly 150 acres of pristine beach and soundfront property at the southern tip of Topsail Island need to keep in writing an assurance that much of the land will be forever conserved, Topsail Beach commissioners warned.

During a nearly three-hour-long special called meeting Tuesday morning, some town commissioners suggested that Todd and Laura Olson’s rezoning request would not stand a chance if the couple did not agree in writing to place about 80% of the land under permanent conservation.

“Whatever the reason, if this condition is not there, I think this is dead,” Commissioner John Gunter said.

Last week, the Olsons submitted some proposed revisions to the town’s draft conditions, to which the Olsons would have to agree before commissioners vote on the couple’s request to rezone roughly a quarter of the property from its current conservation zone.

Related: Topsail Beach board wants more study before rezoning

Among proposed revisions to those draft conditions, the Olsons would agree not to develop or disturb land outside of the proposed conditional zoning boundaries, rather than establish a permanent conservation easement, before they could receive a building permit.

The Olsons cited “some potential tax implications” as the reason for the proposed revision to the draft conditions. The couple has signed a letter of intent with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to grant the organization a conservation easement for a minimum of 80% of the property, which would forever prevent development on more than 115 acres.

Commissioner Morton Blanchard said the tax implications were not the town’s problem.

“It’s hard to go forward with no guarantees,” he said. “I’ve got to vote on what’s best for this town and I can’t vote on faith.”

Blanchard said he was hoping that land outside of the proposed building footprint would be placed under a permanent conservation easement. If that doesn’t happen, “I think it will be a non-starter here,” he said.

Before a presentation was made updating the board on various studies on the property, a handful of Topsail Beach property owners spoke in favor of the proposed rezoning request, saying that the proposal to permanently conserve much of the land was the town’s best shot at ensuring against high-density development.

Still, most of the feedback commissioners received at the meeting, including written comments, were from those who oppose the rezoning request.

The spit at the south end of the island is known as The Point, privately owned land where undeveloped shores are popular to property owners and tourists alike.

The Olsons are under contract to buy the site pending the outcome of their rezoning request.

They want to build seven houses, a pool and pool house, decking for beach and sound accesses, and a small, private marina on the land.

Under the proposed conditions, the Olsons would not build beyond what would be included in a master development plan approved by the town. That would include any additional driving or parking surfaces, docks, above and below-ground storage tanks, and accessory structures.

“I understand taxes, but that’s not our responsibility,” Mayor Steve Smith said. “That was the real benefit this community saw for moving forward with this type of proposal.”

Olson representatives said they would submit additional information to the town by Nov. 17.

Frank Stick was in search of two things when he arrived on the Outer Banks in the 1920s: adventure and money. He found enough adventure to fill a lifetime but like many Bankers on the isolated barrier islands, he scrambled to pay the bills. Once one of the largest landowners, with property from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras, the artist turned developer lost many of his holdings during the Great Depression. Stick eventually recovered and developed the much-admired Southern Shores community with his son David and other partners. A complex man of shifting interests and unwavering opinions, Stick was both a conservationist who played an instrumental role in the formation of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and an avid land speculator who wrote of turning the Banks into a playground for tourists.

This is his story.

Chapter 5: Southern Shores

Read the entire series

Frank Stick was now in his sixties and approaching retirement. He had managed to right the family’s finances by selling his remaining real estate and keeping to his steady work habits. There was even enough money for he and Maud to spend winters in Florida, first at San Carlos Bay, near Fort Myers Beach, and later in Key West. Still, Frank worried about building a nest egg and, as always, kept an eye out for opportunities.

One surfaced in 1945 when Walter J. Townsend, a shipping magnate from Bayonne, New Jersey, considered selling 2,700 acres he owned just north of Kitty Hawk — his only investment on the Outer Banks. The tract ran from ocean to sound and included four miles of pristine oceanfront and even more shoreline fronting Currituck Sound and Ginguite Bay. Long ago, a sand wave had washed over the flat beach and sculpted a series of terraces and gradually rising slopes that elevated the profile from beach to sound.

At $30,000, the price was considered extraordinary and was well beyond Frank’s reach. But he believed the area was promising; developers were busy filling up Nags Head and Kill Devil Hills and would eventually look north for more land. He approached friends for help and offered Townsend an option on the four miles. Townsend’s secretary officially accepted. But then Townsend began having second thoughts. Sensing that his land was worth even more, he declined to go through with the sale and failed to respond to letters Frank wrote.

Frank turned to his son-in-law, attorney John McMullan of Elizabeth City, who sued Townsend for failing to exercise the contract. McMullan won at trial and then on appeal. Frank rewarded his son-in-law with a one-third interest in the property. McMullan suggested that his law partner, N. Elton Aydlett, and Aydlett’s brother, Cyrus, a successful realtor/investor, cover the $30,000 option in return for another one-third interest. A partnership was born, with Frank in charge of managing the design and construction.

The first order of business, choosing a name, proved problematic. Frank and his partners bounced around possibilities, finally settling on Southern Shores. Frank had hoped for something a little artier that captured his plan to build a communal kind of resort that appealed to artists, writers and vacationers of all economic stripes, not only wealthy outsiders. The name was also geographically confusing. The four-mile tract near the Wright Brothers Memorial Bridge served as a gateway to the northern beaches of Duck and Corolla, and wasn’t part of the Lower Banks. An advertisement even stressed its location “At the north end of the beach – A fully restricted ocean front development for discriminating people.”

Frank got busy laying out the streets along the oceanfront, with a paved road, Ocean Boulevard, running north to south and side streets positioned east to west. Lots were set in 50-foot increments. However, customers were required to buy two lots at a time, or 100 feet of frontage. Instead of a la carte pricing, Frank introduced fixed-pricing that included the lot, site preparation, and house. Using his skills as an artist, he gave each potential owner a handsome sketch of his house.

One of the earliest buyers was Huntington Cairns, a polymath from Washington, D.C., who had gone directly to law school after high school, skipping college, and spent his spare time studying Plato and Shakespeare. In addition to his work as lawyer, Cairns wrote books across such diverse subjects as philosophy and journalism, including a biography of his old friend, Baltimore writer, H.L. Mencken. For years, he served as secretary and general counsel for the National Gallery of Art, and as an unpaid adviser to the Treasury Department, judging whether Post-War art arriving in America should be considered pornographic. Unsurprisingly, Huntington and Frank hit it off and Frank built Cairns a cottage next door to an oceanfront house Frank built for himself. The Sticks and Cairns often shared dinners with an array of famous and not-so-famous writers and artist friends of Huntington. Cairns called Southern Shores his second Eden and later retired there.

Building affordable housing during the war years had influenced Frank’s thoughts on style. So, too, the simple low-slung bungalows that Frank saw in Florida, At Southern Shores, Frank merged these influences in a signature new Outer Banks bungalow known as a Flat Top – a single-story, whitewashed block bungalow with a flat roof. The design was driven in part by a shortage of building supplies following the war. Many of the usual supplies, wood and steel, weren’t available. Frank and his Hatteras buddy, Curtis Gray, formed a company, Kitty Hawk Concrete Products, and used sand they carted off the beach (illegal today) to manufacture concrete blocks.

According to the architecture writer Marimar McNaughton, “A Flat Top house took roughly four months to build and cost one-third less than a traditional home.” Nevertheless the Southern Shores partners sold only one house in 1947 and Frank was forced to take on the role of salesman, reaching out to a long list of friends and associates. He also turned to his son David, then working in New York City as an editor, to come help.

For the next few years, the Sticks concentrated on the oceanfront, slowly filling in scores of lots and developing new sections. Meanwhile, the land along the sound and scruffy upper terraces remained untouched because it was thought to be worthless. It would be David who saw the value of extending Southern Shores, laying out lots and roads, digging lagoons, adding a marina, golf course and freshwater lake, turning Southern Shores into a destination for retirees and year-round Bankers, as well as an oceanfront resort.

But even as the business was beginning to show a profit, the working relationship between Frank and David soured. There were scuffles over responsibilities, salaries, and business philosophies. David resented the way Elton Aydlett seemed to question his every decision, and more than once threatened to quit.

Some of the tension was likely the normal back and forth between fathers and sons. But the disagreements also felt personal at times. Frank could be impatient and controlling and may not have given David enough credit for his good work. “Tact was a trait for which Dad was never noted, nor am I,” David once observed.

One of the issues was that Frank was growing restless once more. Southern Shores was moving along and he wanted more time for himself, for Maud, and for his beloved art. He had begun painting again and wanted to do more than illustrations; he wanted to leave something lasting for his family as his legacy. In the 1950s, Frank also began visiting the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and being Frank Stick, he of course had ideas.

In 1952, Frank formed a new partnership with John McMullan and the Aydlett brothers and purchased 1,600 acres of the old Lameshur Sugar Plantation overlooking Cruz Bay on the island’s south coast. The goal was to develop an exclusive mountainside resort or, alternatively, restore the property and “make a quick and profitable turn-over,” Frank wrote. It never worked out. Money was short and the investors had trouble finding equipment and workers. In 1954, Frank wrote that he had had an epiphany: Instead of building a resort, why not set aside the land as part of a national park, like he had done on the Outer Banks. Frank donated his share of the land and sold the rest at cost for the park. Working with the financier Laurance Rockefeller, who owned property on the north coast, Caneel Bay, and his old friend, Conrad Wirth, of the National Park Service, Frank helped plan the Virgin Islands National Park.

That same year Frank informed his partners that he was retiring. He was 70. While he would continue to give advice to David and help to mediate the growing disagreements between David and Elton Aydlett, Frank used most of his time to travel and paint. He died in 1966, at the age of 82, and was buried in Kill Devil Hills.

After Frank’s death, David continued to develop the soundside at Southern Shores, digging channels to the Currituck Sound and interior ponds to help drain swamp land for building. Planning began for a separate development-within-a-development known as Chicahauk, with canals and open space nestled among the coastal dunes. Sales increased. Nevertheless, David was saddled with debts and “almost on the verge of bankruptcy,” he would later recall. In 1976, he agreed to sell Southern Shores for $2.1 million to Walter Royal Davis, a flamboyant character who had grown up poor near Elizabeth City but gone on to make millions hauling oil in the Texas Panhandle. Davis turned the job over to a talented landscape architect named Charles “Mickey” Hayes Jr. who finished Southern Shores and then designed the exclusive Currituck Club in Corolla.

Frank Stick was in search of two things when he arrived on the Outer Banks in the 1920s: adventure and money. He found enough adventure to fill a lifetime but like many Bankers on the isolated barrier islands, he scrambled to pay the bills. Once one of the largest landowners, with property from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras, the artist turned developer lost many of his holdings during the Great Depression. Stick eventually recovered and developed the much-admired Southern Shores community with his son David and other partners. A complex man of shifting interests and unwavering opinions, Stick was both a conservationist who played an instrumental role in the formation of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and an avid land speculator who wrote of turning the Banks into a playground for tourists.

This is his story.

Chapter Four: Inventing the Seashore

Read the ongoing series

In the 1930s, with the nation in the throes of the Great Depression and any signs of a land boom now a distant memory, Frank Stick shifted tactics and returned to his role as a conservationist.

Writing in the July 21, 1933, edition of The Elizabeth City Independent, Frank outlined a sprawling new vision calling for the government to set aside a large share of the Outer Banks as a park. Entitled: A COASTAL PARK FOR NORTH CAROLINA AND THE NATION, Frank argued that the government had scores of beautiful parks out West – Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, among others – but barely any presence in the East, and nothing along the coast. Why not a park for the Outer Banks? he asked. The low, slim barrier islands included miles of “shining beaches, peaceful sun-kissed sounds, and bountiful wildlife.”

Frank’s cri de coeur took up an entire page of W.O. Saunders’s broadsheet. That by itself should have signaled to readers that Saunders favored the idea. In fact, a decade earlier the editor had called for a state park in Hatteras in his newspaper. Frank Stick’s plan was far more elaborate, taking the readers through the logic for a park, where it might be located, and how it would boost the isolated Banks and its faltering economy.   

Frank began by telling readers that the “opportunity for healthful outdoor recreation and communion with nature” was an indispensable part of America’s progress as a nation — as important as commerce, politics or education. Unfortunately, he continued, speculators had acquired the majority of the nation’s shoreline for private development. With so much land tied up in private hands, ordinary citizens would have dwindling opportunities to experience the serenity and beauty of the seashore.

At first blush, it might seem odd that Stick, one of the largest title holders on the Outer Banks until the Depression, would single out speculators. However, it is worth remembering that Frank never saw himself as a real estate man greedily buying up the oceanfront. In his mind, he was a conservationist striving for an equitable balance between development and nature. Was it true? Not exactly. He landed on the Banks with a plan and needed to make money in real estate after abandoning his art career. Still, his later developments, especially Southern Shores, did achieve some of the balance he sought.

Frank proposed that the government should acquire up to 100 miles – or most of the Banks – via philanthropic gifts, condemnation, and outright purchases. The Outer Banks, he wrote, were “unique among all lands on the earth,” enjoyed a mild year-round climate, and rarely experienced hurricanes. Contrary to popular narratives, he added, meteorological records showed that the Outer Banks were no windier than the New Jersey coast where he had lived for more than a decade. It was a bold claim and likely made to boost his park plan. In private correspondence, Frank often complained about the relentless wind on the Outer Banks. Indeed, only months after writing his proposal, a hurricane struck the Banks, leveling Frank’s pavilion on Kitty Hawk Bay.

At the time, there was only a small section of paved road on the Banks, paralleling the ocean from Kitty Hawk to Whalebone Junction. Frank envisioned constructing a highway the length of the Banks. With his usual confidence, he explained to readers: “This roadway is no fantastic dream; no expansively enthusiastic scheme to attract public or political favor, but a sensible, well thought out project that would prove inestimable economic and esthetic value …”

Frank calculated that a seashore park would attract 50 visitors for every one visitor to an inland mountain, lake or forest. He wasn’t wrong; a seashore park would draw large crowds. But his numbers were wildly exaggerated. In recent years, even with up to 3 million visitors annually, Cape Hatteras National Seashore ranks well behind the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with its nearly 13 million visitors. Indeed, none of the National Park Service’s 10 national seashores crack the top 10 in attendance for its many parks.

Frank ended his proposal by suggesting that a seashore park could be dedicated to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the newly elected president. It was a savvy political move but probably unnecessary. The administration was already looking for projects for its New Deal relief programs and had embraced legislation calling for the development of recreational areas and public parks. Within a year or two, the Work Progress Administration (WPA) and Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) would employ thousands of jobless and homeless Americans, using them to clear and maintain forests, build camps, repair wildlife refuges, and scores of other jobs. The men would provide a ready source of cheap labor for a seashore park.

The idea of a seashore appealed to National Park Service officials, who, like Stick, worried that the nation’s coasts were being bought up by wealthy Americans, shutting out everyone else. “When we look up and down the ocean fronts of America, we find that everywhere they are passing behind the fence of private ownership,” wrote Harold Ickes, Secretary of The Department of Interior, which includes the National Park Service.

The Park Service sent Marion Shuffler, a researcher, to study the possibility of using the Outer Banks as America’s first national seashore. Shuffler reported back that the economy of the Outer Banks was in serious decline “and tied to a way of life that no longer exists.” He then argued that the future of the Banks depended on tourism, tied to a park. A subsequent study identified a dozen possible locations for federal seashores but settled on the Outer Banks as the best choice.

The momentum was now behind Frank’s proposal. All he needed was for the politics to align.

~

Frank Stick didn’t think of himself as a political person. He called himself “a lefty” but that appeared to be a joke. He complained about some of the New Deal programs and criticized government bureaucrats who never acted quickly enough for his mercurial tastes. If anything, his politics veered more Republican than Democratic.

In a strange twist, in 1940, the FBI office in Charlotte opened an investigation of Frank after they received information that “Frank Stick is an individual who is in favor of dictatorships and opposed to the democratic form of government in this country,” records show. Edward Scheidt, the Special Agent in Charge, asked Victor Meekins, the Dare County Sheriff, to investigate. A few days later, Meekins wrote the agent that Frank had originally been a Republican but was now trying to “adjust himself … to Democratic sentiment.” Meekins added that Frank appeared to be loyal to his country but perhaps became confused at times. “With a world gone hay-wire, he probably is perplexed himself, and scatters remarks without discreetly remembering who is listening.” The Bureau dropped its probe.

After being appointed to a state commission established to promote an Outer Banks park, Frank bristled at the slow pace of those working with him and sometimes took matters into his own hands, traveling to Washington and Raleigh to push his proposal. Over the next few years, Frank worked tirelessly on his vision and was a relentless letter-writer to politicians and key government officials, urging them to move more quickly.

In Frank’s mind, the window for a park was limited. Residents of the Outer Banks had responded favorably to his proposal. But Frank knew there were limits to their enthusiasm. Like him, they had a tenuous relationship with the government. They liked when the government built them roads and bridges. But they worried that the park might be a land grab and restrict their ability to move about freely, hunting and fishing. Their concerns – as well as missteps by the government, and the coming war – would delay the seashore for years.

Park Service officials admired Frank’s energy and dedication, especially Conrad L. Wirth, a Washington, D.C.-based administrator who helped to plan the National Seashore and eventually would be named NPS director. Publicly, Wirth praised Frank. But privately he worried that Frank had “ulterior motives” and might be pushing the park to boost the value of his remaining real estate. It was a classic case of supply and demand. If the government controlled large swaths of the Banks, the remaining land in private hands would go up in price. In a letter to Maud, Frank once noted that if the park were approved, it would be good for them and might help to turn around the family’s fortunes. Of course, Frank wouldn’t have been the only one to benefit. In any event, the two ideas, pushing for a large swath of the Outer Banks to be preserved and encouraging a vibrant tourist economy, weren’t mutually exclusive in Frank’s mind.     

Throughout this period, Frank worked closely with Lindsay C. Warren, the congressman from nearby Washington, in Beaufort County, who represented the Outer Banks. Like Stick and others, Warren saw the future of the isolated barrier islands as tied to tourism. Warren was young, 36, ambitious and eager for headlines. In 1937, he introduced legislation in the House to create the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and also played an instrumental role in directing millions of New Deal dollars to Eastern North Carolina and the Banks.

When FDR unveiled the WPA and CCC, Warren saw an opportunity and began lobbying the administration. In May 1935, FDR invited Warren to spend a weekend on his yacht, Potomac, along with Harry Hopkins, the President’s right-hand man on the New Deal. Two weeks later, Warren announced that the WPA was setting aside over $1 million dollars to fight erosion and help “stabilize” the Outer Banks.

Like most barrier islands, which are constantly shifting, the Outer Banks suffered from chronic erosion. The problem was especially acute near the historic Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which was being undermined and was at risk of collapsing into the Atlantic Ocean. Following publication of Frank’s proposal, a cadre of state foresters and geologists visited the Banks to study the issue. They concluded that the Outer Banks (let alone a park) would not survive without human intervention. They proposed a towering artificial sand dune to prevent sand from washing across the islands in storms. The barrier would extend from the Virginia border to Ocracoke Island.

Frank never mentioned erosion or the supposedly ragged condition of the Banks’ sand dunes in his proposal. Nevertheless, he quickly endorsed the idea as his own, contending that a stable dune was needed to protect the asphalt road he envisioned running the length of the Banks. Later, he directed a crew at one of the eight government camps on the Banks that housed thousands of itinerant workers building the dunes.

Years later, in 1973, the NPS would abandon its dune-building activities. Erosion was a natural part of barrier island migration, scientists said, and blocking sand from washing across the islands and elevating the interiors was a mistake. The artificial dune also provided a false sense of security, the scientists wrote, encouraging development in areas prone to flooding and storms. By then, the Service had spent millions of dollars moving around sand. State engineers had spent millions more.  

America’s first national seashore didn’t officially open until 1953. By then, Frank Stick had moved on to new ideas and interests, including new real estate deals. His son David would assume the family lead in helping the seashore into existence, working closely with state and federal officials, writing articles, and giving talks.

Next in the series: Southern Shores

Frank Stick was in search of two things when he arrived on the Outer Banks in the 1920s: adventure and money. He found enough adventure to fill a lifetime but like many Bankers on the isolated barrier islands, he scrambled to pay the bills. Once one of the largest landowners, with property from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras, the artist turned developer lost many of his holdings during the Great Depression. Stick eventually recovered and developed the much-admired Southern Shores community with his son David and other partners. A complex man of shifting interests and unwavering opinions, Stick was both a conservationist who played an instrumental role in the formation of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and an avid land speculator who wrote of turning the Banks into a playground for tourists.

This is his story.

Chapter Three: Setbacks to A Dream

Read the ongoing series

The Elizabeth City Independent’s publisher W.O. Saunders liked Frank Stick. He thought he was a dreamer and an artist with a worthy plan to transform the isolated Outer Banks into a national destination for tourists and create thousands of jobs and unprecedented wealth.

The curmudgeonly editor filled his newspaper with story after story touting Stick and his partners, helping to promote their Virginia Dare Shores project near Kitty Hawk. THRONGS EXPECTED AT VIRGINIA DARE SHORES, a June 3^rd headline enthused. Frank Stick was “selling America’s most beautiful coastal playground to Americans,” Saunders wrote in another story.

But W.O. Saunders was no one’s toady. When he felt he was being misled by Stick and his partners, the laudatory stories vanished and he turned on the New Jersey developers.   

“THE TRUTH ABOUT THAT VIRGINIA SHORES,” a November 1927 headline thundered. “HOW A PAIR OF ENTHUSIASTIC AMATEURS AND A PAIR OF INDIFFERENT BUSINESS ASSOCIATES PULLED A FLIVVER” (Selling a car in bad condition).

“In the spring of this year it started out with a great flourish of trumpets, proclaiming a fifty-million-dollar development on the North Carolina Coast in the vicinity of Kill Devil Hills,” Saunders wrote. “It was going to build cement streets on the sand, build hotels, run a great resort and sell lots on Virginia Dare shores faster than deeds could be recorded. AND IT ALL ENDED IN A FIASCO. The lots didn’t sell and the company didn’t pay its bills around town.”

Saunders accused Stick’s longtime associate Allen Hueth of over-promising. He wrote that Elmer Geran, the former congressman, “was losing money and needed to make money.” He called Frank Stick a dreamer who lacked business experience. Capt. Frank Winch, the former publicist, “made a great noise,” Saunders wrote. “But he did not sell lots. He did make a lot of bills … and then he woke up and there wasn’t any more money to pay their bills. NOW THAT WAS A PRETTY HOW DO YOU DO.”

The Saunders story was only the beginning of the troubles at Virginia Dare Shores. The partners were also squabbling. Hueth accused Winch of wasting thousands of dollars on expenses while failing to set up sales offices along the East Coast.

“We do not see how we can go along with [future] financial assistance unless you are willing to follow out our idea,” Hueth wrote in a letter stamped “Confidential.” “As it is now, your company, Shore Properties has had a great deal of money advanced, which we believe should have been spent to much better advantage.” In another letter, Hueth called Winch’s efforts “an absolute failure.”

Winch angrily defended himself, accusing Hueth and Stick of failing to build any actual cottages, let alone a bridge linking the resort to the mainland. “Because of lack of organization and support, because of uncompleted development of the properties itself, because of nasty rumors, because we have permitted our credit to be shattered … these are some of the causes and NONE of them are up to me,” he declared.

There are no records of what happened next, but presumably Winch was fired or quit. For months, Stick and his partners struggled to recover. But progress was slow and they fell behind on payments on their properties. In December 1928, they hosted a gala at their Virginia Dare Shores pavilion celebrating the 25^th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ talismanic first flight. Thousands of politicians, government officials and celebrities arrived by ferry for the festivities. Amelia Earhart rode in the bucket seat of a sedan with Frank Stick’s son, David.

For the moment, all seemed upbeat. But the expected flurry of sales never materialized. Then, following the celebration, tragedy struck. On the ferry ride across Kitty Hawk Bay, Allen Hueth suffered a massive heart attack and died. He had been talking with the region’s young congressman, Lindsay Warren, at the time. Apparently, they had been discussing how to save Virginia Dare Shores.

~

Frank Stick didn’t just lose a fishing buddy and close friend when Hueth died, he lost an important business partner as well. Hueth provided decades of experience in real estate and finance. He was also a critical source of capital. In the succeeding years, Frank struggled to cover options on thousands of acres of Outer Banks property their various companies owned. Some of the lenders began to call the loans and, in some cases, Frank’s shares were offered at tax sales at the county courthouse in Manteo.

According to David Stick, his father emerged from the Great Depression owning a fraction of his original holdings. He lost a half-interest in a large ocean-to-sound tract in Nags Head; a one-third interest in his Colington Island property, and scattered interests along the Lower Banks. I couldn’t confirm this but did stumble across one instance in which Frank arranged for an Elizabeth City businessman to bid on his Kitty Hawk property at tax sale and then transfer the property back to Frank’s Hatteras Holding Corp., in return for an interest in the land. In any case, even as the market for coastal land collapsed, Frank kept enough property to not entirely give up his dream, and continued to advise some of his fellow Asbury Park investors on other land deals.   

For years, Frank had been splitting his time between Interlaken and the Outer Banks, where he stayed in hotels. In 1929, he agreed to lease an old lodge called Skyco on Roanoke Island. Frank, Charlotte and David lived there much of the time. Maud commuted back and forth and spent a fair amount of time looking after their parents. Later, Frank built a family home in Kill Devil Hills.

As the Depression deepened, Frank spent most of his time scrambling to keep the family afloat. In the 1930s, he switched from selling lots to building homes. But instead of building traditional Nags Head cottages with wrap-around porches and slanted, overhanging roofs, Frank designed colorful Cape Cod-style beach houses. A row of these cottages along the oceanfront in Kill Devil Hills became known as “Millionaire’s Row.” Later, Frank formed a company, Community Housing Inc., to build low-cost housing in the Tidewater, Virginia, area; lead a work crew clearing a right-of-way for utility lines near Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point; undertook a government-funded restoration of Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island; and served as executive director of a government commission promoting a seashore park on the Outer Banks – anything to pay the bills.

In public settings, Frank remained calm and confident. However, in Depression-era correspondence with Maud, he let down his guard and allowed his inner doubts to surface. Writing in December 1934, Frank apologized for the family’s financial struggles, blaming himself for his real estate failures and observing that the children shouldn’t have to “suffer” because of his mistakes.” However, Frank rarely ended his letters on a dark note. Hope was always just around the corner, and he often expressed confidence that a big deal he was working on would pan out soon.

In what today feels like a desperate plea, Frank even placed an advertisement in The Independent, declaring: “With faith in the Future — FRANK STICK.”

Next in the series: Inventing the Seashore

Frank Stick was in search of two things when he arrived on the Outer Banks in the 1920s: adventure and money. He found enough adventure to fill a lifetime but like many Bankers on the isolated barrier islands, he scrambled to pay the bills. Once one of the largest landowners, with property from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras, the artist turned developer lost many of his holdings during the Great Depression. Stick eventually recovered and developed the much-admired Southern Shores community with his son David and other partners. A complex man of shifting interests and unwavering opinions, Stick was both a conservationist who played an instrumental role in the formation of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and an avid land speculator who wrote of turning the Banks into a playground for tourists.

This is his story.

Chapter Two: The Nature Lover Turns Speculator

Read Chapter One: The Outdoorsman

In the summer of 1926, Frank Stick put aside his paint brushes and made the long journey from Asbury Park to the Outer Banks. Details about the August trip are scarce. It appears that Frank and a friend drove from New Jersey. But where they stayed or for how long is unclear. Years later, family members would say Frank came to go fishing, fell in love with the spare beauty of the Banks, and decided he wanted to live there. It is a good story and in keeping with the narrative that Frank and others crafted of the artist as a tireless adventurer who often made decisions from the gut. And for nearly a century it has gone unquestioned, repeated in numerous books and articles.

But the story is incomplete. Frank Stick was looking to land more than a few bluefish when he visited the Banks. His career as an illustrator whose paintings appeared on the covers of such diverse national magazines as Field & Stream, Redbook and Ladies Home Journal was beginning to unravel. Frank was restless and looking for a new, lucrative career. He had identified the Outer Banks as one of the most promising shorelines on the East Coast. His partner on the trip, Allen R. Hueth, was a wealthy main street real estate agent who owned or managed hundreds of properties around Asbury Park. True, they were fishing buddies. However, they brought along more than rods and reels on this trip. They also brought a plan, and cash, plenty of cash.

Hueth and Stick saw the Outer Banks as an opportunity, maybe even a way to get rich. Other than seven or eight small villages scattered here and there from Kitty Hawk to Cape Hatteras, there were miles and miles of empty oceanfront, rolling sand dunes, and maritime forests fronting the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds. Unlike Asbury Park and other booming resorts along the northern New Jersey coast, where oceanfront lots sold for thousands of dollars, land on the Banks was cheap, costing only a few dollars. Many sales were on installment. All investors had to do was put down something and take an option on the rest, paying off as they went. With restless Americans looking to escape the summer heat, and an exuberant stock market refreshing pocketbooks, the moment felt ideal for a land boom at the beach.

Stick and Hueth arranged a meeting with Capt. Daniel Webster Hayman, a native of Kitty Hawk who piloted steamboats and yachts from Norfolk to Key West, and somehow had managed to come into possession of 30,000 acres on the Banks. Wanderlust caught Capt. Dan early in life and at the age of nine he had shipped on a three-mast schooner as a mess boy. In more recent years, he had piloted a millionaire’s yacht up and down the Florida coast, where a land boom was transforming mangrove forests and sawgrass into rivers of gold. Recognizing the possibilities, Capt. Dan had returned to North Carolina and begun investing in real estate.

All told, it is said Capt. Dan sold his 30,000 acres for about $200,000 – or about $7 an acre. That doesn’t sound like much today but it is worth recalling that some Bankers were giving away oceanfront lots for pennies at the time. Stick and Hueth bought a 2,300-acre tract near Kill Devil Hills that included the site where Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first heavier than air flights. They then added 6,000 acres near Nags Head, 8,000 acres between Oregon Inlet and Hatteras and a smaller tract running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Kitty Hawk Bay near the border of Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk.

Almost immediately, Stick and his New Jersey partners began advertising in local newspapers. For example:

“MILLIONS”

HAVE BEEN MADE IN

BEACH FRONT PROPERTY

… shouted an advertisement in the Thursday, Oct. 21, 1926, edition of The Asbury Park Press.

North Carolina the coming playground of America today offers the same opportunity that was found in New Jersey and Florida ten years ago. Accessable (sic); an ideal year-round climate; destructive storms are unknown and North Carolina is conceded to be the most progressive and prosperous State in the Union. Lots as low as $100.00.

Upon returning home, Frank Stick began to recruit friends and business associates from Asbury Park to invest in his Outer Banks’ ventures. Frank’s Interlaken neighbor and fellow illustrator, Bill Koerner, purchased land near Kill Devil Hills. Elmer H. Geran, an attorney, banker, and former one-term congressman, joined Stick and Hueth in their recently formed North Carolina Coast Development Co. T.H. Beringer, an Asbury Park councilman, invested in 500 acres of Colington Island, a prized tract in the Albemarle Sound. Charles Baker and Susan Sutton, owners of the largest department store in Asbury Park, acquired the sand dunes that would eventually become the site of the Wright Brothers Memorial. Meanwhile, Stick formed a separate company, Hatteras Holding Corp., to buy coastal land and build lodges and hunting clubs for wealthy industrialists from the North. He brokered deals for the Phipps brothers, John and Henry, scions of a Pittsburgh steel fortune, and helped design and build hunting lodges for the brothers near Cape Hatteras and Buxton. In turn, the Phipps family provided Stick with a $12,000 loan to help him cover some of his debts, correspondence shows.

Stick and his fellow investors now owned thousands of acres of the Outer Banks. How many exactly? That’s hard to know. Hueth told The Asbury Park Press that they controlled 40 miles of oceanfront and bay in Dare County, which included the barrier islands from Kitty Hawk to Hatteras. Another story put the figure at 75 miles. Neither figure is credible. Frank’s son, David, the late, local historian, used a more believable 14 miles.

In any case, it was a lot. W.O. Saunders, editor and publisher of The Elizabeth City Independent, took notice. “A revolution has come to Dare County,” he wrote. “It is a bloodless revolution … but a revolution nevertheless. Wealthy Northerners … are slowly but surely acquiring mile after mile of beach and marsh lands.”        

David Stick put it more simply. He called it “The Jersey Shore Invasion.”

~

In 1927, Frank and his partners announced plans for a resort north of Kill Devil Hills, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Kitty Hawk Bay. It would be called Virginia Dare Shores, named for the first English child born in the Americas, near Manteo. As with most of Frank’s visions, it was eye-catching and creative. The design included a wide center boulevard named for Capt. Dan Hayman, with blocks of cottages running north and south. There was to be a pavilion for community events, a dock for the ferry shuttling vacationers from the mainland to the resort. A cement block cottage offered a place for Frank and his family to stay until he moved them permanently to the Banks. Frank also announced plans for two hotels – one a 200-room oceanfront structure near the site of the Wright Brothers’ flight and the other a 30-room hotel on Kitty Hawk Bay. The latter would be built immediately, he promised The Independent.

It was a heady time for Frank and his partners and the locals eagerly cheered their every move. The days of isolation and poverty were finally giving way to a new age. “It is impossible to stem the beginnings of a rush of visitors who are anxious to see the new region for themselves,” W.O. Saunders wrote.

Excitement and enthusiasm are one thing, actual development another. Frank and his partners struggled to find buyers. That wasn’t surprising considering the absence of roads or bridges connecting their planned resort to the mainland. For help selling his dream, Stick turned to Frank Winch, a former publicist for the circus who had recently directed a farewell tour for the showman Buffalo Bill Cody. Ordinary adjectives don’t quite do Winch justice. He was big, loud, excessively confident, and prone to exaggeration. Like Stick, he was a sharpshooter, big game hunter and a naturalist, which likely explains how Frank knew him. Prior to promoting Virginia Dare Shores, Winch had set up shop in Miami, selling the land boom there. “WANT TO MAKE MONEY?” one of his advertisements blared. “I HAVE MADE MONEY.” As the press agent for Coney Island, Winch once got into a row with local media for using the term “hot dog.” That was too “low brow for a summer resort,” he insisted. The proper term was “frankfurter.”

Frank met Winch at a Norfolk hotel and the pair agreed on a plan. Winch would operate out of Washington, D.C., and set up satellite offices in the big cities from Norfolk to New York. That May, the new partners held a get-to-know-us meeting with members of the Elizabeth City Chamber of Commerce and handed out courtesy cards for free ferry rides to their new pavilion on Kitty Hawk Bay. Winch grandly told the crowd that sales had already reached $100,000, and that construction of 15 to 20 cottages would begin in two weeks.

Prior to the gathering, Winch visited W.O. Saunders at his home to celebrate Saunders’s birthday. According to a story in The Independent. Winch presented the publisher with “a handsome silver service … and a beautiful 24 carat virgin gold ruby ring.” The newspaper described the offerings as birthday presents.

Following the meeting, Saunders’s newspaper published a glowing report on the Virginia Dare Shores project, referring to Stick and his partners as “splendid fellows” who were transforming the Outer Banks. He also informed readers that his newspaper had printed “a beautiful supplement” for the developers. Written by Winch, the glossy, 16-page report was filled with bluster and exaggerations. It repeated earlier claims that the partners controlled most of the Outer Banks; that there were “smooth hard roads,” and that Virginia Dare Shores was “ready for immediate occupancy.”

It was fantasy and Frank Stick knew it. There were no paved roads. No cottages ready for immediate occupancy. While they were moving forward, progress was slow and money was tight. Little could Frank know, but his vision of turning the Banks into a summer playground was about to implode.

Next in the series: Setbacks to a Dream

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice.

Less than three weeks after being surprised by the now infamous Dare County affordable housing provision inserted into the state budget, all six Dare County municipalities have signed on to a lawsuit filed against the State of North Carolina challenging that provision.

The housing measure, for which no one has yet acknowledged responsibility, would have restricted the towns’ ability to regulate affordable housing projects funded by $35 million in state money awarded to the county for that purpose. Various town officials have vocally criticized the measure for eroding and encroaching on local authority over development and zoning.

According to Andy Garman, town manager for Nags Head, the complaint, which was filed in Wake County Superior Court Friday, Oct. 6, seeks a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction, a permanent injunction and declaratory relief. Four different groups of lawyers, including those employed as town attorneys, are on the complaint on behalf of the six plaintiffs.

A joint statement released by the six towns on Oct. 6 noted that the effect of the budget provision “is to require Plaintiffs to allow these Dare County Affordable Housing Projects to be constructed within a town or area of a private party’s choosing and to be completely exempt from certain zoning and regulatory controls that otherwise apply to all other development of property within Plaintiffs’ jurisdictions…despite the fact that citizens throughout Dare County have expressed strenuous objection to the placement of these Dare County Projects in certain zoning districts and other parts of some of Plaintiffs’ jurisdiction.”

“In this action, Plaintiffs seek a declaration that the Dare County Local Act is a constitutionally prohibited local or special enactment and otherwise violates certain provisions of the Constitution of North Carolina and also deprives Plaintiffs of their property for a purpose other than a constitutionally permitted purpose,” the statement added.

In explaining the process that led to the towns agreeing to be plaintiffs in the suit, Garman said that “Basically, (the town managers) all found out about it on the nineteenth (of September) and we started talking about it among ourselves.” After that, the managers alerted the town boards and municipal councils and boards and brought in the town attorneys.

At the municipal level, the outcry against the mysterious provision was loud and instant, with local officials in all six towns writing letters of protests and/or passing resolutions calling for the removal of the budget item and for Dare County not to enforce it.

Passions on the matter flamed up at an Oct. 2 Dare County Board of Commissioners meeting during a contentious public comment session and a response by Board Chairman Bob Woodard. At the meeting, the county commissioners did move to establish an affordable housing task force that would include representatives from each of the municipalities.

At the same time, the county has consistently stated that it had no knowledge of, nor any role in the insertion of that affordable housing budget provision. At that Oct. 2 meeting, County Manager Bobby Outten told the towns that the county had no intention of “bulldozing” them with large unwanted housing developments — although it’s not clear how much that statement allayed the towns’ concerns.

When asked for a response to the litigation filed by the towns, Outten told the Voice that he was not aware of it.  For his part, Woodard declined to make a statement on the subject.

This story is provided courtesy of The Outer Banks Voice, a digital newspaper covering the Outer Banks. Coastal Review is partnering with the Voice to provide readers with more environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice.

Citing overwhelming opposition to allowing Dare County’s proposed essential housing project to connect to the town’s wastewater treatment system, the Manteo Board of Commissioners on Wednesday voted unanimously to reject the county’s request.

The Sanderling project at the end of Bowsertown Road envisioned a 46-unit apartment complex that the county had contracted with Woda Cooper Companies to build. Although the complex would be on county property, according to Woda Cooper officials there is not enough land on the property for a septic system to support the complex.

If built, the 46 units would represent a small step toward remedying the housing shortage for year-round workers in the county.

Manteo Commissioner Sherry Wickstrom, in her remarks at the meeting, indicated the county needed 1,200 housing units. Chair of the Dare County Commissioners Bob Woodard, in an interview the following day, told the Voice that number was low. “She said 1,200. We’re lacking 2,500 (units),” he said.

The decision by the Manteo commissioners continues a trend of county-based essential or workforce housing proposals being rejected at the municipal level. Back in January 2022, Manteo commissioners also turned down a county request to connect with the town’s wastewater treatment system for what was then envisioned as a 120-unit development.

In August 2022, Kill Devil Hills commissioners rejected an effort to rezone the 44-acre Baum tract to potentially pave the way for a high-density multifamily housing site backed by the county. And early this year, Nags Head commissioners opted to rezone an area that would have potentially housed a 54-unit Woda Cooper housing development.

At the Sept. 6 Manteo Commissioners meeting, County Manager Bobby Outten noted that the county and the town had a history of working together.

“We want to work with you and anyone else to solve the (housing) problem, much as we did when you had a parking problem,” he said. “We took down some buildings, donated some land, and we all worked towards solving a parking problem in your downtown.”

Outten also stressed that every concern the commissioners had voiced about the project had been addressed.

“We were told by you that (the original proposal) was too big,” he said, adding the project they’re proposing is 46 units.

Outten continued that there were concerns voiced during discussions about impact fees, annexation and setting aside teacher housing. He explained that the county agreed to pay what the town requires for the impact fees, would annex and set aside 10 housing units for the teachers.

In public comment, though, every resident who spoke about the project was opposed to the proposal. Pointing to two issues in particular, speakers felt traffic in Manteo had become a significant problem and the addition of a 46-unit housing complex would exacerbate that. Residents were also concerned about the effect the development would have on the existing wastewater system and expressed concern about losing the small town feel of Manteo.

The commissioners described their vote as heeding the will of their constituents.

“I think tonight,” Commissioner Tod Clissold said during the meeting, “You’ve heard that (Manteo residents) are not in favor of a connection to the sewer plant.

“At this time, I just think we have to listen to our voters,” he continued.

Echoing Clissold’s comments, Commissioner Ruth Stetson said, “I can’t find a lot of support for this development. I can’t find any support, actually.”

Woodard, when interviewed the next day, told the Voice that “I fully understand their position. They listen to their constituents. I don’t fault them for that.”

Nonetheless, he had hoped the project could move forward.  “It’s just very disappointing,” he added.

For his part, Outten told the Voice that the county will continue to work toward building essential housing in spite of the setbacks.

“I’d say we’re disappointed in the Manteo decision, but we’re going to continue to work to bring workforce or essential housing to the county,” he said.

Woodard agreed. “We’re looking at multiple options in other places in the county, as well as towns and municipalities.”

Correction: The Sept. 21 meeting was specially called solely to a permit variance and hold public hearings for other rules currently in development. Members will not be discussing or addressing any Rules Review Committee objections to CRC proposed rules, including those related to marine aquaculture, although information relevant to the committee’s objections were included in a draft agenda for the meeting at the time of publication.

Coastal Resources Commission members, during their in-person meeting Sept. 21, are expected to hear a permit variance and hold public hearings for other rules currently in development.

The specially called meeting is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. in the Riverfront Convention Center, 203 S. Front St., New Bern. The draft agenda is available on the Division of Coastal Management’s website.

The next regularly scheduled meeting is set for Nov. 8-9 in Beaufort.

The state Rules Review Commission has objected to rule changes made late last year that allow for a floating upweller system to be permitted as a platform at a private docking facility or permitted marina.

Floating upweller systems, or FLUPSYs, are structures used in mariculture to grow shellfish until large enough to survive in a shellfish lease.

The amendments will not appear in the state code unless resolved, according to agenda documents. Most of the objections relate to unclear or ambiguous language in sections pertaining to “significant adverse impacts.”

The review board’s objections to the recently adopted rules pertaining to floating upweller systems, or FLUPSYs, were not only that the language was unclear or ambiguous, but also that the Coastal Resources Commission lacks authority to regulate such structures.

According to meeting documents available at the time of publication, there are other, “upcoming amendments that will likely receive objections for similar reasons.” The note references proposed amendments on the agenda for the Sept. 21 meeting.

A public hearing is scheduled for 1:15 p.m. on amendments to rules on minimum growing season for vegetation, general permit time period extension, exception for lots platted post-1979, and permit fee increases.

The commission is also expected to consider oceanfront setback variances for two properties in Carolina Beach, one owned by the Riso Trust and the other by North Pier Holdings LLC, a Wilmington-based company formed last year by Caleb Kratsa.

The division, under the North Carolina Division of Environmental Quality, implements the commission’s rules and issues Coastal Area Management Act permits.

Guest commentary

If you bought a home in North Carolina, you likely were never told whether it had previously flooded or whether you are legally required to purchase flood insurance, let alone the cost of that insurance.

That’s because in North Carolina the seller of a property does not have to disclose any of this information. 

A study produced by Milliman, an international insurance actuary, estimated that 13,237 homes were purchased in 2021 in North Carolina that had previously been damaged in floods. None of the sellers of those homes were required to tell the buyers about the history of flood damages. And a home that has flooded once is likely to flood again.

Milliman estimated that North Carolina home buyers who purchased a previously flooded home will pay, on average, $18,164 in unanticipated damages over a 15-year mortgage and $36,328 over a 30-year mortgage. As flood disasters become more frequent and severe and sea levels rise, those damages will climb considerably.

For most of us, if we were to choose between living in a home that’s never flooded and a home that’s flooded repeatedly, we’d choose the one that’s never flooded. Why? Because fleeing rising floodwaters, losing your possessions, and having to spend months cleaning up and rebuilding drains your bank account and it’s incredibly stressful. However, if we do not have the right to know a home’s flood history and risk, then we can be unknowingly forced into this exact situation.

The North Carolina Real Estate Commission is now poised to remedy this problem and grant home buyers the right to know a home’s flood history and other flood risk information. On Aug. 1, the commission closed a public comment period on changes to the state’s mandatory disclosure form. The commission will likely add a series of important questions about flooding that sellers will have to answer and provide to a home buyer – for the first time ever. 

The overwhelming majority of North Carolina residents agree with the commission that this is the right decision. In a poll conducted by the Global Strategy Group, 83% of North Carolinians supported a requirement that sellers tell renters or home buyers the truth about past flooding. Republicans and Democrats, people in the mountains and along the coasts, people of all races and walks of life all agreed that it was wrong to hide such information.

The Real Estate Commission is to be congratulated for putting this policy out for public comment and making sure home buyers are fully informed. It’s unfair that someone selling a house knows about flooding problems and can hide that from the buyer – who is left to find out for themselves after the next flood.

Given the state’s ongoing recovery from hurricanes Matthew in 2016, Florence in 2018, and other flooding events that have occurred throughout the state, this decision is long overdue.

As we enter the most active part of 2023 hurricane season, the commission is taking the right step at the right time.

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

Army Corps of Engineers officials from the Wilmington District are asking for comments on a proposed public boat launch facility on Bogue Sound in western Carteret County.

The proposed boat launch is to be built on a 67-acre parcel set well off N.C. Highway 24 in the Ocean community of Newport, between Goose Creek and Sanders Creek.

Plans for the proposed facility, which are available online along with the public notice, include six ramps, a transient floating dock, 159-space boat trailer parking lot and an access channel to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.

The applicant, Carteret County, said that the new access is to provide access to Bogue Sound for boaters and vacationers to the area, as well as alleviate pressures at other boat ramps. Carteret County, the North Carolina Coastal Federation and North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission are working together on the project.

The proposed project will require new dredging within coastal wetlands, waters and submerged aquatic vegetation, and upland excavation at the site.

The proposed project includes living shorelines installation on the property and south of the proposed boat ramp facility to offset the loss of about eight-tenths of an acre of submerged aquatic vegetation and habitat.

The Coastal Federation is in the process of designing its new Center for Coastal Protection and Restoration to be built on 10 acres neighboring the proposed public boat ramp facility. There will also be a hiking trial connecting Bogue Sound to the Croatan National Forest on the property as well.

Comments must be submitted by 5 p.m. Aug. 26 to Liz Hair, Wilmington Regulatory Field Office, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC 28403, or to sarah.e.hair@usace.army.mil, or to WilmingtonNCREG@usace.army.mil.

More information, more work, more study and more discussion are needed.

Topsail Beach commissioners said Monday that a Raleigh software entrepreneur’s evolving plan to purchase and develop a personal multi-home family compound with a private marina on an undeveloped 119-acre site situated at the south end of town isn’t yet on solid enough footing to allow for a decision on a long-pending rezoning request.

The town board said it still wants more answers and professional analyses related to the proposal before it decides.

At one point during the special called meeting held to discuss proposed conditions and comments on the conditional rezoning application for the New Topsail Inlet property known as The Point, Commissioner John Gunter suggested the entire process needed to start anew because so much had changed, including late-hour changes that he said made it appear that the Olsons were just trying to win votes.

The applicants and prospective owners of the parcel, Todd Olson, founder of Pendo, and his wife Laura Olson, were at the meeting. The Olsons said they were merely reacting to feedback from the public and town planning board in making multiple changes to their plans since talks of the proposal began last year. They said the plans were presented as a “vision doc” and had been fluid to allow for dialogue, “to open up the aperture of what’s possible” regarding the site, which is part of the federal Coastal Barrier Resources System.

The Olsons said their proposed private development of the federally restricted site would be far less dense than any other development in town and all changes made in the latest iteration of their plans had been made in response to officials’ recommendations.

But some commissioners were frustrated that changes were made as recently as the night before the meeting.

“I’m struggling with why we’ve gotten to this point when my feeling is, you have had six months or more to respond to the initial public comments that you solicited yourself and then didn’t really address to people’s satisfaction,” Gunter said to the Olsons. “And now the proposal, in my mind, has changed in hopes of securing more agreement to it.”

Commissioner Frank Braxton said the Olsons could be best served by professional assessments that address the issues raised in prior discussions.

“You’re trying to sell a plan, and we don’t have it yet,” Braxton said.

The board consensus included calls for soil scientists for septic, hydrogeologists for potable water and engineers to study issues such as water pressure for fire suppression where public utilities cannot be extended. An environmental assessment was also recommended.

Jacksonville-based surveyor Charles Riggs submitted the rezoning request last year on behalf of the Olsons. Riggs offered on Monday to draw up a new site plan to allay the board’s unease, but Braxton suggested bringing in other expertise instead.

“You may be going outside of your wheelhouse on something like this because this is a one-of-a-kind shot. This is one of the most primo lots on the East Coast right now and something very unique. And I would think you’d really want to throw what you can at it and get a very talented architect and engineer — landscape architects, a planner, whatever — and have them really go over it and try to give you something good to sell,” Braxton said.

Braxton is president of an engineering and landscape architecture firm who has also worked with the Raleigh Planning Department.

Much of the meeting’s discussion centered on a draft of points for proposed conditions. The Olsons had previously agreed to the planning board’s conditions, included in the document, but commissioners wanted more detailed answers.

Earlier, during the public comment portion of the meeting, several property owners cited similar and familiar concerns about the proposed project. But it was the late-hour revisions that chafed some members of the board.

Commissioners said it was unfair to them and the public to be expected to consider the controversial rezoning application when the plan was still changing as recently as within 24 hours of the workshop meeting at town hall.

Todd Olson said the initial documents were submitted anticipating that further questions would be asked and intending to provide a sense for what the couple would be amenable to in advance.

“We’re not saying, ‘We need that,’ we’re not saying, ‘We want that.’ We’re not saying that even is what’s going to exist. We’re saying that if there’s discussion of a parking lot, there are questions that are, ‘What does it look like?’ and ‘What amenities will be there?’ And we’re simply open to having the conversation. We’re not saying this is what we think, but there’s a lot of conditions that we haven’t had an open dialogue around and we’re trying to create an open dialogue,” Olson said.

Olson said that the changes were also in response to public feedback.

“I don’t think there’s any submission that we’re going to submit that’s going to make people happy to be quite honest,” he said.

Gunter noted that the plans had been public for months, an official public hearing was set for Sept. 13, the board was expected to make its decision in October, and now among the last-minute changes was enlarging the proposed building envelope.

Riggs said that was to allow the family flexibility, “So that when they want to build a house in a couple of years, they can pick the spot and then design it, and then 10 years later, when they want to build their second house, they can pick that spot and then design. So, any plan that you see today is going to be approximate.”

“This needs to start all over again if you’re going to expand what you’re proposing,” Gunter said.

Conservation enhancements

Information was sent to Coastal Review on behalf of the Olsons over the weekend. In it, the couple says their plan would yield community benefits such as preservation of property the town had tried to purchase for more than 20 years, improved and more accessible beach access with showers and bathrooms maintained by an attendant, and enhanced conservation as the new owners would improve awareness of wildlife nesting site “disturbances” now most often caused by “unknowing beachgoers.”

The Olsons say they have been working with the Coastal Land Trust and, if conserved, the nonprofit’s “efforts would have uninterrupted reach between Topsail and Figure Eight Island.”

Their home placement decisions considered factors such as sea level rise, distance from critical habitats, inlet movement and distance from the ocean and Serenity Point.

“We chose these spots to be at the high points on the property,” according to a PowerPoint that was provided to Coastal Review. The slideshow was created by Laura Olson and details the steps the family plans to take regarding conversation and preservation.

The slideshow also notes the accretion of sand at The Point as the inlet has shifted farther out: “The walk around the point was a much shorter walk 50 years ago!” a text box superimposed over an aerial image showing historic shoreline positions over the decades.

Dr. Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, has maintained that the site is appropriately zoned as-is. He said the Olson’s proposed conditions do nothing to diminish the risk.

“There are no ways to modify the project that would reduce the hazard exposure,” Young told Coastal Review Monday in an email.

Young, who has been mapping coastal hazards for three decades and has served on the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Advisory Panel, also leads a project working with the National Park Service to assess the vulnerability of every asset in every U.S. coastal park.

In previous comments submitted to the town, Young has contended that the site “would rank as extremely high in every single category we evaluate for coastal hazards” and leave town residents responsible for the potential consequences, including post-storm liabilities.

In his comments also published on his LinkedIn page, Young warned, “Don’t be misled by the fact that the spit is currently growing. It is still highly storm vulnerable. Land adjacent to inlets can change rapidly and it will experience extreme storm surge and significant wave impact during storm events. If you approve building here, you may as well eliminate all restrictions and pretend that we have learned nothing about coastal processes and coastal hazards over the last few decades in North Carolina. It is as simple as that.”

Topsail Beach commissioners are meeting Monday afternoon to talk details of a proposed gated family compound at the undeveloped southern tip of town.

Commissioners will propose and discuss conditions on Pendo CEO Todd Olsen’s conditional rezoning application, which seeks to remove fewer than 30 acres of the nearly 150-acre property from its current conservation zone.

The software entrepreneur is under contract to buy the land pending the outcome of the rezoning request.

The Olsons want to build seven houses, a pool and pool house, decking beach and sound accesses, and a six-slip private marina on the sprawling, natural area known as The Point.

Olson and his wife, Laura, have signed a letter of intent with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to grant the organization a conservation easement for a minimum of 80% of the property, which would forever prevent development on more than 115 acres.

Their rezoning request was unanimously denied in May by the town’s planning board.

The commissioners’ special-called meeting will be held at 3 p.m. in the town hall board chambers, 820 S. Anderson Blvd.

Documents will be made available on the town’s website at https://topsailbeachnc.gov/Government/Agenda-Minutes.

TOPSAIL BEACH – With the one-year mark approaching since a Raleigh software entrepreneur submitted plans to build a family compound on the undeveloped south end of Topsail Island, frustrations have mounted over when to hold the next and possibly final public hearing on a request to rezone a portion of the property.

This week, commissioners set a hearing for late summer.

When the town planner suggested Topsail Beach commissioners host the public hearing in October, several property owners attending the board’s regular monthly meeting Wednesday night let out a collective sigh of exacerbation and verbally protested.

What ensued was a debate of timelines, procedure and, when the conversation turned to holding the public hearing on a Saturday rather than during a regular weeknight meeting of the commissioners, precedent.

“October? This is July,” Commissioner John Gunter said.

Gunter said he had a list of a dozen or more conditions he’d like to add to proposed development plans that have morphed since Pendo CEO Todd Olson turned them over the town last October as part of a request to conditionally rezone the property.

Olson and his wife Laura are under contract to buy the nearly 150-acre site pending their request to rezone roughly a quarter of the property from its current conservation zone.

The couple has also signed a letter of intent with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to grant the organization a conservation easement for a minimum of 80% of the property, which would forever prevent development on more than 115 acres.

But a grassroots group called Conserve the Point is working with nongovernmental organizations to try and cull public and private funding to buy the land from the current owners to ensure none of the property gets developed.

The Topsail Beach Planning Board in May unanimously denied the Olsons’ rezoning request.

The Olsons want to build seven houses, a pool and pool house, decking beach and sound accesses, and a six-slip private marina on the sprawling, natural area known as The Point.

The south end of Topsail Island has steadily grown over the years with the island’s southerly migration at New Topsail Inlet.

The land, owned for decades by the McLeod family, is a popular draw for residents, tourists and frequent visitors of the town who enjoy sandy walks along the ocean and sound shores.

The Olsons’ request to rezone fewer than 30 acres has been met with fierce opposition from property owners, tourists and environmentalists.

The land is designated critical habitat to threatened and endangered piping plovers and loggerhead sea turtles. It is within a state-designated inlet hazard area and in a VE flood zone, which is an area with a 1% or greater chance of flooding with an additional risk of damage from storm waves.

The property is also within a federally designated Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, unit.

Congress enacted CBRA in the early 1980s to discourage development in low-lying, storm- and flood-prone coastal areas by prohibiting certain federal assistance within those areas, including eligibility to the National Flood Insurance Program. Local governments face the threat of being cut off from some types of federal funding if that town, city or county extends infrastructure such as water and sewer service to development within a CBRA zone.

Town commissioners were informed Wednesday night that Laura Olson is in the process of meeting with various environmental agencies at the property and that she has a deadline of Aug. 18 to submit any additional information to the town based on the results of those meetings.

That led to commissioners questioning whether the Olsons are planning to make changes to the plans that have been submitted to the town.

When asked to address commissioners, a visibly frustrated Charles Riggs, the Jacksonville-based surveyor who represents the Olsons, said he was at the meeting with the understanding that the board was going to potentially place additional conditions on the proposed development plans.

“I was not prepared to make a presentation tonight,” he said. “Any change (to the plans) would be based off what the commissioners are requesting. It’s my understanding that the concept and plans that you have seen is what we’re going to be moving forward with. I was here tonight to gather information on what the commissioners wanted to do.”

He said the Olsons certainly do not want to withdraw and resubmit their application to rezone, a suggestion Gunter initially made and then recanted just before the meeting adjourned.

“I don’t want this to go back to the planning board,” Gunter said. “I want this to move and to move fast.”

Commissioner Frank Braxton concurred.

“I agree with John that we need to move this forward and to get this behind us,” he said.

Gunter continued to push for a public hearing before September, a timeline Mayor Steve Smith said simply isn’t feasible.

“We have a lot of other things we have to take care of in the town,” Smith said. “This is not the only one.”

Commissioners unanimously voted to schedule the public hearing at their Sept. 13 meeting.

Commissioners also agreed to hold a workshop to discuss any conditions they may decide to place on the proposed plans. Details of that workshop are to be determined.

Even with the might of government, it can be difficult to force people to remove their houses that are at risk of falling into the ocean.

More and more, it’s also proving to be difficult for homeowners to find property insurance that would adequately cover, or proactively prevent, that risk.

But a Federal Insurance Office report, “Insurance Supervision and Regulation of Climate-Related Risks,” released in June shows that the insurance industry is lagging in addressing the wide range of escalating climate hazards far beyond covering oceanfront coastal development.

“More work is needed by state and federal regulators and policymakers, as well as by the private sector and the climate science and research communities,” the report said, “to better understand the nature of climate-related risks for the insurance industry, their implications for insurance regulation and supervision, and for the stability of the financial system — including for real estate markets and the banking sector.”

With alarming spikes in recent years in flood, storm and wildfire disasters, and with property insurers fleeing Louisiana, Florida and California, homeowners are increasingly paying more for less insurance, having policies canceled with no warning, or searching in vain for coverage.

“I think we’re definitely at an inflection point where insurers are pricing themselves out of doing what they’ve been counted on to do for generations,” said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a San Francisco-based nonprofit information resource for insurance consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. “This is clearly a national matter.”

One dramatic climate risk, in the form of severe beach erosion, has been on full display in Rodanthe, an Outer Banks village on the northern end of Hatteras Island where, since 2020, five oceanfront houses have collapsed into the Atlantic, scattering debris for miles in the water and on beaches along Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Related: Federation, law center call for enforcement of existing law

Government-subsidized flood insurance policies won’t pay policyholders until the house is destroyed, nor will they cover proactive removal or cleanup costs for debris.

Although property owners in Rodanthe want Dare County to pay for a beach nourishment project, which could protect houses and restore flood insurance coverage, the county has said that the high rate of erosion — an annual average of about 14 feet — and the relatively small number of affected properties would make it prohibitively expensive.

A recently released engineering report completed for the county estimated that for a project covering 5.7 miles of beach, it would take about 3.8 million cubic yards of sand to offset five years’ worth of erosion, with a one-time cost of about $40 million.

Dare County Board Chairman Bob Woodard said during the commission’s June 5 meeting that U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., indicated that it may be possible to secure federal nourishment funds.

“There are some folks in Rodanthe that appear to have some pretty strong ties to representatives in D.C. that are trying to help (the congressman) make this happen,” Woodward said. Commissioners agreed to send a letter to Murphy requesting $40 million for the nourishment project.

In a June 16 response to Woodard, Murphy wrote that a feasibility study would have to be performed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that was estimated to cost “a minimum” of $3 million, before a funding request could be made.

A spokesman for Murphy, responding to an inquiry from Coastal Review in a June 26 email, said that the congressman and his team had been in touch with commissioners prior to their request, and he is continuing to discuss “a plan of action and the best way ahead” as the situation evolves.

“Congressman Murphy has been closely monitoring the conditions in Rodanthe and has witnessed the erosion firsthand,” the spokesman wrote.

Starting in the late 1980s, there had been a provision in the National Flood Insurance Program known as the Upton-Jones Act that had provided funds to demolish or relocate houses threatened by encroaching surf on an eroding beach. It lasted less than eight years.

Revival of Upton-Jones or a similar measure is currently being reconsidered by government officials and policymakers as one remedy for the Rodanthe problem. The Upton-Jones Amendment had funded up to 40% of the policy to move houses and up to 110% to demolish them. The maximum payout was $185,000 for the structure and $60,000 for its contents.

But as federal and state laws so far appear toothless to thwart houses from falling onto public beaches, escalating threats created by rising seas, intensifying rainfall and raging wildfires are exposing looming deficiencies not just in the National Flood Insurance Program, but in property insurance overall.

Climate-related risks categorized broadly as physical, transition and litigation, the report found, “present new and increasingly significant challenges for the insurance industry that warrant careful monitoring by financial regulators, policymakers, and insurance companies. The oversight of climate-related risks is also an emerging and increasingly critical topic for state insurance regulators.”

Potential revival of the Upton-Jones Act, which was repealed by Congress in 1994, was part of a broader discussion on insurance options for properties on the vulnerable Atlantic shoreline during the second virtual video meeting of the Threatened Oceanfront Structures Interagency Work Group.

Established jointly in August 2022 by the National Park Service and the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management to seek solutions for the problem in Rodanthe, the group appeared to view the flood program as a concern most relevant to the bottom line.

“And that is the question of the house is going to collapse,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said to the online group, which included about 24 panelists and 25 attendees. “There’s not only going to be the cost of the payout … but now there is also going to be environmental damage potentially and the cost of cleanup. It is hard to image that that is going to be more than an orderly move.”

During two hours of discussion, the panel agreed that there are gaps in qualifications meeting the need for available grants, and government codes and regulations need to be updated, as well as information on erosion rates. Considering the lack of available private insurance coverage, the recently updated NFIP Risk Rating 2.0 seems to provide the best option for flood coverage. But there were questions whether a new Upton-Jones program would be more appropriate as a hazard mitigation program, rather than insurance.

Even with the updated program that is gradually increasing rates, flood insurance premiums are 50% below what they need to be, said Spencer Rogers, a retired North Carolina Sea Grant coastal engineer and geologist.

“And that’s a major issue for the program,” he said, “that any analysis that’s going to … cost additional money for the flood insurance program needs to address the money.”

As Bach, with the consumer insurance group, explained, recent rate increases have been influenced by inflation and supply-chain issues, but a primary driver is reinsurance, essentially transferring risk to another insurer to protect the primary insurer. But the newest drivers, she said, are insurance technology rating tools that provide much more detail on the risks.

With those analytic tools, California and other states have realized that calculating risks with models that are predicting the future based on the past has greatly underestimated the actual risks.

Bach said the situation currently is reminiscent to what happened in the 1960s, when property insurance for flooding became essentially unaffordable and unavailable, resulting in the federal government creating the subsidized National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP. For a large number of homeowners, options today for property insurance could mean going into more debt by financing the insurance; paying higher rates year over year; having bare minimum insurance; or having no insurance. Insurers, she said, are “running away from catastrophic risk at the same time that they have been raising their rates.”

All Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-backed mortgages require homeowners insurance, but even uninsured property owners without mortgages often need federal assistance after disasters.

“I think there are increasingly loud cries for there to be a version of the NFIP, basically an American disaster insurance program … in the sense that it’s an insurer of last resort for people who can’t get coverage elsewhere,” Bach said. “But I think that’s what we’re going to be seeing more (demand) for because insurers are a powerful lobby, but so our Realtors and so our builders and so our voters. So at some point a solution is going to have to be found here, but it’s increasingly looking like it’s not going to be the private property insurance system as we’ve known it.”

Bach said that the questions going forward are, what insurance program are elected officials going to come up, and what will the recipe look like? As Bach sees it, people are going to continue to want to live near beautiful coasts and forests, or stay where their family has been rooted for generations for as long as possible.

“They didn’t come to the risk,” she said. “The risk came to them while they were there.”

Two nonprofit environmental organizations are putting pressure on state and federal agencies to address the risks from the spewing septic systems of oceanfront Outer Banks houses that have collapsed or are at risk of falling into the ocean.

On behalf of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, the Southern Environmental Law Center sent letters Thursday to the National Park Service at Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, urging them to address imminent threats to public health, welfare, and safety created by collapsing houses and abandoned septic tanks in Rodanthe village in Dare County.

In a press release, the organizations noted that the eroding shoreline and rising sea levels had left houses that once stood inland vulnerable on the wet sand beach and that, since 2020, five houses have collapsed on the Rodanthe oceanfront, “littering North Carolina’s surf and shoreline with dangerous debris including nails, drywall, chemicals, sewage, and other household materials that could contain toxic substances.”

They added that the collapses left behind septic tanks “that discharge concentrated human sewage onto the beach and into the ocean. And even before houses collapse, storms and high tides can leave their septic systems exposed, damaged, and leaking sewage onto the public beaches.”

The groups said that government agencies are responsible for eliminating the health hazards that they said threaten visitor safety and for protecting the national seashore for the use and enjoyment of future generations.

“Government officials at every level have a responsibility to prevent dangerous hazards for the safety of locals and tourists alike on North Carolina’s coast,” said Julie Youngman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The situation at Rodanthe is only getting worse with sea level rise and more intense storms from climate disruption.”

The letters urge the government agencies to address the exposed and abandoned septic tanks, public health threats posed by debris from past collapses, and the risk caused by houses identified as most likely to collapse next. The letters state that these risks, in the face of climate change, must be addressed before another house falls.

“Immediate action is required to remove exposed septic systems and threatened oceanfront structures to prevent further degradation of the coastal environment and protect the safety and welfare of the public,” said Alyson Flynn, coastal advocate and environmental economist at the North Carolina Coastal Federation. “We support and implore our decisionmakers to use their authority to clean up our oceanfront and ensure that coastal management measures protect our coast.”

TOPSAIL BEACH – The Topsail Beach Planning Board on Wednesday denied a request to rezone a portion of the undeveloped southern end of the town to build a family compound.

The board’s unanimous recommendation now goes to Topsail Beach commissioners, who will decide whether to uphold the planning board’s vote or approve the application to conditionally rezone roughly a quarter of the property known as The Point from its current conservation zone.

Commissioners are expected during their June 14 meeting to schedule a public hearing, which is anticipated to be held during the board’s July 12 meeting.

Raleigh software entrepreneur Todd Olson’s rezoning request has been met with a flurry of opposition from property owners in the town, throughout the island and tourists who frequent the town for family vacations and day trips.

After the planning board cast its vote Wednesday, one man in the audience called out, “Hallelujah!” A majority of people filling the chairs set up in The Historic Assembly Building in the heart of the Pender County town’s business district applauded the decision.

Representatives of the Olson family declined to comment after the meeting.

The Olson family wants to build seven houses, a pool and pool house, decking, beach and sound accesses and a six-slip private marina on the sprawling nearly 150-acre site that has steadily grown over the years as the southern end of Topsail Island at New Topsail Inlet has accrued sand.

The Olsons are under contract to buy the land pending whether or not the footprint in which building would occur – fewer than 30 acres – gets rezoned.

They have also signed a letter of intent with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to grant the organization a conservation easement for a minimum of 80% of the property. If that deal were to go through it would mean that more than 115 acres would forever stay undeveloped.

For months now, town residents, property owners and tourists have expressed opposition to the rezoning request in public meetings and hearings, and on social media.

A grassroots group called Conserve the Point is working with nongovernmental organizations to try and cull public and private funding to buy the land from the McLeod family, which has owned the property for decades.

Prospective buyer Laura Olson said Wednesday that she is an environmentalist, one who can be found at beach cleanups and who works on water quality issues.

“I do believe we’re on the same team. What makes me worried are the options that would come after us,” she said, alluding to developers who might eye the land if it remains on the market.

There are areas of the property that are already threatened, she said. Unleashed dogs disturb the nests of shorebirds and people sometimes traverse the dunes.

The land is designated critical habitat to threatened and endangered piping plovers and loggerhead sea turtles.

“We do plan to work with scientists and protecting things on the property,” Olson said.

She said a conservation easement for the majority of the land would be made official before building would begin.

“Honestly, we’re pretty focused with our family and our work lives today,” Olson said. “This is a project we don’t even really want to be working on right now. This is for the future.”

Even if commissioners buck the planning board’s recommendation, any proposed development of the land will face the scrutiny of federal and state regulatory agencies.

The property is in a federally designated Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, unit.

Congress enacted CBRA, pronounced “cobra,” in the early 1980s to discourage development in low-lying, storm- and flood-prone coastal areas by prohibiting certain federal assistance within those areas, including access to the National Flood Insurance Program. Local governments face the threat of being cut off from some types of federal funding if that town, city or county extends infrastructure such as water and sewer service to development within a CBRA zone.

Topsail Beach has a policy in its current land use plan that mandates any development must connect to the town’s public water system. Because the land is within a CBRA zone, town water cannot be extended on the site.

That and other “differing policies and inconclusive descriptions for development density” resulted in town staff neither recommending or denying the conditional zoning request.

The land is also within a state-designated Inlet Hazard Area, one in which shorelines face a higher threat of erosion and flooding at inlets that can shift suddenly and dramatically.

In a last-minute update to the proposed development plans, Jacksonville-based surveyor Charles Riggs, who represents the Olsons, informed the planning board that the “building envelope,” or area in which development would occur, had been trimmed down from about 26 acres to 18 acres.

That decision was made after consulting further with the Coastal Land Trust and wildlife officials, he said.

“I believe we have a valid, legitimate plan here which includes over 123 acres of conserved land,” Riggs said.

He said the Olson family was still taking some of the conditions set forth by town planning staff under consideration, including deeding one acre adjacent to a town-maintained public parking lot to the town.

“We do not anticipate a helicopter pad. We don’t anticipate any short-term vacation rentals at this time,” Riggs said.

Before casting their votes, planning board members said they had to consider potential future impacts of the rezoning request and proposed development to the environment and to property owners.

“We don’t know the long-term impact as we think about water tanks and burying things and digging up the dunes … I just don’t feel comfortable with that lack of information,” said Carrie Hewitt, the board’s vice chair.

The state released this week an online manual to help local governments in coastal counties with the basics of development requirements.

The comprehensive land use planning technical guide, “Comprehensive Land Use Planning in Coastal North Carolina — Guidance for Local Governments,” is available on the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management website.

The guide complies with the Coastal Resources Commission land use planning requirements and offers an optional and much broader comprehensive plan that integrates Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA requirements, officials said.

“The availability of this comprehensive guide in an online format continues DCM’s modernization of our processes and materials in order to better serve our local governments and the community,” Division Director Braxton Davis said in a statement.

Each land use plan includes local policies that address growth issues such as the protection of productive resources such as farmland, forest resources and fisheries, desired types of economic development, natural resource protection and the reduction of storm hazards.

The plan was developed in partnership with the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Dr. Mark T. Imperial and Dr. Kirsten Kinzer.

TOPSAIL BEACH – The highly anticipated recommendation for a rezoning request that would allow development on the southern end of Topsail Island is likely a little more than two weeks away.

Island property owners and visitors to the Pender County beach town continued to voice their opposition Wednesday to rezoning “The Point,” nearly 150 undisturbed acres stretching from the ocean to New Topsail Inlet.

Raleigh software entrepreneur Todd Olson is under contract to buy the tract pending his request of the town to rezone the land from conservation to conditional use, which would allow him to pursue plans to build a family compound.

Olson was not at the Topsail Beach Planning Board’s meeting Wednesday that included a public hearing, during which 20 people spoke in objection to his request.

The land that has been owned by the McLeod family for decades is a sentimental spot for many familiar with the island.

Speakers at Wednesday’s hearing expressed their love of the property and reiterated concerns raised over the past several months about potential environmental impacts development may have on land both state and federal governments have deemed particularly vulnerable to coastal storms because of its location to an inlet.

The property is within a state-designated Inlet Hazard Area, one in which shorelines face a higher threat of erosion and flooding at inlets that can suddenly and dramatically shift. The land is also in a Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS, zone.

Congress created the system in the early 1980s to discourage building on relatively undeveloped barrier islands by barring federal funding and financial assistance in hurricane-prone, biologically rich areas.

Charles Riggs, a Jacksonville-based land surveyor representing Olson, told planning board members Wednesday that infrastructure on the property, including water wells, septic systems and roads, will be privately maintained.

Jones-Onslow Electric Membership Corp. has indicated it will supply power to the site.

Olson’s development proposal has changed since he initially approached the town with his rezoning request last year, including a proposal to conserve a majority of the property.

A lawyer representing Olson said Wednesday that Olson is currently in negotiations with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to place about 80% of the land — likely 115 or so acres — in a conservation easement in perpetuity.

That would restrict that portion of the land from being developed but allow construction within what officials call a “building envelope” of roughly 30 acres.

Plans submitted to the town call for seven homes, including a boat house Riggs said is being considered a dwelling, a fenced-in pool, road and waterfront accesses, and a six-slip private marina.

Riggs said the proposed development is a generational plan, one where Olson would initially have one house built with the prospect of adding the other six in the future.

The property would not be fenced off, Riggs said, but it will be gated.

Riggs said the houses would be single-story structures with low-profile roofs. The roofline of the homes may be at an elevation of 37 to 38 feet, he said, at least a couple of feet lower than those at Serenity Point, a townhome community sitting next to the property.

The homes cannot exceed 5,000 square feet, per building restrictions set forth in development within Inlet Hazard Areas.

The town’s planning staff last week sent Riggs a list of conditions for Olson to consider, including limiting the number of structures to those currently identified on the plan and granting a privately-maintained 30-foot easement for emergency vehicles to access the property.

Other conditions call for Olson to dedicate an existing parking lot at the south end to the town and about one acre adjacent to the lot, and have sprinkler systems installed in each house.

The town is not extending water service to the property, a move that would jeopardize Topsail Beach from receiving future federal funding because the property is in the CBRS.

The town-maintained parking lot is owned by the McLeod family, members of whom attended the public hearing.

Tom Terrell, an attorney representing the family, said the family has kindly and graciously allowed the public to freely access the land for six decades.

“This family has a unique voice,” he said. “They have a special interest that nobody in this room has. They have been willing taxpayers of this property. It is their property.”

He asked the planning board to recognize that the McLeod family has property rights and argued that denying the rezoning request would be a first step in a taking of the property.

The planning board is scheduled to meet May 24 and is expected to make its recommendation on the rezoning request. The board must make its decision by May 30.

The recommendation will then go before Topsail Beach commissioners, who will also hold a public hearing on the request.

Dare County Board of Commissioners will hold a public hearing to give residents a chance to speak about a proposed amendment to the county’s cluster home development ordinance.

The hearing is set for 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 17, in the commissioners meeting room in the Dare County administration building, 954 Marshall C. Collins Drive, Manteo.   

The board of commissioners requested that the planning board review the cluster homes development ordinance. The planning board determined that the current ordinance allows for a level of density and scale in traditionally single-family districts that is not consistent with the intent of those districts, officials said.

The proposed amendment would remove cluster homes from being permitted in 22 districts in unincorporated Dare County, specifically residential single-family zoning districts that do not allow the development of multi-family units, according to the county.

If adopted, the proposed amendment would only impact future cluster home developments within the unincorporated areas of the county following the date of its adoption. Changes to the ordinance would not impact cluster home developments that have already been approved or applications already submitted.

For more information, contact Dare County Planning Director Noah Gillam at Noah.Gillam@DareNC.gov or 252-475-5873, or visit www.DareNC.gov/Planning.

This story was updated to clarify information on the tentative date of a public hearing on a proposed zoning amendment unrelated to the Wanchese cluster home decision.

By a unanimous vote Monday, the Dare County Board of Commissioners approved a special use permit for a proposed cluster development on about 10.5 acres along Old Wharf Road in Wanchese.

The vote was 5-0 with Commissioners Ervin Bateman and Jim Tobin recused.

The proposed project site will feature 60 two- and three-bedroom homes, according to plans submitted by Brad Alexander, owner of Aria Construction & Development of Creswell.

The vote followed a sometimes noisy and angry public comment period with residents of the unincorporated village of Wanchese telling county commissioners they believed they had been betrayed. Frustrated that zoning changes made in 2018 allowed for cluster, or high-density, development in the village, residents directed their frustration at commissioners, telling them numerous times during the meeting that they had lost their constituents’ votes.

“I’m only one vote but it can be multiplied,” Wanchese resident Nan Willis told the board.

The 2018 changes were geared toward addressing the county’s shortage of affordable housing.

Wanchese residents Monday repeatedly pointed to the Wanchese Village Residential Zoning District ordinance passed by the county in 2006 that they believed would preserve the “village feel” of the community. Several speakers noted that the 2018 zoning amendments were poorly advertised and that residents were not aware of the changes.

Residents, however, were concerned about more than whether the cluster development would change the nature of the village. Of particular concern was stormwater in an area that historically has poor drainage.

Rex Mann noted that during periods of heavy rain Wanchese was prone to flooding and that “the county has had to pay to have low-lying areas pumped. Even with retention ponds the ground can only accept so much water and when it can’t accept any more, it comes up in a different area.”

The project site is forested, and a number of residents brought up the impact of losing so many trees.

Their concerns were buttressed by Alyson Flynn, coastal advocate and environmental economist with the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Wanchese office. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review. Flynn asked the county to withhold issuing special use permits until a county engineer could be hired to approve the developer’s plan, as stipulated under the stormwater management heading in the county development ordinance.

“Specifically tonight, the Federation requests that no approval be granted for special use permit applications falling under the cluster home ordinance for unincorporated Dare county until an engineer is on staff or at a minimum contracted on behalf of the county,” she told commissioners, noting that the planning department in issuing a permit was relying on engineers hired by the applicant.

Despite the concerns, the commissioners may have had no choice regarding the permit. County Manager Bobby Outten, who also serves as the county attorney, advised commissioners that, under state law, if a special use permit meets all the established requirements, the board must vote to approve.

Stormwater plans are not a condition of approval. Nonetheless, commissioners in their comments expressed unease at the density of the planned development.

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the kind of density that is being proposed,” Commissioner Danny Couch said.

His observation was echoed by Vice Chair Wally Overman.

For Alexander, the developer, the vote was a relief and a chance to perhaps change the village residents’ perception.

“Hopefully everybody’s emotions will kind of die down and down the road they’ll see that it’s not as bad as they think it is,” he said.

In the wake of the Wanchese cluster development controversy, Dare County is reevaluating the 2018 cluster home development in unincorporated areas, with possible revisions and deletions of districts where cluster homes may be built, according to a memo in the agenda packet for Monday.

Public comment was initially set for the June 5 commissioner’s meeting, but the board instead set May 17 as the tentative date for the hearing.

MANTEO – Advocates say would-be homebuyers and current oceanfront property owners in North Carolina have long needed clearer rules and updated information as climate change increases the risks of damage and flooding.

Two unrelated, but long-sought actions taken last week by the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission seek to clarify two persistent issues: septic systems on the public beach, and residential flooding.

With two dozen or so septic tanks and their various parts scattered on the beaches of Cape Hatteras National Seashore last year after the collapse of three large beach houses into the ocean in the village of Rodanthe, gaps in regulations and enforcement became glaringly self-evident. Concerns also were renewed that some owners of the damaged or destroyed properties seemed to be uninformed about the risk of beach erosion, storm tides and flood damage.

The commission, which met Thursday in Manteo, voted unanimously to approve an amended septic rule. Although the changes did not address all the complexities of ocean shoreline septic issues, they specify what is allowed in repairing or moving septic systems on an eroding ocean beach, and are the first update since the recent spate of beach house collapses.

According to the updated rule, if a septic system on the oceanfront is battered by storm tide, repairs can be done in place without a permit. Otherwise, the replacement or relocation of any septic system seaward of the vegetation line needs a permit.

“The idea here is we’re trying to get them off the public beach,” Division of Coastal Management Deputy Director Mike Lopazanski said during a presentation at the Coastal Resources Advisory Committee meeting Wednesday in Manteo. The panel advises the commission on local government matters.

Ocean beaches from the foreshore to the low-tide line are in the public trust in North Carolina. That part of the beach within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore is also public land, National Park Service property. The relevant state statute defines the public trust beach as the wet sand area that “is subject to regular flooding by tides and the dry sand area of the beach that is subject to occasional flooding by tides, including wind tides other than those resulting from a hurricane or tropical storm.”

Lopazanski said the amended septic rule also directs the Division of Coastal Management to make allowances for areas impacted by hurricanes and tropical storms, where septic systems may be damaged by overwash or burial of the vegetation line. The systems, which the general statute defines as the septic tank, the pump tank and the ground absorption field, can still be repaired or relocated to restore their function and avoid impacts to the public trust beach, he said.

In decisions to repair or relocate, components are considered separate structures. If they cannot be repaired in place, they would be subject to erosion-rate-based setbacks that apply to other oceanfront structures. Septic systems will not be permitted separately when an owner seeks a permit to build in a coastal zone.

Also, National Flood Insurance Program staff clarified that public funds are not available for moving septic systems, Lopazanski said. Flood insurance payouts are not considered public funds.

A public hearing on the amended rule is expected to be held in early fall.

Flood history disclosure

After another presentation by Department of Environmental Quality Assistant General Counsel Christine A. Goebel about a petition for rulemaking with the N.C. Real Estate Commission that is proposing to add information about a property’s flood history and flood risk to the real estate disclosure form, the commission agreed to send a letter in support of the changes to the Real Estate Commission.

Outer Banks Association of Realtors Government Affairs Director Donna Creef said that the Outer Banks agents were concerned about access to flood information, some of which may be available only to engineers. Flood history also may not be available to a broker, or be limited by privacy strictures. She noted that buyers should be advised of the value of having a flood insurance policy, no matter the requirement in the designated flood zone.

Coastal Resources Advisory Committee member Spencer Rogers, a coastal erosion specialist who retired last year after 40 years with N.C. Sea Grant, recommended including the beach erosion rate in disclosures. He suggested including information about a provision in state law that requires a builder to move a property that is imminently threatened for a period of eight years. The threat could be mitigated by beach protections such as sandbags or beach nourishment. Rogers said that to his knowledge, the requirement had never been applied.

The commission agreed to add the additional information to the letter of support for the disclosure requirement changes.

The rulemaking petition was filed in January by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of five nonprofit organizations and asks the Real Estate Commission to update the disclosure form with five additional questions that would require a seller or the seller’s agent to disclose the flood information.

As it’s now written, the Real Estate Commission’s disclosure statement — the sole required disclosure document by sellers to prospective buyers — does not include information about flooding.

“The current Disclosure Statement does not solicit adequate information related to a property’s flood history and flood risk,” the proposed rule amendment said. “A home that has flooded once is likely to flood again. Providing homebuyers with information about the potential flood risk that comes with a home will enable buyers to take appropriate steps to mitigate damages, including by purchasing flood insurance.”

According to the petition, North Carolina experienced 4,382 flooding events between 1996 and 2021, resulting in 72 deaths and nearly $1.7 billion in property and crop damage.

“Many North Carolina counties have experienced increased catastrophic flooding in recent years, with some experiencing multiple major flooding disasters,” according to the document. “Since 1977, North Carolina has seen 29 major federal disasters declared for events that caused major flood damage in one or more counties.”

In her presentation, Goebel said that a study in 2021, “North Carolina Coastal Hazards Disclosures in Real Estate Transactions,” by then-third-year University of North Carolina law student Anderson Tran, recommended that North Carolina build on the disclosure form used by Texas, which was called one of the best in the country.

The proposed rule changes were published in the March 15 North Carolina Register. Comments will be accepted through May 15, and the proposed effective date is July 1.

Correction: This report originally misidentified Justin Bateman of Wanchese.

Wanchese residents and others in Dare County say a proposed 60-unit cluster development at the intersection of Old Wharf Road and Brinkley Drive would forever change the coastal village’s tight-knit community character.

Turnout was heavy Monday for the lengthy Dare County Board of Commissioners meeting in Manteo, where many spoke out during the public hearing against the requested special use permit for the development.

The board delayed its decision until next month to allow time for gathering more information, particularly regarding updates to a traffic study that had been conducted when there are far fewer vehicles than during vacation season.

In addition to traffic worries, those in attendance expressed concerns about whether the 10.5-acre site was suitable for the proposed density and about the adequacy of sewage treatment and stormwater management plans.

Issuance of a special use permit requires a quasi-judicial hearing in North Carolina and a vote to approve by, in this case, Dare County commissioners. But after five and half hours of discussion, commissioners voted instead to table the decision until the May 1 meeting.

Developer Brad Alexander of Aria Construction & Development Inc. of Creswell was present for the hearing. His company has been active in Outer Banks construction for almost 20 years. During that time, Aria has built numerous single-family dwellings in residential areas of Dare County and rental properties as large as 7,000 square feet. But that history didn’t allay Wanchese residents’ concerns.

Several speakers addressed Alexander directly in their comments.

“After all this uproar and pushback from the community, why do you still continue to want to do this?” Asked Justin Bateman, the first speaker of the evening, who described himself as an “eighth-generation Wancheser.”  

Residential cluster developments are seen as a way to maximize the number of homes possible in a limited space. Lot sizes are small, theoretically allowing for shared infrastructure and more efficient use of emergency services.

Often in suburban and rural communities, cluster developments have their own green space requirements. However, the Dare County cluster development ordinance includes no such requirement.

Alexander said his firm would retain a thin buffer of trees.

The proposed Villages at Old Wharf Road cluster home development features 36 two- bedroom homes at 960 square feet and 24 three-bedroom homes of 1,120 square feet.

Alexander said during the hearing that the two-bedroom homes would be tentatively offered at $299,000 and the three-bedroom homes at $399,000.  However, he noted, prices could change due to market conditions.

Windsor attorney Lloyd C. Smith III, who represented Aria Construction, called a number of witnesses to the stand including the site engineer and the owner of the septic system that would be installed.

During the legal proceedings, Alexander was asked about the homes themselves and he pushed back on a recurring complaint that they were mobile homes on stilts.

Asked by Commission Chair Bob Woodard if the construction was to be “…just like other beach boxes…” Alexander was emphatic in his reply.

“They will all be stick-built houses,” he said.

In 2006, Dare County approved the Wanchese Village Residential Zoning District as a way to preserve the village feel of the unincorporated community. At that time, residents believed zoning would protect the village from overdevelopment.

Cluster development was added as a special use in the Wanchese district in 2018. Residents and representatives of the Wanchese Preservation Alliance claim the zoning change was put into place without the knowledge of the residents of the village.

Several at the meeting were worried that the proposed development site, which is now undeveloped, has poor drainage. Some voiced concern about stormwater runoff from the site and whether the on-site sewage system would pollute groundwater.

Smith, the attorney, asked site engineer Rick House to the podium to testify during the hearing about stormwater management and sewage treatment.

House said the planned stormwater collection system for the development would collect twice the amount of stormwater required by state regulations.

House also pointed out that the sewage system to be used for the development was a TS2 system that produced significantly cleaner effluent than a typical system used for a single home. The TS2 system uses drainfields more efficiently, he said.

Coastal Advocate and Environmental Economist Alyson Flynn based at the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s Wanchese office said during the public comment portion of the meeting that the state’s stormwater rules did not adequately address Wanchese residents’ flooding concerns.

“The North Carolina coastal stormwater program only regulates water quality impacts from stormwater runoff. The state program is not designed to protect people our property from being flooded … by this or any or future projects,” she said.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Commissioners themselves did not raise specific concerns about the project until Jody Lewis, senior project manager at engineering firm VHB, presented his traffic analysis.

Chairman Woodard wanted to know how frequently and when the traffic counts for the study were done. When told that the counts included two days in February and another, March 1, Woodard and other commissioners expressed dismay about the timing.

“I would seem to think that we would have a lot different findings in May, June, July, August and September,” said Woodard.

Lewis agreed the timing would likely change the numbers.

TOPSAIL BEACH – The countdown is on for the Topsail Beach Planning Board to make a recommendation on whether to rezone a portion of “The Point,” a locally beloved stretch of undeveloped waterfront property at the southern tip of Topsail Island.

Details of a master development plan submitted on behalf of Todd Olson, a Raleigh software entrepreneur who is under contract to buy the nearly 150-acre tract, were discussed during the town planning board’s meeting Monday morning.

The meeting kickstarted a 65-day timer in which the board must either recommend approving or denying Olson’s request to rezone a little more than 30 acres of the property from conservation to conditional use.

Olson declined to speak at the meeting Monday, but land surveyor Charles Riggs walked planning board members and dozens of property owners, most of whom oppose the rezoning request, through the proposed plans.

Those plans call for building seven single-family homes and a swimming pool near the center of the property, walkway water accesses and a boat dock for six vessels.

Olson has offered to work with the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust to permanently conserve the remaining 119 or so acres.

The offer did not appear to appease those at the meeting who oppose development of the site.

Dr. Rob Young, professor of coastal geology and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, stated in a letter to the planning board, “Any willingness of the Coastal Land Trust to accept the remaining property as conservation easement should not be a consideration.”

“It is likely much of that additional land will be gone in the future,” Young wrote.

He and others who spoke during the meeting pointed out that most of the property is within a federally designated Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS, area. The Reagan-era law to reduce federal coastal disaster expenditures and protect natural resources restricts federal funding and financial assistance.

Though development is not prohibited in the CBRS, building is discouraged. Property owners of land within the CBRS do not qualify for federal assistance, including the National Flood Insurance Program, and loans for public roads or utilities and disaster relief are prohibited.

An official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees CBRS mapping, noted in an email to the town that utility service may be extended to a unit within the system only if federal funds are not used to pay for its construction or future costs, including maintenance and repairs. Service from any federally funded sources are prohibited from being extended into a CBRS unit.

“If any of the utilities were constructed using federal loans and grants, or expect to receive federal assistance for future maintenance and repair, they cannot be used to supply services to the proposed development (within the CBRS unit), even if the connection point is outside of the unit,” Kathy Matthews, renewable energy coordinator and fish and wildlife biologist with the service’s Raleigh office, wrote in the email. “I just wanted to clarify the Service’s long-standing legal opinion.”

State and federal agencies asked to weigh in on the proposed rezoning and subsequent development noted a variety of concerns, including potential issues with on-site septic systems and adverse impacts to endangered and threatened species, including piping plover, red knot and sea turtles.

More than 2,600 have signed an online petition opposing the proposed rezoning.

After the planning board makes its recommendation, the request then goes to the town’s board of commissioners. Both boards will host public hearings prior to voting on the request.

An updated proposal to build on land at the south end of Topsail Island is expected to be discussed by the Topsail Beach Planning Board next week.

The board is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Monday in the Assembly Building at 720 Channel Blvd.

Todd Olson, the prospective owner of the land referred to locally as “The Point,” is requesting the town conditionally rezone a little more than 30 acres of the nearly 150-acre tract so that he may build seven single-family homes on the land.

The rest of the nearly 120 acres would remain a conservation zone as classified by the town, and the family would partner with the N.C. Coastal Land Trust, according to the proposed plans.

The Coastal Land Trust released information on its website stating that the Olsons are proposing to place most of the property under a conservation easement with the land trust, “which would permanently restrict residential and commercial development on that portion of the property.”

“The Coastal Land Trust views this as an excellent and feasible way to permanently conserve the majority of this outstanding property. It is the next best alternative to purchasing The Point which has proven to be very difficult given the price of the property, the challenges of obtaining funding for the purchase through public grant sources and private fundraising, and the constraints in managing the property,” the statement reads.

The proposal to rezone the land, which has accreted over time, has been met with fierce opposition from residents and visitors to the town.

Olson’s proposal includes building seven, one-story homes on pilings, a swimming pool and pool house, maintenance building and garage, and beach access and pedestrian water access.

The land is within a federally designated area called the Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS.

Though building is permitted in the system, property owners of land within the CBRS do not qualify for federal funding, including Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance or the National Flood Insurance Program.

The meeting will be aired live at https://www.facebook.com/townoftopsailbeach.

Comments and questions may be submitted to the board at https://form.jotform.com/230533813570047

Before 9:30 a.m. Monday. Supporting documents are available at  www.topsailbeachnc.gov.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Special Report: Houses on the Edge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore are hosting by web conference an interagency work group meeting this month to discuss property acquisition and financial assistance for owners with threatened oceanfront homes.

The public may listen by computer or phone.

The Threatened Oceanfront Structures Interagency Work Group is to meet at 1 p.m. Feb. 27 via WebEx. Join by computer using meeting number 2435 125 4862, or call 1-415-655-0003 using access code 2435 125 4862 and password IWGFEB23, or 49433223 from phones.

Panelists will discuss property acquisition and financial assistance programs that may assist both owners of threatened oceanfront structures and federal, state or local governments responsible for beach management.

Three vacation houses in Rodanthe collapsed into the ocean in 2022. Several more remained perilously close to the ocean.

Special Report: Houses on the Edge

The work group was established in August 2022 to engage with partner organizations and stakeholders to identify, research and recommend policies and programs to establish a proactive, holistic, predictable and coordinated approach to erosion-threatened structures and to ensure that appropriate regulatory, legal, insurance, and financial mechanisms exist.

Submit comments by email to DCMcomments@ncdenr.gov. List “Threatened Oceanfront Structures” in the subject line.

RODANTHE — A new bridge has bypassed a dangerous and persistent ocean overwash problem on the roadway on the north end of Hatteras Island. Now residents of this tiny village are looking for beach nourishment to protect their homes from washing into the ocean.

The reason that Rodanthe is at risk is the same reason that a shoreline protection project would be very difficult: the unmanageable forces of geology, erosion and sea level rise.

“Look at the shape of the coast from Rodanthe down to Waves and Salvo, a broad convex to the shoreline,” Tim Kana, owner of Columbia, South Carolina-based Coastal Science & Engineering and a professional geologist, explained to Coastal Review. “You’re eroding at Rodanthe and accreting at Waves and Salvo. This crescent moon is just shifting down the coast.”

Averaging 14 feet per year and as much as 20 feet at times in some sections of beach, Rodanthe has one of the highest erosion rates on the East Coast, and in recent years it’s been accelerating. Homes that had many yards of beach out front when purchased are now sitting at the edge of the surf. Last year, three of them collapsed into the sea, and others now must be relocated back from the shoreline to prevent the same fate.

Special Report: Houses on the Edge

Without an infusion of lots of state or federal money, or enormous amounts of local tax revenue, the prospect of a new shoreline protection project for privately owned properties would be impossible.

At a standing-room-only community meeting held by Dare County Jan. 18 in Rodanthe, county manager Bobby Outten told residents that the first step in looking at beach nourishment is getting an update on the erosion rate provided in a 2013 study done by Kana’s firm that estimated a $20 million cost to widen Rodanthe’s beaches.

“We know that’s not going to be enough,” he said.

In a slide presentation, Outten gave an overview of beach nourishment projects in the county, starting with Nags Head in 2011. After the federal government declined to fund a planned project, the county stepped in and paid half the costs out of a special fund it created with 2% of its annual occupancy tax revenue. Since then, the county has continued sharing costs with numerous other town projects in the county, as well as its own in the unincorporated villages of Avon and Buxton.

Today, there is about $6 million available in the fund, he said, and to fund just the prior $20 million estimate for Rodanthe nourishment, the county would need $30 million.

“The question is, ‘how are we going to pay for this?’” he said. “That fund is not going to grow fast enough.”

The tax value generated from the combined 81 or so properties in Rodanthe would also fall woefully short.

Outten added that Dare County and other coastal communities in North Carolina have been asking the state to establish a recurring fund to help pay for nourishment projects.

“I’ll tell you, it’s not just us,” he said. “We’re all working all angles we can.”

In Dare County alone, two other areas — the “canal zone” on N.C. Highway 12 south of the Basnight Bridge and the Isabel Inlet area on N.C. 12 in Buxton — are subject to severe erosion. But those areas are part of a critical public transportation route. Rodanthe’s oceanfront area, on the other hand, is unlikely to be eligible for public funds because, although the beaches are part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the affected property is mostly vacation homes that are privately owned.

During the public comment period, Jett Ferebee, who owns a campground in Rodanthe, said that because the National Park Service owns the public beach, the situation is different than the other areas of the county.

“If we lose the entire beach in Rodanthe, I would declare that’s an impairment of the our National Park system,” he said. “Rodanthe, we’re sitting here, an unincorporated village, we really don’t have much representation. We need some federal help.”

Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said that National Park Service policy does not permit spending public funds to protect private property. Not only are hundreds of parks competing for slim funds, there are numerous park needs and projects on the Outer Banks, including severe erosion on Ocracoke Island, that is threatening the National Seashore and N.C. 12.

Dare County, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the state, is not a poor or underserved county, so it does not qualify for government funds that are intended to help less wealthy populations and communities. That was part of the reason that Rodanthe was largely unsuited for a recent state grant program to buy out at-risk homes, Outten said.

Outten said he is trying to see what the options are, and the first step is finding out what the current erosion rate is and how much cubic yardage of sand would be required to do a nourishment project. The $35,000 update, which would provide a “rough estimate” of the extent of the project, would likely take 90-120 days to complete.

Kana, who said that work had not yet begun, explained that Rodanthe is not only challenging because of the high erosion rate, but also because it doesn’t have much naturally deposited sand available near shore, so it would have to be found farther offshore.

But it’s hard to know what to expect before doing the updated engineering work.

“Rodanthe is more exposed with the curvature of the shoreline right there,” Kana said. “The only way you can address that is with sand-retaining structures.”

But those structures are not permitted on ocean shorelines in North Carolina.

With so much erosion and storm damage happening nationwide, finding enough public money is at best extremely competitive.

“What I heard from that meeting is that new beach nourishment in Dare County is basically dead,” said Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. “It was a very straightforward presentation.”

Young said he appreciated Outten’s frankness with Rodanthe residents about the situation. “That’s certainly not what they wanted to hear,” Young said.

Young, who attended the meeting, said he was disappointed to not hear a discussion of future buyouts. “What threatens the beach is development,” he said. “It’s not the park service’s job to hold the beach because there’s development there.”

Young said that with enough money, beach nourishment could buy time in Rodanthe to establish a buyout program, he said.

“It’s the best long-term solution,” he said of buyouts.

Second of two-part special series. Read part 1.

In Currituck County, on the northern Outer Banks, the maritime forests grow thick with southern live oaks. These trees can live up to 300 years, their twisted trunks spiraling out of sandy soil all the way down the Carolina coast. For centuries, they have borne witness to changing communities and landscapes.

On this 11-mile stretch, also known as “Carova” or “the 4×4,” which goes from the North Carolina-Virginia line to the start of the paved road in Corolla, there is a diverse range of ecosystems. The Atlantic Ocean swells, and stiff winds pound the exposed homes on the eastern side of the barrier island. Moving west toward Currituck Sound, the forest grows thicker before transitioning into marshy wetlands alongside a set of man-made canals. At the northern gates to False Cape State Park in Virginia, the forest grows tall enough to make you forget there is a beach nearby.

It was Carova’s natural beauty and quiet serenity that struck both Edna Baden and Elizabeth White, Carova residents since 1994 and 2004, respectively, inspiring them to move permanently.

Maintaining protected, undisturbed areas also is important for the survival of a 500-year-old herd of wild Colonial Spanish mustangs that are a unique breed roaming 7,544 acres of beach, wetlands and forest that surround the 700 houses dotting the landscape.

Legend has it that today’s herd is composed of the descendants of horses left behind when Spanish settlers arrived on the North Carolina coast in the late 1500s. DNA testing by the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, a nonprofit founded in 1989 to protect the horses, supports this theory. Their research confirms that the Corolla wild horses are genetically isolated from other wild horse herds like their northern neighbors, the wild ponies of Chincoteague and Assateague islands.

The herd used to roam freely from the town of Duck up to the Virginia line. But when developers extended the paved road north to Corolla in the 1980s, the fund recorded more than 30 horse fatalities caused by the increased traffic on N.C. Highway 12. The organization decided in 1997 to create a sanctuary in the off-road area to protect the 20 remaining horses. The herd’s population today is roughly 100 horses.

Meg Puckett is a native Virginian who joined the Corolla Wild Horse Fund in 2016 as herd manager. She is on call 24/7 to respond to emergencies and monitor the animals’ behavior, migration habits, and general health and welfare. Because residents see the horses daily, and often know them well enough to identify them by name, Puckett frequently gets phone calls with news about a particular animal’s activity. In that way, the horses are also part of this community.

Yet, Puckett stressed that the horses are wild animals, different from domestic horses, so the fund tries to keep their intervention as minimal as possible. But she said that the changing environment threatens the horses to such an extent that the fund has had to intervene multiple times over the past few years to keep the animals alive.

“We had one mare that died from a disease called Potomac Horse Fever, which is caused by mayfly larva in the water. That’s something that normally would be killed off in a deep freeze, but we’re not getting deep freezes,” Puckett said. Another horse recently died on the beach after suffering heat stroke.

There have also been three confirmed cases and a fourth suspected case of equine pythiosis, commonly called swamp cancer, over the past two years, including one mare who had to be evacuated and now lives on the mainland. The Chincoteague herd also lost a few horses to the disease a few years ago. “That’s an infection that historically had really only been seen in more tropical climates,” Puckett said.

The infection is caused by fungal growth in decaying plant matter that is left in standing water. Irregular weather patterns driven by climate change bring intense rainfall and drought, creating patches of standing water, especially on beach roads where tire tracks have created indentations in the sand.

“We’ll get heavy flooding rain and then nothing. So you just have this stagnant water and then it never rains again to flush it out of there,” Puckett said.

Contaminated water is also an issue for people living on a shallow water table with no coordinated sewage-management system. Groundwater is only a few feet deep on most lots. Baden said everybody used to drink water straight from the tap, but no one does anymore.

Steve Grout, another longtime Carova resident, concurred. “Most people spend thousands of dollars on water filtration systems just to get stuff that comes out clear,” he said. “For most people, it comes out of their faucets brown.”

“All of this is tied into humans,” Puckett said. “When you start messing with the marsh … it’s supposed to flood, it’s supposed to filter that water. And when it can’t do that, that’s when you start to see problems.”

The Chowanog, Yeopin and Poteskyte Native Americans are the original inhabitants of Currituck County. Seasonal settlers like fishermen, lightkeepers, waterfowl hunters and the U.S. Coast Guard have passed through for centuries.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that commercial development was poised to begin in earnest in Carova as developers from Virginia Beach looked to expand. Vehicle traffic skyrocketed along the beaches, prompting the U.S. Department of the Interior to get involved and restrict vehicle access in 1973. Today, Carova remains free of high-rises and commercial development and is a prime destination for vacationers and second-home buyers.

“Its attraction is that it is a relatively free area in terms of regulation,” said Clark Twiddy, president of Twiddy & Co., an Outer Banks property management company. “Swan Beach, North Swan and Carova have, I think, always held this place in our imagination as a free, natural environment with a minimum of human disturbance or human intrusion.”

But escaping to a seemingly wide-open space is inherently intrusive.

Along Carova’s sand roads, bulldozers idle over piles of fallen branches and dug-up sand. Horses graze between “for sale” and “no trespassing” signs on every corner.

The maritime forest grows behind the dunes, but the tree roots stretch under vacant lots awaiting clearing. Despite a designation under the Coastal Barrier Resources System, which strips federal funding to disincentivize development in storm-prone areas, single-family homes continue to spring up.

Many residents turn to work in the construction, real estate or tourism industries, which can contribute to the destruction of the environment they also aim to protect. And with the rise in lot sales over the past three years, more lots are always in need of clearing.

This gives Baden pause. “I bought my house when it was 10 years old,” she said. “For all I know, my lot could have had live oak trees.”

The lot next to Baden’s house was recently razed. Her neighbor, J-P Peron, a real estate agent and Carova resident, sold it to someone who may well become another neighbor. She watched as another neighbor cleared it. Baden refuses to walk on the lot — she feels bad energy. A lot of deaths happened there.

There’s also extensive construction in wetlands and other flood-vulnerable areas. Many of these places are on the Currituck Sound side and are likely to be underwater when sea levels rise a foot, which is almost certain to happen by 2050. More intense hurricanes, driven by climate change, on top of higher sea levels are also expected to cause more frequent floods in the coming decades.

Already in Swan Beach, which lies on lowland marsh, residents deal with flooding on a regular basis. To build in this area, property owners must bring in truckloads of sand to fill in low spots and create space for septic tanks and water systems.

“I’m astonished that they’re building where there are wetlands,” White said. “I never thought the area in front of my house would be developed because it’s clearly all wetlands, and the water needs to go somewhere.”

There are few regulations for building in Currituck County, in general, and the lack of federal support does little to hamper construction for those who can afford it. Also at issue is that the northern Outer Banks are in a roughly yearlong drought, according to White and her partner Bill Sanderlin. A common hangout area for the horses in Swan is usually waist-high with water but is completely dry these days. White and Sanderlin pointed out that many of Swan Beach’s roads are flooded 50% of the year, perhaps tricking recent buyers into thinking the land is drier than it is.

This is not enough for real estate companies to turn buyers away, however. “If you’re in the real estate business, you disclose things. And the only sin is a failure to disclose,” Twiddy said.

Once people are settled as full-time residents, it’s both common practice and a common pipe dream to try and prevent others from moving there too, whether it is to preserve the privacy of their space or, like Baden and White, to prevent more deforestation and conserve more space for the horses.

“The best buyers for vacant lots are the houses next door to them. If you’ve got the means and the opportunity arises, you jump on it,” Peron said. “I bought a lot to the south of me. I have not been able to buy a lot to the north of me. I’ve been trying for over a decade.”

“You picked that lot because it was so nice and open,” he continued, “but the last thing you want is to have a big, honkin’ house 20 feet away from you.”

The horses play into this land-grab effort, too. Residents are working to buy land and take it out of development so that the horses have enough room to roam and space to take shelter in case of extreme weather.

“The idea is to raise enough money so that we can buy all the land in a corridor that would connect from Swan Beach up to the Virginia line,” White said, who is helping with this project.

Twice, Peron has been able to get sellers to donate their lots to the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, especially in areas that are difficult to build on. Puckett is all for this practice: “I think that any lot that you take out of development is a good thing.”

Carova’s Climate Future

Climate threats are coming for Carova, and soon. What remains murky is what residents in the 4×4 area and people across the state are going to do about it.

One state project working on the ground is the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, facilitated by the state Division of Coastal Management, which aims to provide communities with expertise and funding to complete resilience and adaptation projects. Currituck County representatives participate, but the county’s only listed project within the 4×4 area is a shoreline stabilization study to explore beach nourishment.

Farther south, on Pine Island sanctuary in Currituck Sound, Audubon North Carolina is beginning some marsh restoration pilot projects to strengthen eroding shorelines and elevate sinking wetlands through sediment application and creating structures with natural materials like Christmas trees.

The benefits that come from buying up neighboring lots can extend beyond the horses, helping improve ecosystem connectivity for other wildlife. “We are all here for a reason. The isolation, the environment. It behooves us all to protect it,” Puckett said. “If I’m protecting the horses, that means I’m also protecting the environment. If it’s healthy enough for the horses, it’s going to be healthy enough for all the rest of the animals.”

Yet, none of these projects will substantially help Carova residents prepare for higher seas, stronger storms, fiercer heat waves, or the other climate threats that are predicted to come their way.

Edward Ponton, who is one of the only full-time residents born and reared in the 4×4, wonders if these threats and other hardships are taken less seriously because people with multiple homes can escape. The Pontons are one of the families who have made Swan Beach their home for generations, and they don’t plan on leaving any time soon.

“You just wonder if some of those people are going to make their money and get out of here and we will be left with whatever is to come,” Ponton said. “My dad always likes to say piracy is alive and well on the Outer Banks.”

This is the second in a two-part special reporting series on climate change along the northern Outer Banks. Read part one here. This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

First in a two-part special series.

On a blustery day in September, Edward Ponton studies an incoming storm as the afternoon rain meets the ocean. He points north, calling attention to the backs of the rolling waves, indicating a southeast swell. It’s the remnants of Hurricane Fiona making its way up the North Carolina coast.

“There’s something down there,” Ponton warns. “If it’s coming across a certain way, you have to be prepared … and that would have been 100 years ago, how people knew there was a storm coming.”

Ponton’s family has been a multi-generational presence in the Northern Currituck Outer Banks since the early 1960s, when Buddy Ponton, his father, came south from Virginia Beach to fish and build a family home.

From the North Carolina-Virginia line to the start of the paved road in Corolla, North Carolina, there are three unincorporated communities: Carova Beach, North Swan Beach and Swan Beach. This 11-mile stretch — often referred to as “Carova” or “the 4×4” — is the northernmost part of the Outer Banks, sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean to the east and the Currituck Sound to the west. The only way to access this area is by driving up N.C. Highway 12 in a four-wheel-drive vehicle until the two-lane highway becomes a beach.

Ponton’s memories span a lifetime of experience. He is the youngest “old-timer”: a resident who was born and raised in the area and who still lives there full time. In the lowlands where he rowed his canoe as a child, new houses now sprout up like weeds. A 500-year-old herd of protected wild horses grazes over 7,544 acres of land that their human neighbors are racing to buy up even as stronger storms and bigger floods threaten to cut the remote community off completely.

But the changing climate has not scared off longtime residents nor big developers seeking to capitalize on the booming tourism and second home market. In fact, with each passing year, it becomes more and more expensive to buy a home and live in Carova, especially in the face of increasing climate threats.

Understanding Carova

In the 4×4 area, there are no grocery stores, gas stations, or commercial businesses of any kind. There are no hospitals or healthcare providers, though the community does run a volunteer fire and rescue service. A tightknit community has formed from years spent out on their own.

In the 1960s, a Virginia Beach-based developer purchased land and subdivided it into one-third-acre lots. “Originally, the plans had been for the Ocean Highway to come down from Sandbridge (Virginia) down to Corolla. A lot of people don’t realize development here on the Currituck Banks started from the north,” Ponton said.

Now, a southern beach gate restricts the wild horses from moving into Corolla, and two northern gates restrict vehicle access into Virginia via False Cape State Park in Virginia. Those gates closed in the 1970s to vehicle traffic, angering residents who now must drive south to the Wright Memorial Bridge and head back north on the mainland to get to Virginia. Less than 20 old-timers still have keys to the northern gate — Ponton’s key will die with his father, Buddy.

Edna Baden was a weekend warrior before she moved full time to the Northern Outer Banks 28 years ago. There were only about 50 year-round residents then, which has grown to about 200 today. “When I moved here in 1994, there were only a handful of houses on the ocean. There were a lot of trailers still. They had little shack kind of places,” Baden said, referring to the Outer Banks’ classic stilted, trailer-style home.

Those original homes are now few and far between, nestled in thick maritime forest. Many of the old-timers settled on the Currituck Sound side, along man-made canals that give them boat access.

Today, there are more than 3,000 properties and 700 houses on this strip of barrier island. Many of those houses appear gargantuan against the dunes, with some of the oceanfront homes featuring more than 20 bedrooms and bathrooms.

It is surprising to see the size of these homes considering that the entirety of the northern Currituck Outer Banks is maintained under the Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS, which was created by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, signed into law by President Reagan in 1982.

The purpose of the law is to encourage land conservation and discourage development in storm-prone coastal areas by withdrawing federal funding from Coastal Barrier Resources Act areas, also known as CBRA zones. People who build within a CBRA zone cannot access the National Flood Insurance Program protection or federal disaster assistance money.

Click on the arrows in the top left of the above map to turn on boundaries such as CBRA zones.

In most cases, researchers have found that the act disincentivizes development in those areas. But in Carova’s case, it is a desirable enough destination that construction creeps in anyways, bringing in high-end development and people willing to pay exorbitantly high insurance rates.

High Seas Ahead

At milepost 16, a house called the Laughing Gull sticks out like a sore thumb, sitting so far out on the beach that cars have to weave around it to get by. It seems like it’s closer to washing away with each crashing wave.

Researchers say that in the United States, the East and Gulf coasts will bear the worst of sea level rise. Like watching your pillow spring back after you lift your head up, a melted glacier at the poles gets pushed up by water underneath it, sending the new ice melt far away — to places like the North Carolina coastline. Over the next three decades, sea levels are expected to rise 10 to 14 inches along the East Coast and 14 to 18 inches along the Gulf Coast, the highest levels in the United States.

Scientists can estimate this rise through 2050 because the oceans trap and store heat, so high greenhouse gas emissions now do not instantly translate to higher sea levels. Instead, the sea level rise over the next 30 years is based on the warming in our world today, and there is “virtually nothing that we can do about that,” said Daniel Gilford, climate scientist at Climate Central, a nonprofit organization that researches and reports the science and impacts of climate change.

This is happening while the Outer Banks are no longer naturally moving. Over time, the islands are supposed to gradually shift westward as ocean waves and winds from the east blow sand to build up the marshes on the west. But hard structures like buildings and roads stop that steady erosion and rebuilding from happening, and instead, there is erosion without addition, whittling the island away until someday, it might not be there at all.

On the northern Outer Banks, sea level rise will first hit areas along the Currituck Sound, the side that naturally should be rebuilding, since the marsh is closer to sea level. This inevitable rise is likely to swallow swampier areas near the Virginia border, around the man-made canals, and the entire Currituck National Wildlife Refuge.

Without extreme cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels could rise more than a foot by 2050. Beyond that, global action on climate change could mean the difference between 2, 4, or more feet of sea level rise by 2100.

“In the latter days of the 21st century, the sea level rise along the North Carolina coast is really going to be dramatically influenced by the decisions that we make right now,” Gilford said.

Today, the Laughing Gull stands alone — its neighbors were moved landward to behind the dunes as the tide encroached upon their foundations. But its survival is uncertain because rising seas are not the only climate concern in Carova. Hurricane Florence, a ferocious storm that hit in 2018 and was a $24 billion disaster, didn’t hit Carova as badly as other places along the Outer Banks. But the threat of hurricanes remains, and a warmer ocean can make hurricanes worse by fueling greater flooding and storm surges.

Hurricane response is complicated because of Carova’s designation in the Coastal Barrier Resources System, which bars federal flood insurance coverage, forcing property owners to turn to private insurance markets.

“The insurance on our house gets dropped every two or three years,” said Elizabeth White, a Swan Beach resident since 2004. She is a customer at Lloyd’s of London, which she says is some of the most expensive insurance on the market.

Paying the price

Living in Carova is no easy feat in itself. Since the area is zoned exclusively for low-density residential housing, increasingly large and expensive single-family homes are the only option for buyers. While the trend had been moving in this direction for a couple of decades, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated it.

“Sales went through the roof,” J-P Peron, a real estate agent and resident, said of the pandemic. “Overnight, my business quadrupled.” So many people were buying houses that Carova ran out of post office boxes and internet plans. People snatched up houses and land, making it even harder for the people who build, clean and service houses in Carova to live there, also.

Two of those builders are Steve Grout, a carpenter who has been a full-time Carova resident for more than a decade, and Alex, an immigrant day laborer. In September, they were working on renovating an oceanfront house that was weathered away by the wind and sea. But the new siding they were installing won’t last long, either, Grout said, as it’s hard to withstand the elements.

While Grout has a short commute to work each day, Alex lives on the Currituck County mainland and makes the two-and-a-half-hour round trip commute to Carova and back every day. “My family lives in Durham,” Alex explained, saying that he visits them every weekend, “but the rest of the time I stay out here in Powells Point.”

Powells Point is right across the Wright Memorial Bridge on the mainland, but even then, it can still take over an hour to reach Carova. Alex wishes that Carova had rentable accommodations so that he and his family, along with other workers, could live closer to the construction sites.

Because of the lack of affordable rental homes in Carova, and despite 80% of properties in the offroad area sitting empty, sourcing labor can be difficult and projects take longer to complete. Builders rely on workers like Alex, who are both skilled and dedicated, and Grout said they usually have to pay them more than a contractor would for similar work elsewhere.

At the construction site, Grout and Alex were preparing for the arrival of a crew from HGTV to film the house for an episode of the show “Beachfront Bargain Hunt.” Grout said their renovation faces unique limitations, compared to other homes that appear on the show.

“It’s hard for us because we can’t really find help out here. Normally, they probably have 30 guys out here and finish the whole project in a month,” Grout said. “But we don’t have that luxury.”

Clark Twiddy, president of Twiddy & Co., a property management company on the Outer Banks, sees that his employees who clean and service the rental homes face similar challenges. “The average cleaner for Twiddy & Co. drives 82 miles one-way,” he said. “The people who clean these homes by and large don’t live here.”

But without changing the area’s zoning to allow for multifamily housing or without a clear plan from the county or Twiddy & Co. about who is going to supply that housing, it is hard to see how people without considerable resources can afford the cost of living. “We as a destination will fail, period, unless we address housing in a meaningful way,” Twiddy said.

For those who are able to buy a house, they then need to be able to afford a car with four-wheel-drive, which quickly deteriorates from the sand and saltwater. “The life expectancy of a daily driver up here is between three and five years at most,” Peron said. “I’m on my sixth Ford Expedition for work. Then I’ve also gone through one Jeep Cherokee, two Jeep Grand Cherokees and one Jeep Commander.”

The expense of living in Carova is a factor of its remoteness, lack of federal infrastructure and exposure to the elements. In the face of imminent climate threats like storms and floods that “we live with all the time,” as Ponton described.

From an outside perspective, it can be hard to understand why people are willing to spend so much to live in a place as remote as Carova. Even when speaking with residents about their experiences, questions linger about why they choose to live there and whether they can do it sustainably.

Next in the series: Read about the steps that residents are taking to manage the environment around them, whether that is to protect the wild horses, the natural landscape, or their way of life. This series is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

Note to our regular readers: Coastal Review will not publish Dec. 23-27. Our next edition will be Dec. 28.

Pender County commissioners have narrowed the areas where solar farms may be developed, a move county officials say is not intended to be unsupportive of the alternative energy source, but gives them time to “properly regulate” it.

Commissioners unanimously amended a portion of Pender’s zoning text Dec. 5, less than a week after a California-based solar company filed a lawsuit against the county for turning down the company’s request for a special-use permit to build a 2,360-acre facility in the western part of the county.

Coastal Pine Solar LLC sought the permit to develop a proposed 200-megawatt farm on timberland within an area of the county zoned rural agricultural, or RA.

The freshly adopted text amendments to the county’s unified development ordinance no longer allow “other electric power generation” to be developed by way of a special use permit in RA, residential performance and planned development zoning districts. “Other electric power generation” includes solar, wind and tidal-generated power.

“Since there’s no special-use permit their only option as far as pursuing a sight plan approval for solar would be to go through the conditional rezoning process,” Justin Brantley, Pender’s interim planning and community development director, said during the board’s Dec. 5 meeting. “At that point the planning board and board of commissioners have far more flexibility approving or denying those projects or requiring specific conditions.”

The amendments also stripped large-scale commercial alternative power generation as a use allowed by right within the county’s industrial transitional and general industrial zoning districts. A special-use permit must now be obtained to develop in those districts.

Brantley said the county’s land use plan “strongly supports” the adoption of specific standards for alternative energy development within the county.

Such standards could include requiring setbacks, buffers, maintenance plans and decommissioning plans. A majority of Pender’s neighboring counties have at least some combination of those special standards in place.

Brantley said Pender residents who’ve spent their lifetimes living in rural parts of the county may not be ready for “that type of change,” or what a large-scale solar farm might bring.

“That’s why we want to explore text amendments that support stronger buffers, requiring a vegetative buffer, nondisturbed, around the perimeter, preservation of wetlands, setbacks from wetlands, that sort of thing,” he said. “Pender County highly values its agricultural heritage here and while we may encourage solar farms to some extent we want to find a balance there to balance those existing agriculture uses and new forms of energy.”

“This is not saying that Pender County does not support solar farms,” said Commissioner Chairwoman Jackie Newton. “It’s just properly regulating” it.

In a court petition filed Nov. 30 in Pender County Superior Court by Coastal Pine’s attorneys, the company states it presented “voluminous written materials, expert reports, and the testimony of five expert witnesses” to show all of the county’s standards had been met to obtain a special-use permit.

That evidence was presented during a Sept. 19 hearing before the board of commissioners.

In the end, commissioners disregarded the evidence, did not base its findings on the county’s special-use permit standards, and misapplied a provision in the county’s zoning ordinance, according to the lawsuit. Coastal Pine presented the county with a decommissioning plan.

The suit also states that one county commissioner, through his own admission during the September hearing, said he’d spoken with farmers “and those conversations had an impact on him.” Coastal Pine’s attorneys call those conversations, which the commissioner disclosed after the public hearing, “improper” and caused him to pre-form an opinion.

“Evidence in zoning quasi-judicial matters is defined and treated the same as evidence in court,” Tom Terrell Jr., an attorney representing Coastal Pine, wrote in an email responding to questions earlier this week. “Opinions are not considered evidence, and judges are not allowed to base their decision on unsworn testimony from the man on the street who has not heard the evidence and whose statements are not subject to cross-examination.”

Terrell, a Greensboro-based attorney and partner with Fox Rothschild LLP, said in a Dec. 19 email he was not aware commissioners had adopted the zoning text amendments.

Coastal Pines asks the court to reverse the board of commissioner’s decision and remand with instructions to issue the special-use permit.

Pender County hosts several solar farms, including a 675-acre, 105-megawatt facility that generates energy to international pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk.

According to the Solar Energies Industry Association latest published data, North Carolina is ranked fourth nationally in solar power with more than 8,000 megawatts of solar installed, enough to power more than 955,000 homes.

The total solar investment in the state is $11 billion.

Second in a series.

RODANTHE — As every nor’easter blows over the Outer Banks this winter, what is top of mind for many is whether another sagging oceanfront house along the Hatteras Island beaches will succumb to the pounding waves of the Atlantic.

With a total of three large houses collapsing into the ocean so far this year, numerous oceanfront property owners in Rodanthe are scrambling to obtain permits and contractors to move their houses back from the severely eroded beach. A few of the large wooden beach houses are sitting in the surf, playing chicken with a stormy sea.

“Once it’s down, it’s considerably more difficult,” Mike Dunn, owner of W.M. Dunn Construction, LLC, of Powells Point, the contractor hired to clean up the fallen houses, said in a recent interview. “It’s cheaper, easier and more efficient to tear down a house.”

Cleanup, which is not covered by insurance, is as much as four times more expensive for the property owner, he said. A standing house can be removed for about $10,000 to $15,000; a fallen house could cost $50,000 to $100,000.

Related: A cycle of septic repairs, washouts on park service beaches

Dunn said his crew, using excavators and front-end loaders, removed 30 to 40 dump truck loads of debris that stretched along 11 miles of beach after two houses fell in May, with some crew on the job as long as 60 days. The contractor also was hired to do the cleanup of the house that collapsed in February.

“The problem with this type of work for the (owners) is they’re cleaning up everybody else’s trash,” Dunn said, referring to neighboring properties. “People lost decks, pools, fences, all that kind of stuff, during the storm.”

Although many fault the owners of the threatened or doomed beachfront houses, there is plenty of blame to go around: inconsistent real estate disclosure rules; outdated local zoning laws and building codes; gaps in state regulations; ineffective federal policies; escalating climate change impacts; inaccurate flood maps; and overall government inaction.

Whatever the reason, Dunn believes it is unfair to conclude that the property owner is at fault or irresponsible.

“They were shocked,” he said of the Rodanthe owners who lost their houses. At least two of them were from out of state, he said. “I’ve had guys literally crying to me on the phone. It’s very sad. It’s very unfortunate what happened to them — one had to file bankruptcy.”

The erosion rate in Rodanthe has long been one of the highest on the Outer Banks — as much as an annual average of 14 feet — but it has accelerated with rising sea levels, especially with storm impacts. Especially for people who are unfamiliar with the speed at which an Outer Banks beach can change, Dunn said, it can be unexpected, as it was for one of the owners.

“When he bought the house about 1 1/2 years ago, he probably had about 150 feet of beach,” he recalled. “And then, there was nothing.”

Beach nourishment is currently not available for Rodanthe, a point of contention to property owners in the small, unincorporated village. Dare County officials have said beach widening in that area would be too costly. Yet, numerous Rodanthe beachfront houses are currently listed for sale on real estate websites.

In North Carolina, real estate agents licensed by the state are required to disclose any known hazards or defects with prospective buyers, who are then to be provided a form with the information before a contract can be signed. Real estate agents are not allowed to lie if questioned about potential risks or other problems. But those same rules may not apply to out-of-state sellers, properties sold by the owner or unlicensed agents.

Bottom line, large houses are allowed to stand on the beach until they are inevitably destroyed, casting debris that is carried far and wide by currents and winds because no authority, no force of law, is demanding nor commanding that they be removed.

To wit: there’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program, a requirement for mortgaged property in a flood zone.

“The policies are not paying out anything until it’s a claim,” explained Allen Moran, an owner of Basnight & Moran Insurance Agency in Nags Head. “It’s similar to if there’s a tree over your house, they won’t pay before it falls down.”

The maximum FEMA will pay for a house when it collapses is $250,000 for the building, and $100,000 for the contents, he said. Flood insurance ratings have recently been changed to better reflect the real flood risk of property, which has increased the costs for some properties, and decreased it for others. 

Under the old rates, he said, the average policy for an oceanfront property in Dare County would cost about $3,000 a year; now it will range from $4,500 a year to $6,000 a year. 

Moran said the program also offers Increased Cost of Compliance, or ICC, coverage of up to $30,000 to help owners with property in designated “special flood hazard areas” meet local requirements to rebuild or repair flood-damaged structures, which includes relocation. An owner has to apply within six months of submitting a claim, and it must be damaged 50% or more or suffered a repetitive loss history with 25% or greater loss in each loss.

Still, as one FEMA official explained, with the increasing number and severity of disaster threats, addressing measures — whether proactive or responsive — for high-risk properties is complex and beyond the capability of one agency.

“We believe insurance coupled with mitigation is key to disaster resilience against climate change – especially flooding, the most common and destructive threat,” said FEMA Deputy Associate Administrator for Resilience David Maurstad in an email response to Coastal Review. “In the end, no single government and private sector entity can develop and implement a mitigation strategy, especially not today with climate change.”

Currently, there is a total of 4.7 million national flood insurance policies in force, according to Maurstad’s email. For context, the agency pointed out that the 2020 U.S. Census data reports 81 households in Rodanthe. Of all the nation’s disasters, flooding is the most common and costliest, impacting 98% of the United States.

“Living in close proximity of a water source, such as a coastline, the risk definitely increases that a structure may be impacted by flooding,” Maurstad wrote.

But since property development decisions are not made by FEMA, he noted, the location of properties are local decisions. “Communities that participate in the NFIP have, at a minimum, adopted the minimum federal and state requirements for floodplain management,” he said.

Costs for demolition or relocation are not covered under the National Flood Insurance Act. But they used to be. Adopted in 1988, the Upton-Jones Amendment provided coverage for structures in imminent danger on an eroded shoreline. The program would pay up to 40% of the policy to relocate endangered structures and up to 110% of the policy to property owners to demolish and remove their structure. At the time, the maximum amount of an oceanfront policy was $185,000 for the structure and $60,000 for its contents.

The amendment was repealed in 1994, and no effort since to revise it has gained traction in Congress.

As it stands now, removing the property from the risk is not the role of the flood insurance program.

“Essentially we are distinguishing between an insurance program which pays out for insured losses versus mitigation grant programs which reduce the risk of flooding to structures and therefore the risk of insurance payouts when the mitigation is focused on insured properties,” explained Maurstad.

FEMA currently offers numerous grants to address flood risk. Dare County’s Hazard Mitigation Grants Program, which offers local, permanent residents an opportunity to apply for funds to elevate their homes above current base flood levels, has been popular and effective. Other competitive grants are available through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which offers funds for projects such as flood control, utility protection, stabilization and retrofitting, and Flood Mitigation Assistance Grants, for projects that reduce or eliminate repetitive flood risks.

On Aug. 12, FEMA published a funding opportunity that increased the funding level for Flood Mitigation Assistance by five times, from $160 million to $800 million, Maurstad said. To date, the program has mitigated more than 8,000 FEMA-insured properties over the last 20 years. Also, he said, home acquisitions are eligible through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program funds and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

Congress established the National Flood Insurance Program in 1968 in response to disaster costs following severe flood and storm damage from Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the nation’s first billion-dollar hurricane. But the original intent to provide government-subsidized property insurance for Americans living in flood-prone areas has become a Pandora’s box of budget deficits, political division and regional rivalries, pitting coastal residents against inland property owners, cities against rural communities, and victims of ocean surge against those who’ve suffered flash flooding from rising rivers and intense rains.

As described in a 32-page Congressional Research Service paper on the program, updated in October, the program has been plagued by underfunding and dysfunctional politics, especially as disaster costs have been spiking. Ridden with acronyms, complicated rules and changing risk ratings based on state flood maps, the program is difficult to understand even for the private insurance agents who handle the flood policies.

Since the end of fiscal year 2017, there have been no less than 21 short-term congressional reauthorizations of the program, with the most recent due to expire Dec. 16. Congress canceled $16 billion of program debt in 2017, which allowed it to cover claims for hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. But the insurance program currently owes $20.525 billion to the U.S. Treasury, leaving $9.9 billion in borrowing authority from a $30.425 billion limit in law, according to the Congressional Research Service document.

Despite its fiscal woes, FEMA is still focused on expanding the number of properties covered by flood insurance, and is working closely with insurance and real estate industry professionals and community leaders to drive purchases, Maurstad, the FEMA administrator, said.

But flood insurance is hardly a panacea. Financial preparedness is also necessary to rebuild after a disaster, he added, helping not only restoration of homes and communities, but also reducing the need for federal disaster assistance.

Prompted by a petition in January 2021 from the Association of State Floodplain Managers and the Natural Resources Defense Council seeking revisions of the current floodplain management standards, Maurstad said, FEMA is in the process of analysis of potential updates in regulations and policy.

Eroding shorelines that threaten existing development reflect only a portion of where flood insurance is important. But climate change impacts will only increase flood risks and storm damages that will require coming together to find solutions, or adaptation.  

“It is the urgent task of each of us, as a nation of stakeholders,” Maurstad wrote. “Disaster resilience is a cross-cutting and integrated effort among a wide range of stakeholders from the public and private sectors. Each area of expertise and sphere of responsibility affects another. It is all part of one, all-encompassing story.”

The long-drawn process of updating maps at coastal inlets and building rules within those areas will stretch well into the New Year.

Proposed updates to the state’s inlet hazard areas, or IHAs, will be tweaked again and up for discussion at the state Coastal Resources Commission’s February 2023 meeting.

If the commission at that time approves rule amendments proposed by Division of Coastal Management staff, it will kick off another round of the state rulemaking process, giving everyone from property owners to developers more time to express their opinions on the matter.

Related: Coastal commission delays vote on clarified septic rules

IHAs were established at developed inlets along the state’s coast more than 40 years ago to tighten building rules in these areas where shorelines are especially vulnerable to erosion and flooding.

“So, because they’re the most dynamic places we have on the coast, that’s where we typically see our erosion hotspots, that’s where we end up with sandbags and emergency orders and long-term impacts to inland habitats and beach uses and economic impacts. Those are the most hazardous spots,” Division Director Braxton Davis said at the commission’s Nov. 17 meeting.

IHAs are designed to control density and structure size at inlets.

Commission members during their September meeting unanimously approved updated maps and rules for these areas, wrapping up decades of discussions on how to best predict inlet erosion and accretion rates.

But shortly after that mid-September meeting, division staff discovered that the way the new rule was written cut out an exception that would allow homes of up to 2,000 square feet to be built in areas where the new erosion rate-based setbacks in the IHAs would prevent construction of new houses.

The division later that month withdrew the updated rules from the Rules Review Commission, which reviews and approves rules adopted by state agencies.

The division hosted a series of workshops in late 2019 through early 2020 in communities that will be affected by the rule updates and extended the public comment period for the proposed amended rules.

Property owners, developers and town officials continue to raise concerns about some of the proposed amendments and the map updates.

Davis told commission members that most of the letters he had read were from property owners whose lots were in an IHA and who worried that they would not be able to rebuild their homes if destroyed or damaged more than 50% by storms, fire or other causes.

“And that is just not the way that rule reads,” he said. “In fact, all of the existing homes would be grandfathered under the rules the same way that they’re grandfathered across the entire oceanfront in North Carolina.”

However, there are restrictions to rebuilding.

“You have to have at least 60 feet of distance between the oceanfront vegetation line and where the structure is,” Davis said. “You can’t expand the footprint and so there’s some conditions.”

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

Hundreds of acres at those inlets are designed IHAs.

At least some Ocean Isle Beach property owners are pushing back on the proposed map for Shallotte Inlet, arguing that erosion at the island’s east end is being curtailed by the terminal groin built there last spring.

The terminal groin, a wall-like structure made of rocks placed perpendicular to the shore at inlets to reduce erosion, was built well after the proposed updated maps were recommended for the commission’s approval.

Steve Johnson lives at Ocean Isle’s east end. He was one of a handful of people who spoke during the commission’s meeting earlier this month in Beaufort about the proposed IHA rule amendments and updated maps.

“The current plan was designed in 2019,” he said. “It is 2022, three years later. We’re not talking about the current state of reality on any design, specifically Ocean Isle. Why in the world would we implement rules on something that is not current reality.”

Ocean Isle property owner Cherri Cheek agreed.

“The map created several years ago affects many homes and properties on Ocean Isle Beach,” she said. “Studies for creating these maps need to be performed in the present and take into consideration our present-day beach renourishment and the completion of the terminal groin before causing the property rights of our citizens to be in danger. The map does not change the dynamics of nature, but it does take away the property rights of our tax paying citizens. The tax repercussions to our town and our county are huge.”

Ocean Isle Beach Assistant Town Administrator Justin Whiteside said that adding another 152 acres of property in the existing IHA would exceed the $1 million impact threshold set by the state.

The state’s goal is to update the IHAs every five years.

This post has been updated

BEAUFORT — The state Coastal Resources Commission, when it met earlier this month, put off until next year any decision on proposed new septic system rules for oceanfront structures, changes drafted in response to recent sewage spills from erosion-compromised homes on the Outer Banks.

The commission met Nov. 17 in Beaufort and took the Division of Coastal Management staff’s recommendation to wait until February to allow for more public input and to hear from an interagency group that first met in August. The group is made up of state and federal officials and others working to address problems related to erosion-threatened structures and to discuss proposed rules governing replacement and relocation of septic systems seaward of the oceanfront vegetation line.

Three houses have fallen into the ocean this year on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in Rodanthe, one in February and two on May 10. Since then, park officials have identified 33 exposed septic systems and drain fields along the erosion-prone stretch of public beach. Park service officials have been working with 24 owners to get them to move their houses.

Related: A cycle of septic repairs, washouts on park service beaches

Division Director Braxton Davis is heading up the interagency group and asked the commission to delay a vote on the proposed rule changes. Davis said he expected to return in February with new information.

“Over time, even with setbacks for new construction, ocean shorelines can erode to the point where structures are located out on the public beach and are imminently threatened by erosion, including septic systems in some areas,” Davis told Coastal Review in an email response after the meeting. “This is a concern for the Division and for other agencies and local governments. Delaying action until the February CRC meeting allows staff the opportunity to consider the public input we’ve received to date.”

The proposed changes include clarifying existing rules, including one stipulating that any new septic system must meet the oceanfront setback of the primary structure. Another change would clarify that a septic system relocated with public funds must meet the oceanfront setback, while a system that is moved with private money that does not meet current ocean setbacks are to be relocated the maximum possible distance landward of its current location.

Division Policy and Planning Section Chief Mike Lopazanski said during the meeting that the septic system needs to be landward of the house, or farthest away from the ocean on the property, and not alongside the house.

Division staff proposed amending the “development allowed within the oceanfront setback” rule to add relocated or repaired/replaced septic systems. This rule allows certain types of development seaward of the oceanfront setback but does not include septic systems.

Another proposed amendment would specifically state that septic systems are to be considered separate structures in making “repair versus replacement” determinations and clarify that a building, a septic tank and a drain field or secondary treatment system are each to be considered separate structures.

The interagency group is set to meet in December, Lopazanski said.

“One of the things we’d like to do, once I get some reaction from you all, is bring this rule language to them as a way of addressing this particular issue with erosion-threatened structures,” Lopazanski told the commission.

First in a series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Officials are asking residents to share their vision for Brunswick County’s future 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 25 during a Blueprint Brunswick 2040 community drop-in meeting at the Brunswick Center, 101 Stone Chimney Road, Supply.

Input from the public will help refine and prioritize the recommendations and action steps needed to finalize the draft Blueprint Brunswick 2040 comprehensive land use plan and parks and recreation master plan, the county said in a release. Consultants and staff will incorporate additional input collected during the drop-in meeting into the final draft of the plans.

At this meeting, the policies for managing change over the coming decades are to be presented at 6 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. Residents can come and go whenever is convenient for them and are not required to stay the entire time.

Draft maps are available for review and comment including the Vision Plan, which are the future land use and conservation maps, and the future Parks and Recreation map. The maps represent draft policy ideas that will ultimately guide future growth, decisions, and investments in infrastructure and services in the county through 2040.

Bald Head Island, Belville, Bolivia, Navassa, Northwest and Sandy Creek are incorporating their comprehensive land use plans into the Blueprint Brunswick. Visit the Blueprint Brunswick – Towns webpage for more information.

To view the resources, draft maps and plans, visit the Blueprint Brunswick 2040 main website and submit input brunswickcountync.gov/blueprintbrunswick.

Contact Brunswick County Planning Director Kirstie Dixon at 910-253-2027 or email kirstie.dixon@brunswickcountync.gov, or Aaron Perkins, Parks & Recreation director, at 910-253-2676 or aaron.perkins@brunswickcountync.gov.

WILMINGTON – State rules on where septic tanks can be located on oceanfront properties are likely to change in the coming months.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission Thursday gave the green light to Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis to move ahead with proposed changes to existing rules, including setbacks and permit requirements.

Davis indicated those recommendations will include clarifying that an oceanfront property owner must obtain a permit in order to place a septic tank displaced by a storm or tide event back in its original location.

The proposed amendments would prohibit septic tanks from being placed seaward of the first line of oceanfront vegetation.

Davis will present recommended changes at the commission’s November meeting.

Discussions have been taking place for months as to how federal, state and local governments can address a problem coastal experts say is only going to get worse with rising seas and climate change.

In February, encroaching waves toppled three oceanfront homes in Rodanthe, leaving debris strewn for miles along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

“Even when houses don’t collapse they are constantly shedding debris due to the wrath of high tides and the ocean,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac said at the commission’s quarterly meeting Thursday in Wilmington.

As he spoke, he scrolled through pictures on a large projector capturing the aftermath of the homes that collapsed in early February, a time in which there were no coastal storms.

The destruction left a debris field stretching about 15 miles on the national seashore, where everything from fiberglass shards, tens of thousands of roofing tiles, drywall, carpet and other construction materials littered the beach.

“Even the kitchen sink, which is meant to be a bit of a joke, but it’s not,” Hallac said, referencing a photograph of a sink on the sand.

Though property owners paid for a contractor to clean the debris, the park has had to dig into its coffers to pay for cleanup. The park purchased a $40,000 beach rake, which is being used this week to pull materials off the beach.

The debris has affected access to the national shore. People have been injured by stepping on boards and nails. Surfers and swimmers have been hit by debris floating in the Atlantic Ocean.

More than 3 million people visited the Cape Hatteras National Seashore last year, the highest number on record, Hallac said. Nearly 160,000 people used the parks’ overnight campgrounds and 55,000 beach driving permits were issued.

Along with the problem of debris left behind from collapsed homes are septic tanks that have been exposed and relocated by waves.

Hallac shared with the commission that during an interview with a New York Times reporter following the collapse of a Buxton home in May, an exposed septic tank broke open.

“We actually had to leave the area because the smell was so bad,” he said.

Though Hurricane Earl was 830 miles off Rodanthe’s coast last weekend, churning waves exposed a newly installed septic system, which broke open and discharged raw, untreated sewage on the beach throughout the night.

“This is not an uncommon event and it does not take a significant storm to cause these problems,” Hallac said. “This is a problem that is likely to become more significant. We are dealing with significant issues from sea level rise.”

A 1986 survey found that more than 700 oceanfront structures in the state at that time faced short-term erosion risk, Davis said.

While many of those homes are gone, the numbers are about the same today. 

Davis said that North Carolina has some of the strongest oceanfront setbacks in the country. Coastal rules dictate that the bigger the structure, the farther away from the ocean it must be built.

“Even with really strong oceanfront setbacks we’re going to end up over time with houses on the beach,” he said.

Permits issued by the division or local governments must include a condition that a private home be moved within two years after it becomes imminently threatened.

That rule has not been enforced, Davis said, because natural beach recovery, beach renourishment, or permitted temporary sandbag structures typically occur within that time period.

Davis said the rule lacks clarity and is challenging to implement because of frequent changes in property ownership and worries about litigation.

The sea level is predicted to rise between 10 to 14 inches by 2050. Moderate flooding events are expected to increase tenfold by that time.

Hallac said some progress is being made as officials work with the owners of 24 homes in Rodanthe. Four homes had been relocated — the latest moved Wednesday — and permitting was underway to move another two.

Local, state and federal officials have been working together to get homes threatened by the ocean moved before they crumble into the sea.

The Division of Coastal Management, National Park Service and Dare County officials recently formed an interagency group to determine the authority of federal and state agencies to take protective actions on their jurisdictional shoreline.

The working group is to lay out a variety of immediate and long-term solutions to solving the problems facing some oceanfront properties and the communities they’re in.

“We need partners in thinking it through,” Davis said. “We’re talking about something that’s not going away. Coastwide, we’re going to see it.”

The group is discussing ways to educate homeowners, looking at the inventory of parcels that may be available for relocated homes, real estate disclosure requirements and the liability of property owners.

“It’s a situation from which I see no escape,” Commission Chair Renee Cahoon said.

RODANTHE — Big houses falling into the ocean on the Outer Banks earlier this year had many people wondering why the government didn’t do more to proactively get the houses off the beach before they collapsed, with debris spreading for miles.

The changing climate has added urgency to already complex balances between private property rights and public trust issues. And instead of proactive measures, legal threats have instead resulted in apparent inaction.

“It’s very frustrating to look nationally and see we don’t have any great models for getting homes off the beach that are risk of collapsing,” Robert Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, told Coastal Review last week.

As has happened in Nags Head and other beach areas, government measures are immediately met with lawsuits often with representation by legal advocates for private property rights that argue that such measures constitute a “taking” — essentially government taking private property for public use.

“There are very powerful interests that are seeking to protect this oceanfront resort economy,” Young said.

He noted a similar example happening in Harbor Island, South Carolina.

“They’re fighting over whose job it is to remove the houses,” Young said. “Everybody is suing everybody.”

In a May 31 op-ed in the Charlotte Observer, Young stated that climate change had increased the urgency to establish proactive coastal policies and encourage more realistic development.

Even though most oceanfront houses on the Outer Banks are investment properties, it is often the taxpayer and the local communities who pay the price when the houses collapse into the ocean. Only a small percentage of properties on the oceanfront are year-round homes, and the large majority are investment houses, Young said.

Young noted that some of the imperiled beach properties had sold within the past year. He pointed a finger at the real estate industry and the need for disclosure laws.

“So whose job is it?” Young asked during the interview, referring to removing teetering houses before they collapse. “I guess it’s God’s job.”

Willo Kelly, chief executive officer of the Outer Banks Association of Realtors, told Coastal Review that under North Carolina Real Estate Commission rules and standards, real estate agents have an ethical obligation to be truthful, but every risk is not necessarily apparent, predictable or even legal to talk about, such as a neighborhood crime rate.

Even federal flood insurance maps in North Carolina do not necessarily reflect the real risk, she said, so it is wise for prospective buyers to do their due diligence on oceanfront property.

“It’s not really that the house may be flooded — we have houses on pilings — but if (the ocean) pushes on pilings and the house falls, it’s flooded,” Kelly said, adding that the Outer Banks are undeniably dynamic barrier islands.

“Nobody is thinking that if you have an oceanfront house that it’s going to be there forever,” Kelly said. “This is the first year we’ve seen these numbers of houses that been impacted.”

After months of informal discussions on how to address the problem, Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis and Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac are expected to elaborate on those discussions Thursday during the Coastal Resources Commission meeting in Wilmington.

Related: Coastal commission to discuss imperiled beach houses

Davis is expected to provide details of proposals to tighten regulations on septic tanks along the beachfront. Exposed tanks often create public health hazards on eroded beaches, especially after storms, as Davis notes in a memo to the commission included in the meeting agenda.

Davis, Hallac and others, including Dare County officials, have been part of discussions held by a recently formed interagency group to tackle the problem, including determination of the authority of federal and state agencies to take protective actions on their jurisdictional shorelines.

“The Work Group will engage with partner organizations and stakeholders to identify and research policies and programs to establish a proactive, holistic, predictable, and coordinated approach to erosion-threatened structures in North Carolina,” Davis explains in the memo. “The Work Group is planning to meet regularly in the coming year and produce a report outlining short- and long-term solutions.”

As erosion increases with rising seas, and with climate change intensifying storms, more oceanfront structures have encroached on public beaches, Davis notes in the memo. Based on an agency review of 2020 imagery, he said, “over 750 of approximately 8,777 oceanfront structures were considered at risk from oceanfront erosion (no dunes or vegetation between the structure and ocean.)”

Hallac told Coastal Review that preventing the problem in the first place is the goal.

It’s not just destruction of the houses, Hallac said, it’s also about the long-term effects on the public and the natural resources in and along Cape Hatteras National Seashore. After the houses fell into the surf earlier this year, debris stretched for 15 miles up and down the beach, as well as in the ocean and on private property, and dozens of destroyed or damaged septic tanks were strewn along the beach.

“We still have a debris problem from the houses that collapsed in May,” Hallac said recently. “There are thousands and thousands of pieces of tar paper and carpet padding up to 4 miles from the house collapse site.”

The park has had to purchase a $40,000 beach rake to sift debris from the sand and has spent a “substantial” amount in cleanup costs in addition to what the property owners paid for a contractor to clean the debris.

Erosion has complicated where the national seashore boundaries exist, but in general, Hallac said, the park is understood to have jurisdiction of the beach between the high- and low-tide lines. 

“Their backyards now are essentially in the Atlantic Ocean,” he said. “Fences, retaining walls, decks, lighting are in the national seashore.”

When Dare County notified the national seashore officials about the risk, Hallac said that 24 property owners were then notified and asked to do whatever was possible to prevent their houses from being destroyed, such as having it removed or demolished.

Several homes have been moved from the beach, either back on their own lot, or on a new lot, or are in the process of planning to move.

With severe beach erosion, houses don’t need a storm to push them into the sea — they can be undermined and collapse just from wave action on clear day. The most recent collapse happened when winds had maxed out at 30 mph.

“We’re beginning to get our arms around the magnitude of the threat,” Hallac said.

Meanwhile, the agency is researching and evaluating the park’s authority and long-term options in addressing protection of the national seashore.

Looming over past discussions has been the threat of lawsuits.

Sierra Weaver, senior attorney with the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill, said that the federal, state and local governments have the authority and responsibility to protect the public.

Weaver said that what’s known as a “taking” is a complicated legal concept, but it’s not when the ocean does the taking.

“North Carolina state law is very clear that when an ocean takes a person’s property, it’s not the government taking the person’s property, that is the ocean taking a person’s property,” she told Coastal Review. “And because of that, when you’re faced with erosion that takes down a person’s house, you’re looking at natural acts of the ocean. And so North Carolina law is set up to ensure we’re protecting public safety in the face of a dynamic coastline.” 

Weaver said the recent house collapses were a wakeup call to all levels of government. That includes increased transparency and disclosure on the part of real estate agents.

“This is one of those things that is becoming really a hot topic across the country at the state and federal levels, is how can homeowner disclosure requirements be strengthened to ensure that we stop this cycle of people either not knowing that there’s a problem or claiming that they know that there’s a problem?” she continued. “That is, is the buyer unaware that there’s a problem? Or are they fully aware that houses are washing into the ocean, but they’re gambling that they’re make enough in rent before the ocean is lost, and then collect on flood insurance?”

She said the long-term answer is in changing the incentive structure for homes on the coast, “so we stop this cycle of people simply looking to make money rather than looking to protect those public trust resources that we all value so much.”

Weaver said the takings concept is “a world full of balancing tests and multiple considerations” that becomes “very murky very quickly.” It’s site-specific.

“There’s just a lot of factors that come into play that make it very, very difficult to talk about any particular situation until it’s right in front of you,” she said.