The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission is to meet next week to consider proposed language amendments for inlet hazard areas.

The meeting for the commission, which establishes policies for the N.C. Coastal Management Program and adopts rules for both the Coastal Area Management Act and the N.C. Dredge and Fill Act, will begin with a field trip to Ocean Isle Beach’s terminal groin at 3 p.m. on April 15. 

The full commission meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. on April 16 at 111 Causeway Drive, Ocean Isle Beach. An in-person public comment period is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. that day. The public may sign up to speak upon arrival at the meeting.  

Members of the public may attend in-person or join the meeting Thursday through the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s YouTube channel. 

The commission establishes areas of environmental concern, which are authorized under CAMA, and are the bases of the permitting program for regulating coastal development.

There are three types of ocean hazard AECs: ocean erodible, inlet hazard, and unvegetated beach.

The ocean erodible area is “the area where there exists a substantial possibility of excessive erosion and significant shoreline fluctuation,” and the inlet hazard area is defined as “locations that ‘are especially vulnerable to erosion, flooding and other adverse effects of sand, wind, and water because of their proximity to dynamic ocean inlets,” according to the division, which carries out the rules and regulations for the commission.

During the meeting, the commission will consider ocean erodible area and inlet hazard area erosion rates and setback factors.

The division has since 1979 used the same long-term erosion data to determine construction setbacks in inlet and ocean hazard areas, and to establish the landward boundaries of ocean erodible areas of environmental concern.  

The commission’s setback rules are used to site oceanfront development based on the size of the structure according to the graduated setback provisions. In areas where there is a high rate of erosion, buildings must be located farther from the shoreline than in areas where there is less erosion. The size of the structure determines how far back a house must be located away from the shoreline.

Because of limited data and resources, erosion rate setback factors within inlet hazard areas have traditionally been based on the rates of adjacent ocean erodible areas.

“Given the rapid changes that can occur at inlets, this method has often resulted in setback factors that underestimate the true erosion dynamics of these areas,” division documents state.

During the commission’s August 2025 meeting, Dr. Laura Moore, the chairperson of the commission’s Science Panel on Coastal Hazards, presented the panel’s recommendations on updated boundaries for inlet hazard areas and ocean erodible areas, and their corresponding erosion rate setback factors.

A subcommittee was appointed at the time to evaluate the possible changes, and presented its recommendation during the February meeting.

Updating ocean hazard area boundaries for inlet hazard areas and ocean erodible areas, along with the associated erosion rate setback factors, requires rule amendments to reference the updated report and maps, documents continue.

Because inlet hazard area boundaries have remained static and adjacent ocean erodible area erosion rates were applied within the inlet hazard areas, the primary amendment has been to the rule “to simply reference the updated oceanfront erosion rate report.  However, this update includes revised IHA boundaries and inlet-specific erosion rates within IHAs, necessitating additional rule amendments to reference the applicable reports, maps, and use standards,” documents explain.

Division staff noted that the 2025 study is consistent with previous update studies, in that inlet hazard area boundaries at undeveloped inlets were not analyzed.

The commission at this month’s meeting is to consider approving rule amendments that reflect the subcommittee’s findings and recommendations and supported by the Coastal Resources Advisory Council, updated inlet hazard boundaries, and updated ocean erodible areas and inlet hazard areas erosion rate setbacks, to include ocean erodible areas landward boundaries.

Division staff are to recommend removing the inlet hazard area designations from Little River Inlet, New River and Brown’s Inlets at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Bogue Inlet at Hammocks Beach State Park, Barden Inlet, Ocracoke Inlet and Hatteras Inlet.

“It is important to note that while inlet hazards are present at these sites, these areas are not being developed,” staff said.

In addition, division staff are to present updates on septic systems within the ocean hazard areas of environmental concern, consider draft rule amendments for human-made ditches requested by a petition for rulemaking, and a permit for temporary weather monitoring structures on the beach in the ocean hazard area of environmental concern.

The full meeting agenda and briefing materials are on the commission’s website. 

Second and final in a series

As the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel studies the effects of permanent beach erosion control structures such as seawalls and jetties, a critical aspect of the analysis will be looking at the lessons learned.

The commission banned hardened structures on the ocean shoreline in 1985 because of the down-shore erosive effects on the beach. Still, there are numerous examples of such structures in place along different parts of the coast, with varied degrees of effectiveness.

Erosion is not only more severe and longstanding on the Outer Banks, which are more exposed to the power of the open ocean and coastal storms than other parts of the North Carolina coast, it is the most dramatic and unforgiving, especially on Hatteras and Ocracoke islands. But coastal erosion is a statewide issue. To that point, federal beach nourishment projects in North Carolina began in 1965 at Wrightsville Beach and at Carolina Beach, and nourishment at both locations has been done in recent years.

When development and tourism took off on the Outer Banks in the 1980s, it didn’t take long before beach cottages began lining ocean shorelines.

Still, the forces of erosion had no mercy, and Kitty Hawk began losing beachfront properties. After the commission issued a variance to the hardened structures ban in 2003, permitting sheet-piling along N.C. Highway 12 in the beach community, then-Sen. Marc Basnight strongarmed the state’s ban into legislation.

Then in 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law that permitted four “test” terminal groins and has since expanded the permissible number of groins to seven. To date, four communities submitted permit applications: Figure Eight Island, Ocean Isle Beach, Bald Head Island and Holden Beach. Holden Beach has since withdrawn its application.

Long before the ban, numerous attempts were made to shore up the beach oceanward of the 1870 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton. By 1930, the nation’s tallest brick lighthouse was a mere 98 feet from the ocean.

According to National Park Service records, interlocking steel sheet-pile groins were installed in the 1930s on the beach near the lighthouse and reinforced a few years later. Over the years, dunes were built, grasses were planted, the beach was nourished, revetment and sandbag walls were installed.

In 1969, the U.S. Navy installed three reinforced concrete groins to protect its base, which was adjacent to the lighthouse at the time. But the erosion continued. More sandbags were put in place; more beach nourishment was done. The Navy left in the 1980s. While the National Park Service officially gave up its beach nourishment and dune stabilization efforts in 1973, it continued trying in ensuing years to protect the lighthouse from the sea with rip-rap, artificial seagrass, sandbags and a scour-mat apron.

Finally, after much study and public debate, with the ocean lapping at its foundation, in 1999 the lighthouse was relocated about a half mile from the beach.

Fast-forward a quarter-century and, since September 2025, 19 unoccupied beach houses near that same beach in Buxton have collapsed into the ocean.

Escalating beach erosion along the state’s entire coast, but especially in Buxton, has put difficult discussions about lifting the hardened shorelines ban back on the table. The few existing permanent erosion-control structures built over the years on North Carolina beaches have yielded mixed results.

Oregon Inlet

One of the most successful examples of a terminal groin doing what it was intended to do, and with relatively minimal harm, is the 3,125-foot terminal groin and 625-foot revetment built in 1991 to protect the N.C. Highway 12 tie-in at the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, which has since been replaced and renamed the Marc Basnight Bridge. The $13.4 million groin is substantial — ranging from 110 to 170 feet wide at its base and 25 feet wide at its landward end, and 39 feet wide at its seaward end — and was built to withstand waves as high as 15 feet, according to an analysis done by the state Division of Coastal Management, “North Carolina’s Terminal Groins at Oregon Inlet and Fort Macon,  Descriptions and Discussions.”

Located on the south side of Oregon Inlet at the north edge of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge land, the groin placement encouraged sand buildup, or accretion, landward, resulting in a wide expansion of 50 acres of sandy property on the inlet side of the historic state-owned Oregon Inlet Life-Saving Station. The building is vacant, but has been weatherized to preserve it for future use.

The groin site and surrounding beach have been regularly monitored by state and federal coastal scientists. Studies have shown that the structure has likely increased shoaling of a spit on the Bodie island side and deepening of the channel. Yet, the groin has cause little if any destructive downstream erosion while adequately protecting the highway and bridge infrastructure.

But the report warned that within the next 20 years or so, the continued southward migration of the Bodie Island spit could push the inlet’s main navigational channel up against the terminal groin structure itself.

“If this were to occur, the result would be severe scour and an increase in the maintenance necessary to preserve the threatened integrity of the structure itself,” according to the document.

Beaufort Inlet/Fort Macon

Since Fort Macon was constructed in 1834, about 25 erosion-control structures adjacent to Beaufort Inlet have been built, including groins, breakwaters, timber cribbing, sand-fencing and seawalls, as well as multiple beach nourishment projects, according to the terminal groin report.  The first phase of the terminal groin project began in 1961 and included a 530-foot seawall, a 250-foot revetment and 720-foot long, 6-foot-high terminal groin. Phase II, beginning in 1965, extended the groin 410 feet oceanward, and another groin was built west of the revetment to address extensive soundside erosion, while 93,000 cubic yards of sand was placed on the ocean beach.

The third phase, started in 1970, extended the terminal groin another 400 feet, to a total of 1,530 feet long. A 480-foot-long stone groin was built to stabilize the beach fill, and another 100,000 cubic yards of sand was placed on the ocean beach. Total costs for the three-phase project was $1.35 million.

Effects of the project include increased wave energy along the Fort Macon State Park and Bogue Banks area, and continued increases in wave energy were predicted. A sediment deficit has created erosion on the inlet’s western shoreline. Meanwhile, the sand spit at Fort Macon has migrated into the western bank of the navigation channel, indicating that the terminal groin has become inefficient at trapping sediment.

“Without constant beach nourishment, the terminal groin would no longer perform as observed historically and potentially fail altogether,” the report concluded.

Buxton

Dare County is planning a nourishment project in Buxton, as well as restoration of one of the Navy’s three abandoned reinforced sheet-pile groins that had been installed in 1969. According to the recent application to repair the southernmost groin, which is 50% or more intact, that groin had been lengthened in 1982 on the landward side by 300 feet, and armor stone was added two years later. New sheet piles and additional scour protection were added to the structures in 1994. The other two groins in the original groin field are too damaged to qualify under the Coastal Resources Commission’s “50% rule” that permits repairs.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten has said publicly that the county is under no illusions that the project planned for this summer will solve the erosion issue for good. But the hope is that it will serve as a Band-Aid long enough to find a more permanent solution to erosion that is now so severe it is threatening the livelihoods of community residents and the island’s tourism economy, as well as N.C Highway 12.

Retired East Carolina University professor and veteran coastal geologist Dr. Stanley Riggs, who has studied the Outer Banks since the 1970s, agreed that the fact that the lighthouse had to be relocated to save it illustrates why Buxton’s erosion is not going to be easy to tame for long, with or without groins. When the first coastal survey from Virginia to Ocracoke was done in 1852, the original 1802 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which was destroyed, had been 1,000 feet from the shoreline, Riggs recently told Coastal Review. All told, the shoreline has receded 3,000 feet, or about two-thirds of a mile, at the cape, he said.

“And it’s been constant,” Riggs said. “It oscillates a little bit, but the main direction has been constant.”

As Riggs explained, offshore just north of the motel area in Buxton, there is an underwater rock structure that is set at an oblique angle relative to the barrier island. Similar “old capes” are also off Avon and Rodanthe, he said. The rocks are under as much as 50 feet of water, and they dictate how the waves refract there.

“And so, if you fly over it, and you get the right angle down there, what you see is a series of cusps, and one side of that cusp will be stable, the other side will be highly erosional,” he said. Groins will only make the eroding side erode faster. And when there are permanent or semipermanent structures along the beach, the shore face — the part that is under water — starts to erode and gets steeper and steeper, he said. And the steeper it gets, the more severe the overwash and the more difficult it is to hold the sand in place. That’s a big reason why beach nourishment is having to be done more frequently.

Not only does the Outer Banks stick out farther into the Atlantic, there is also a narrower continental shelf, which allows the bigger waves to come ashore from the open ocean without the wider “speed bump” needed to dissipate the power.

There’s no negotiating with the ocean, Riggs said. Considering the combination of coastal dynamics at play in Buxton, efforts to control erosion will continue to fail.

“It’s that land-sea-air interface that is really the highest energy place that we’ve got on our planet,” Riggs said. “And there’s some things you can do there. There’s some things you shouldn’t do there, you can’t do there, and it’s a matter of understanding how that system works.”

Ocracoke Island

A persistent erosion hot spot on the north end of the island along N.C. Highway 12, the only road between the Hatteras Ferry Docks and Ocracoke Village, has been patched on and off for decades by increasing numbers of ever larger numbers and size of sandbags.

But even the type of large, new, trapezoidal bags permitted at Ocracoke, Pea Island and Mirlo Beach have not held up as expected, according to a presentation provided by Paul Williams of the North Carolina Department of Transportation at the February Coastal Resources Commission meeting.

Williams presented details at the meeting of NCDOT’s revised request to increase the base of the sandbags from 20 to 30 feet and the height from 6 feet to 10 feet, to better protect them from being undermined by waves.

The newer bags have open ends at the top, which proved to be a problem at Pea Island, Williams told the commission. The Pea Island Refuge at the Visitor Center, he added, faces similar risks now to that seen at Mirlo Beach in Rodanthe in the years before the hotspot was bypassed with completion of the Rodanthe “Jug-Handle” Bridge.

“The performance has not been what we anticipated,” he said, describing how they were flooded at the top, which caused the sandbags to deflate. “This product, there may be some modifications that can be made to make them more resilient.”

Some of the new bags were also installed along with traditional sandbags at Ocracoke, and they’re still covered, Williams said, but roughly 1 mile of sandbags along N.C. 12 are at risk of being undermined during the next big storm.

“So it’s basically to give us more latitude on different products, to try to protect the roadway out there better than traditional sandbags have,” Willams told Coastal Review after the meeting. “We’ve used them for decades out there, and especially Mirlo, they really got tossed around during storms. We were looking to find a more resilient product, and we’re working on evaluating other options out there.”

The new sandbags with an opening at the top are quicker to fill, he said. They’ve worked at other areas, but conditions elsewhere are not as fierce.

“When you’re on the Outer Banks, you’re under constant pressure during some of these storm events, because we’ll have a storm set up on the coast and grind for days at a time,” Williams said. “And every tide cycle is just steadily pulling sand out of the bags, and we need to have some way to stop that.”

Even though many of the traditional sandbags without the troublesome opening are still in place at Ocracoke, Williams said that about half of them, or about 1,000, have been exposed and need to be replaced. Another issue on the island is the limited amount of sand available to cover.

Sandbags, which are considered temporary erosion-control structures that are permitted parallel to shore to protect imminently threatened roads or structures, have rules about color and size, but those rules have been notoriously abused with regard to the “temporary” part, with extensions often adding up to decades at a site, making them “hardened structures” in everything but name.

Before Nags Head in 2011 started nourishing its eroded beaches in South Nags Head, for instance, even battered and torn sandbags weren’t removed for years, and property owners often successfully sued the state to keep longstanding stacked rows of protective bags in place in front of their oceanfront homes on the eroded beach.

As sea levels continue to rise, storms intensify and erosion accelerates, even sandbags as fallbacks in the absence of other impermissible erosion-control structures are becoming less effective, as evidenced by photographs of huge piles of sandbags lined up against undermined houses at North Topsail Beach.

Ocean Isle Beach

Responding to the state legislature’s repeal of the ban on hardened erosion-control structures on the coast, Ocean Isle Beach in 2011 began the planning process to pursue permits to install a terminal groin at Shallotte Inlet to stem erosion that for decades had chewed away at the island’s east end. Five years later, state and federal approval was in hand to build a 750-foot-long terminal groin, but environmental groups in 2017 filed a lawsuit to stop the project. A ruling in March 2021 in the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the project alternatives were properly considered. By April 2022, the $11 million terminal groin was completed.

Today, a diminished beach remains in front of multi-million-dollar homes that were built after the groin was in place. Rows of sandbags block the surf from reaching some of the oceanfront homes, and several lots remain vacant because there is no longer enough property left to meet setback requirements.

In November, the Coastal Resources Commission allowed the owners of eroding vacant oceanfront lots to use larger sandbags to protect their properties.

Interest in future terminal groins

The Village of Bald Head Island, the first community to build a terminal groin after the “test groin” law passed, was issued a permit in October 2014 to build the erosion-control structure, which was completed in 2015.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality monitoring of the project after its completion did not turn up significant issues requiring corrective measures, according to its January 2024 report.

“While ongoing post-construction monitoring performed by the permittee has not identified any significant issues that would require corrective or mitigative measures, the Village performed a maintenance beach nourishment event, received nourishment from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ regularly scheduled Wilmington Harbor maintenance project, and is currently seeking permit authorization for a second Village-sponsored maintenance nourishment event,” according to the document.

Six other communities have expressed “varying degrees” of interest in building a terminal groin project, including North Topsail Beach and Figure Eight Island, as noted in the report.

Because of recent erosion concerns, Dare County GIS staff began remotely monitoring two priority areas on Hatteras Island using drone technology.

GIS staff used the drone imagery collected so far to create a new interactive map that allows the public to view and compare images of coastal erosion over time at Old Lighthouse Road in Buxton and the northern end of Rodanthe.

The map, Hatteras Island Erosion Drone Imagery, features side-by-side comparisons of aerial photos of Rodanthe and Buxton. The user can select two different dates of drone imagery taken in Buxton or Rodanthe using a dropdown menu. A tool in the center of the map allows users to compare images side by side.

The map is an active and ongoing Dare County GIS project. New drone imagery is being collected and added to the map as it becomes available.

The intent of the ongoing project is to collect continual imagery that creates a historical record of erosion to help Dare County officials and other decisionmakers better understand the changing conditions and enable them to make the most informed decisions, the county said.

“The situations in Buxton and Rodanthe are very dynamic, so we wanted to have the most up-to-date information available about the current state of the oceanfront,” Dare County GIS Analyst Kristen Stilson said in a release. “We also wanted the public to be able to see the changing conditions as they are occurring, so everyone can get a better understanding of how rapidly this situation is escalating. It is one thing to see it on the news, but with the map you will be able to see the whole landscape change by just swiping between different dates.”

For more information, contact Stilson at Kristen.Stilson@DareNC.gov or 252-475-5598. 

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 North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management has issued a permit to Dare County for a beach nourishment project planned for this summer at Buxton.

The division also announced Wednesday that it had issued a letter to the county affirming that the proposed work to rebuild one of three groins near the former site of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse qualifies as “repair” under the Coastal Area Management Act and Coastal Resources Commission rules and does not require a CAMA permit for the project to proceed.

“North Carolina’s ocean shoreline is a dynamic environment with challenges driven by extreme shoreline erosion, rising sea levels and more frequent and intense storms,” the division said in its announcement. “Communities along the Outer Banks have been particularly affected by recent weather events and extreme erosion. Along many parts of the state’s coastline, local governments may pursue projects such as beach renourishment to reduce vulnerability to storm damages and protect critical public infrastructure. DCM reviews these projects to ensure they are consistent with CAMA and the CRC’s rules.”

Related: Winter storm takes 4 Buxton houses, leaves inches of snow

The village’s beach, which is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, has suffered severe erosion over the past few years that has led to houses collapsing into the ocean — 31 on the national seashore’s beaches since 2020 — and uncovered long-buried petroleum contamination at the site, which has been used in decades past as a naval facility and a Coast Guard station.

Beach renourishment is one of the primary erosion response strategies allowed under state law. Hard structures such as groins are subject to strict statutory limitations and case-by-case review. All permitted projects include conditions to minimize environmental impacts, maintain public access and safety and require ongoing monitoring.

The project documents are available online.

This report first appeared Feb. 3 in NC Newsline.

North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Mike Causey says even as snow from last weekend’s storm begins to melt, his office has received a flurry of calls from business owners and lifetime Outer Banks residents upset to see more homes falling into the Atlantic Ocean.

The powerful storm, packing winds of 60 mph, brought down four more unoccupied structures in Buxton.

“There’s some angry people out there,” Causey told members of the Council of State on Tuesday. “That makes a total of 31 homes that have collapsed since 2020.”

Related: Winter storm takes 4 Buxton houses, leaves inches of snow

Causey said while his office doesn’t have a solution to deal with the continually eroding shoreline, the state should listen to the locals.

“The complaint that I hear is there’s been too much finger-pointing with the multiple agencies involved, the federal government, the parks system, environmental groups, on down the list,” said Causey. “But what they’re telling me is that we need emergency help to stop the bleeding, because we can’t let these houses keep collapsing.”

Buxton typically loses six feet to eight feet of shoreline each year, but rising sea levels and an active storm season can accelerate that erosion. And a collapsed home can leave a debris field that stretches for miles.

“It is an economic nightmare and it’s an environmental nightmare when that happens,” said Causey.

Property owners are responsible for removing debris when a home collapses, but currents can spread the wreckage far down the coast, so responsibility has increasingly fallen on park officials to protect the shoreline.

Last year the Cape Hatteras National Seashore hauled out over 400 truckloads of debris from fallen houses.

Causey said the residents he’s spoken to this week want to see manmade reefs or hardened structures, which are currently banned, reconsidered. Beach renourishment, which has been used in other coastal communities, is an expensive and temporary solution.

This is not the first time Causey has pressed for help for Outer Banks homeowners.

Last November, Causey and Gov. Josh Stein urged Congress to pass the Preventing Environmental Hazards Act of 2025. The bipartisan bill would allow National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) payments to be made before an imminent collapse caused by erosion.

Standard homeowners’ insurance doesn’t cover shoreline erosion damage, so property owners can’t collect on it, even if the property is condemned, until the house collapses. The proposed legislation would give homeowners financial help to demolish or relocate a condemned structure before it falls into the surf.

“Federal NFIP pre-collapse authority would reduce hazards, protect visitors and wildlife, and save taxpayer dollars on emergency response and cleanup,” Causey and Stein wrote in their Nov. 2025 letter.

But the bill, co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC3), has not moved since last May, when it was referred to the House Committee on Financial Services.

“I think those people deserve to be heard,” said Causey.

While Causey was focused on the coast at Tuesday’s Council of State, Stein turned his attention to disaster recovery out west.

The governor’s office continues to push for Congress to authorize $13.5 billion requested for Hurricane Helene relief, Stein told the council. While North Carolina’s congressional delegation is supportive, the wheels of the federal government move very slowly, tied up in red tape due to new FEMA review requirements.

North Carolina has only received about 12% of the federal aid it has requested for Helene recovery, Stein said.

“I’m so glad I’m not in Congress because I can only imagine trying to get anything constructive done in that body,” said Stein. “But we need their help, Western North Carolina needs their help, and we’re going to keep asking for their help.”

For now, Stein said he’s incredibly grateful for the state employees who helped North Carolinians weather back-to-back winter storms in January.

Transportation crews pre-treated state roads with over 10 million gallons of brine, Stein said. Over 100,000 tons of salt was spread across North Carolina’s 100 counties, with another 20,000 tons expected to be needed in the next day or two with more wintry weather in the forecast.

“They’re just working nonstop to try to minimize the impact on our lives,” said Stein.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence.

The National Park Service has approved a project to stabilize about a mile of rapidly eroding shoreline at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site.

The 513-acre site located on the northern end of Roanoke Island in the Albemarle Sound was established in 1941 to preserve where Sir Walter Raleigh established colonial settlements between 1581 and 1591.

National Park Service leadership signed on Jan. 14 a finding of no significant impact to install a combination of rock revetment and rock berm to sections of the shoreline. A finding of no significant impact confirms that a proposed action won’t significantly affect the environment.

When the National Park Service announced the project’s approval Jan. 15, officials also released the mandatory floodplain statement of findings, which explains why the project must take place in a floodplain, along with any associated risk, and flood mitigation strategies.

The announcement opened up a two-week comment period that ends Friday on the findings. Instructions on how to comment are on National Park Service’s website.

The floodplain statement of findings concludes that the proposed rock revetment and berm to prevent ongoing and future shoreline erosion at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site “is necessary and consistent” with federal rules on activities in floodplains.

On the same day, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced and opened up a public comment period for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-requested federal consistency determination for the proposed rock berm and revetment combination project.

The determination is to “ensure compliance” with the Coastal Zone Management Act, a national policy for managing coastal resources.

“Specifically, the National Park Service proposes installing rock berms and rock revetments along approximately 1,100 linear feet of shoreline on the western end of Roanoke Island to reduce erosion, protect infrastructure, and enhance long-term shoreline stability,” per the state. “The State’s review of the submitted federal consistency determination request will determine if the proposed project in Dare County is consistent with the enforceable policies of North Carolina’s Coastal Management Program.”

To read the shoreline stabilization federal consistency determination request and comment, visit NCDEQ’s website.

Since becoming a national historic site, erosion along the property’s shoreline has been a management challenge. The shoreline is estimated to have eroded a quarter-mile or more since the late 16th century, according to the National Park Service.

Previous efforts have been made to slow shoreline loss but erosion has continued at an estimated 1 to 5 feet per year, impacting both cultural and natural resources at the site as well as the adjacent, privately owned Elizabethan Gardens, documents explain.

Michael Flynn is the physical scientist and certified floodplain manager for the Outer Banks Group of National Parks, which consists of Fort Raleigh, Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Wright Brothers National Memorial.

Flynn told Coastal Review that wind, wave action and currents have eroded the shoreline over time and threaten facilities, infrastructure and cultural resources such as the Waterside Theater, where the “Lost Colony” out door drama is performed every summer, and a family cemetery on the property.

“This has caused loss of archeological resources and upland forested areas,” Flynn said. “In the 1980s, the park installed stabilization measures including rock berm and rock revetment. Erosion is especially prevalent at the edges of these stabilization measures in an effect known as flanking.”

In recent years, park staff have been developing the stabilization and erosion control plan approved earlier this month and the associated environmental assessment, which identifies any potential effects of the proposed project.

The plan and environmental assessment released in July 2025 detailed three possible projects: a rock revetment, a rock berm or a combination of the two. The environmental assessment that was out for public review July 21, 2025, to Aug. 20, 2025, identified as the preferred action the combination of the two.

“After evaluating the potential impacts of three action alternatives, NPS selected the preferred alternative: a combination of rock revetment and rock berm in areas of the shoreline that are the best fit due to existing topography, land use and constructability,” according to the press release.

Flynn said the combination was chosen because of the variable topography along the shoreline. The approach also offers flexibility for engineered designs for different environmental conditions.

For example, the rock revetment alternative will be placed in locations where existing steep and high embankments range from 5 to 15 feet or higher, he said.

“For areas with rock revetment, the application of appropriately sized rock will prevent the bluff from sloughing. The rock berm alternative will be placed in areas with no or minimal embankment heights. For areas with rock berm, the application of appropriately sized rock will protect the low-elevation sand beach areas from erosion caused by wave action,” he explained.

Flynn said that the environmental assessment for the proposed project was prepared in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, and Department of Interior NEPA regulations.

Because the National Park Service issuing earlier this month the finding of no significant impact, often referred to as a FONSI, officials determined that the preferred alternative identified in the environmental assessment, or EA, will not have a significant effect on the human environment. If the environmental assessment does not support a finding of no significant impact, then the park service must prepare an environmental impact statement and issue a Record of Decision before taking action on the proposed activity.

“In short, Fort Raleigh may now proceed with implementing the preferred alternative described within the EA. The park will stabilize the shoreline for erosion control once NPS officials finalize the accompanying Floodplain Statement of Findings,” Flynn said.

The floodplain statement of findings is necessary because of two executive orders that require the National Park Service to evaluate the likely impacts of actions in floodplains.

It is park service policy to preserve floodplain functions and values, minimize potentially hazardous conditions associated with flooding, including threats to human health and safety, risks to National Park Service capital investment, and impacts on natural and beneficial floodplain values, he said.

That means a floodplain statement of findings “is prepared when a proposed action is found to be in, or affecting a floodplain, and relocating the action to a non-floodplain site is considered not to be a viable alternative. This is the case with implementing shoreline stabilization measures for erosion control,” Flynn continued.

Flynn noted that the floodplain findings factor in climate change effects. When data are available, the climate-informed science approach detailed in one of the executive orders is the preferred way to develop the floodplain statement of findings.

The climate-informed science approach incorporates the use of best-available data on water movement and methods that integrate current and future changes in flooding due to the increasing severity and frequency of precipitation, sea level rise, tidal cycles, land use change, yielding the most accurate elevation and flood hazard area, Flynn said.

Once the public review and comment period closes Friday, park staff are to revise the document accordingly and send it to the National Park Service’s Water Resources Division for review and signature. After that, the plan goes to the regional office for review, signature and approval to move forward, he explained.

The panel of scientists that advises the state’s Coastal Resources Commission is to have an online meeting at 11 a.m. Thursday to formulate a plan to write a report on the effects of hard structures on coastlines.

The Coastal Resources Commission’s science panel, which provides the commission with scientific data and recommendations pertaining to coastal topics, was directed at the commission’s November 2025 meeting to evaluate alternatives for managing oceanfront erosion.

Related: Climate change compounds challenge to stabilize beaches

The purpose of this meeting is to develop an outline for the report to propose to the Coastal Resources Commission.

Instructions on how to participate virtually or by phone are on the division’s website.

There will be a listening session for the meeting at N.C. Division of Coastal Management headquarters office at 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City.

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

Nature-based coastal shoreline erosion control structures that successfully attract and grow oysters can better defend shores from waves, according to a study led by East Carolina University researchers.

The study, published late last year in the journal Scientific Reports, found that the more oyster-dense a breakwater designed to recruit and grow those shellfish is, the better that structure is at dissipating waves.

“We actually found that wave attenuation increased or improved as the structures recruited oysters,” said Georgette Tso, a doctoral candidate in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Sciences Program and co-author of the study.

As more and more oysters grow on a surface, their shells building layer by layer, those shells alter that structure’s surface, making that surface rougher and less permeable.

After documenting two seasons of oyster recruitment, researchers found that living shorelines constructed with living oyster breakwaters absorbed wave activity by an increase of 10-15%.

Their findings are based on observations of living shorelines at two private properties along Bogue Sound in Newport in Carteret County.

The structures were installed between May and June 2022 by Native Shorelines, the coastal resiliency division of Davey Resources Group, using concrete-based breakwater systems called QuickReef.

QuickReef is built from materials primarily of natural calcium carbonate formed into concrete slabs. Those slabs are installed to allow water flow and attract oyster larval, which attach to and grow on the structures.

Living shorelines are becoming increasingly attractive for coastal waterfront property owners seeking ways to curb erosion of their land.

“I think there’s been a lot more awareness within coastal North Carolina about living shoreline options as an alternative to a hardened shoreline, like bulkheads or some other vertical structure, which oftentimes actually costs more over time to repair. And, they’re not as resistant to hurricane damage because of that vertical profile,” Tso said.

The benefits of living shorelines, including their resiliency against the effects of rising sea levels, have been documented through research spanning back more than a decade.

But Tso said that there is little data how smaller-scale living shoreline projects like the ones she and her fellow scientists observed for this study actually change the way waves interact with shorelines.

Their observations proved to be “an exciting finding,” Tso said, because they prove what researchers have suspected for some time.

“Oysters grow vertically and they increase the roughness on the surfaces that they grow on. They also can grow within interstitial spaces and reduce porosity in that way. So, we hypothesized that the amount of wave attenuation a structure could provide would increase with the recruitment of live and healthy oyster populations,” she said. “This additional factor that’s not been explored, of it actually improving the wave attenuation potential and reducing the wave energy that hits the back of your shoreline over time, is something that we should communicate more to homeowners because they’ve actually bought into a solution that has increased benefits over time that they may not have anticipated when they first put in the structure.”

And while it’s fair to say the longer these structures recruit oysters the more protection they may offer to a shoreline, Tso said there is one important caveat.

“This is just a two-year study so we’re not capturing the point in time where the oyster population will eventually plateau. The size of the structure and the amount of food available to the oysters in the water is limited, obviously, so the oyster population will eventually plateau. So, though we’ve observed increases in wave attenuation potential, probably it’s going to cap off at some point,” she said.

It is also important to note that oyster recruitment and growth will not be the same at every shoreline.

Shorelines bend and curve, leaving pockets where water does not circulate to deliver oyster larvae.

“What we found is only relevant if your structure can actually recruit oysters, and that’s not true on all North Carolina shorelines,” Tso said. “If you don’t have baby oysters being delivered to your shoreline, you’re not going to be able to recruit oysters. If you’re in a site where that’s not possible then the wave attenuation potential that you have at construction is what you’re going to have. It’s not going to improve because you’re not recruiting oysters.”

Successful oyster larval recruitment and growth also depends on things like water temperature, salinity, and tidal variation.

Tso is in the process of analyzing data researchers collected last summer at more than a dozen QuickReef living shoreline sites. Scientists during that time also revisited their two original study sites, which continued to recruit oysters, Tso said.

The other researchers on this study include Dr. Siddharth Narayan, assistant professor in ECU’s Integrated Coastal Programs, Megan Geesin, a doctoral candidate at ECU, Dr. Matthew Reidenbach, professor and chair of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, Dr. Jens Figlus with Texas A&M’s Ocean Engineering Department, and Dr. Rachel Gittman, assistant professor with ECU’s Department of Biology.

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

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

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

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

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

To get a sense of just how severe Battery Island’s shoreline is changing, look no farther than its trees.

As waves lick away at the fringes of this little island in the middle of the Cape Fear River near Southport, trees rising off its shores are toppling.

“The mature trees that the birds nest in are being lost along the shore,” said Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina.

Each tree that plops into the river is one fewer on an island that is globally significant for nesting white ibis and home to one of the largest wading bird colonies in North Carolina.

To Battery Island’s east rests Shellbed Island, a large marsh system edged by elevated banks of old oyster shells called shell rakes.

In good condition, these rakes do not flood at high tide or during storms, making them a crucial and rather niche nesting habitat for American oystercatchers.

“The Cape Fear River supports almost 30% of the state’s nesting American oystercatchers. And about half of the American oystercatchers that nest on the Cape Fear River nest in these types of habitats. So, it’s a very important habitat type for American oystercatchers and they are a state listed species,” Addison said.

Like Battery Island, waves have altered Shellbed Island’s edges, where the elevated shell rakes have been flattened out and pushed back into the marsh by coastal storms.

In an effort to protect the threatened bird habitat on these islands, Audubon and its partners, Sandbar Oyster Co. and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, have teamed up to design and install two pilot living shoreline projects and test their effectiveness at protecting the low-lying islands on the river.

The Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, is contributing $13,800 in cost share for the $51,500 projects. Of the Coastal Federation’s contribution, $5,250 has been set aside for Battery Island and $8,550 for the project at Shellbed Island.

Georgia Busch, a coastal specialist in the Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office, said these projects, “align with our mission for preservation of critical habitats in our coastal and estuary systems.”

“But, particularly in the lower Cape Fear River, there’s a need for some extra reinforcement of those habitats there. Historically, the birds have used this area for a long, long time and we just want to make sure that stays intact. These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said.

Battery Island’s shores have for years been battered by waves from large vessels that navigate the river to and from the Port of Wilmington, recreational boats that skim the waters around Southport, and the Bald Head Island ferry.

“What makes Battery Island special for the nesting birds is it’s relatively small, it’s far enough away from the mainland that it doesn’t have any mammalian predators on it, and so that allows this colony to have a lot of success,” Addison said.

There’s also little human disturbance on the island. The island, which is managed by Audubon, is closed to people March 1 to Sept. 15 each year.

A test section of about 70 linear feet of living shoreline will be installed along the roughly 100-acre island’s southwest corner, which has experienced some of the most severe erosion.

A reef constructed of Sandbar Oyster Co.’s Oyster Catcher reef building substrates, which are made with plant-fiber cloth, infused with different cement mixtures, and molded into different shapes to promote sediment accumulation and marsh growth.

The test project at Shellbed Island has been designed to prevent shell rakes from washing away.

Power hurricanes, including Florence in 2018 and Dorian in 2019, pushed the shell rakes back into the marsh and flattened them out. And the oyster reefs that at one time provided an abundance of oyster shell in the river are not as plentiful because of overfishing, pollution and habitat degradation.

“There’s still plenty of spat, larval oysters, in the water, but there isn’t a lot of substrate for them to settle on because oysters typically grow on other oysters,” Addison explained. “When you put in a living shoreline-type of material, or almost any hard substrate, you’ll get oysters recruiting onto it. What we would like to do is to help jumpstart some oyster populations in areas of these shell rakes.”

The project at Shellbed Island includes installing roughly 67 feet of living shoreline in front of the shell rakes and material behind the shell rakes, “so that when nature moves those loose shells around, it can build back up into a more sustainable nesting habitat where the oystercatchers are not losing so many of their nests to overwash,” Addison said.

Audubon has a received a grant for a separate project to place loose oyster shell directly on the existing rakes.

Busch explained the test projects are a first-of-their kind because they will be at isolated islands “where we’re really only looking at habitat and this will be really helpful for testing out the strength and feasibility of the Sandbar Oyster Company’s products and of living shorelines.”

“These sites were chosen for both their exposure and their critical points in the river,” she said. “We want to see how this product will work somewhere where we get a lot of wave energy. We’re going to find out.”

Addison said she has “high hopes” for the living shorelines in curbing erosion at the islands.

“If it turns out to look like it’s working well then we could seek larger pots of money and expand our permit to be able to do this at a larger scale,” she said.

Audubon is continuing to fundraise for the projects. Donations may be made by contacting Addison by email at lindsay.addison@audubon.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ocean Isle Beach officials have refuted that claim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reprinted from Island Free Press.

Debris from five oceanfront home collapses continues to cover the shoreline in Buxton as the Cape Hatteras National Seashore (CHNS) moves forward with a coordinated cleanup response, despite the ongoing federal shutdown.

The public is advised to avoid the beach south of Old Lighthouse Road, where pilings, broken construction materials, and household debris remain scattered along the surf zone and are shifting with each tide, creating dangerous conditions.

Beach access from the north end of Buxton to near ORV Ramp 43 remains closed. 

Tuesday’s collapses sent debris across National Seashore property and into nearby neighborhoods, where a significant portion of debris has reached private property inland. Dare County has previously contracted private debris removal crews to assist along Old Lighthouse Road after earlier home collapses in September and October, and similar support is anticipated as the latest cleanup continues.

Meanwhile, CHNS crews are conducting emergency, safety-focused cleanup operations and maintaining limited public access where possible, despite ongoing federal service limitations.

“We’re continuing to respond in an emergency fashion to help maintain public access to general areas,” said CHNS Superintendent David Hallac. “Most of our staff are working to protect the property of the seashore.”

Tuesday’s incidents mark the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th oceanfront home collapses on Hatteras Island since mid-September, which all occurred in Buxton except for one collapse in Rodanthe.

Homeowners are technically responsible for the cleanup of their property debris, but cleanup efforts often involve a combination of private contractors, county resources, local volunteers, and the National Park Service.

Hallac noted that while some of the 15 affected Buxton property owners have requested special use permit applications to help remove debris on Seashore lands, “they have not attempted to clean up on any National Seashore property south of the village, to my knowledge.” The situation differs somewhat from recent 2024 and 2025 collapses in Rodanthe, where homeowners — in several cases — undertook extensive cleanup initiatives along miles of shoreline.

Conditions remain hazardous in the impacted area, with sharp debris, exposed nails, buried pilings, and unstable materials continuing to wash in and out with the surf. Officials warn that the beachfront remains unsafe and urge the public to avoid the area until further notice while cleanup crews work to remove debris and stabilize access.

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

Update: A ninth oceanfront Hatteras Island house fell late Friday; an unoccupied structure at 23047 G.A. Kohler Court, Rodanthe, collapsed shortly before 6 p.m.

Original report follows below:

BUXTON — It started two weeks ago, when one small, unoccupied house here fell into the ocean, long before two powerful tropical storms were approaching Hatteras Island.

But by mid-afternoon Tuesday, shortly before high tide, both hurricanes Humberto and Imelda, while well offshore, had supercharged the ocean off Cape Hatteras, where the Outer Banks bend out farthest into the Atlantic. In a highly unusual spate of structural surrender, five houses along the beach in Buxton — all unoccupied and all off Tower Circle Road or Cottage Avenue — collapsed, apparently one after another and all within 45 minutes after 2 p.m.

Before midnight, another nearby house gave way to the pounding surf.

Then, at about 8 p.m. Wednesday, the eighth house fell onto the same stretch of beach, adding to a staggering amount of debris scattered along the oceanfront and buffeted by swirling surf.  

“We’ve got at least one or two more tides to go before this thing calms down,” John Robert Hooper, the owner of Lighthouse View Oceanfront Lodging in Buxton, told Coastal Review Thursday. “It’s a messy situation right now.”

Debris is spreading south through much of the village oceanfront, which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. But unlike in Rodanthe, Hatteras Island’s northernmost village that experienced 12 house collapses from 2020 to 2024, the debris has not spread as far or as wide along the beach. Instead, much of it has been trapped under houses and driven by wind and surf into neighborhoods.

“We are working very closely with Dare County to coordinate cleanup activities,” said Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

Hallac told Coastal Review Thursday that the National Park Service had been in contact with the property owners before the homes collapsed and is working to again communicate with them.

“We are implementing emergency cleanup activities to protect these federal lands and waterways and to prevent continued impact from the spread of debris,” he said. “We’re planning on starting tomorrow (Friday) morning.”

From what he had seen, Hallac said that it appears many of the houses still had contents inside when they fell. He said the park service had also observed “pieces and parts of septic drainfield lines and other wastewater system components.”

About two dozen park service personnel were planning Thursday to start collecting debris Friday between the southern end of Buxton and Cape Point.

The entire stretch of beach from the north end of the village to the Off-Road Vehicle Ramp 43 will remain closed until further notice.

Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Bob Woodard said Thursday that county and park officials expected to meet with the county’s contractor in Buxton Friday morning to assess the site and coordinate the cleanup response.

“We’re trying to get the homeowners to get contractors to move that debris to the road, so that our guys can come in with bucket trucks and pick it all up and haul it all away,” Woodard told Coastal Review.

Woodard said he believed that most, if not all, of the fallen houses were owned by out-of-town people. But there are an additional dozen or more homes along the same area of beach that are still vulnerable to collapse, he added. 

“We thought there would be a lot more going down yesterday, with that high tide at three o’clock,” Woodard said, referring to Wednesday’s rough conditions.

Considering the extensive impact of the offshore storms, the chairman couldn’t help lamenting the bad luck in the storm’s timing, saying it wouldn’t have happened if a beach nourishment project now planned for 2026 had been in place. 

“We were all praying once we’ve moved the nourishment from ’27 to ’26, just hoping and praying that we wouldn’t have any damages until then,” he said. “But unfortunately, with Mother Nature in 2025, we’ve had three weather systems that kicked us in the butt down there.”

Hooper, who was born in Buxton in 1954, said that these multiple collapses over such a short period of time is dramatically worse than he can recall happening before. 

“Oh, yes, it is,” he told Coastal Review. “There is something else going on here, rather than this normal erosion. You know, clearly the ocean’s higher, but … where is the equilibrium?”

A beach nourishment project in Buxton a few years ago seemed to have mostly ended up at Cape Point a couple of miles south, he said. Yet, Hooper, who had served as a Dare County commissioner from 2000 to 2004, said he has seen ebb and flow of the shoreline over the years, a slow rebalancing.

“And we may be there today, and this may be the end of it, I don’t know,” he said. “But clearly, as quick as all this stuff happened, this is a new element.”

Hooper has had sandbags – technically, a temporary measure only — in front of his oceanfront motel and cottages in Buxton since about 1992, he said, and he repaired and expanded them in 2013.

“Until now, we’ve been able to manage,” he said. The cottages, located south of the motel, have been most affected by the swell.

“I’ve been here fighting this thing for 50 years now, off and on, and probably this morning it’s my first house (that’s) unsafe because of the sewage,” he said. “It’s been tough, but it’s been really tough this fall with some of the PR, and certainly storms like this don’t help”

Since about Aug. 20, he said, visitation in Buxton had been hurting. Since mid-August, he said, he figures that businesses are off 60-70%.

Still, Hooper said that even though it hurts in the short term, losing the houses that were so close to the surf was a looming threat that seemed inevitable. 

“But at least in my viewpoint, you know, we got that over with,” he said. “Because nothing is worse than a house sitting out in the ocean.”

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.”

Precariously perched as a narrow strand protruding into the stormy Atlantic Ocean, Ocracoke Island and its vulnerable highway have been a longtime headache for coastal scientists and road engineers.

Worsening erosion, flooding and storm damage exacerbated by climate change have heightened the urgency for the year-round community: What can be done to save their beloved island?

Researchers met with islanders Sept. 10 at the Ocracoke Community Center to present a study that modeled what the island’s future may hold under different scenarios, from the status quo to new efforts at beach nourishment and bridging.

The bottom line is that the very road itself, along with ongoing attempts to block the ocean’s advance with dunes and stabilize the roadbed with sandbags, has instead resulted in the narrow, low landscape that is currently so under threat by natural forces.

“The heart of the challenge is that the storm events we need to protect roads and buildings from would actually otherwise provide a lifeline for barrier islands in the face of rising sea levels,” Laura Moore, professor and associate chair of research with University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said in an interview before the meeting. “It’s an extremely difficult reality, but unfortunately, the more successful we are in preventing storm impacts, the more quickly we’re managing the barrier islands out from under us.”

Accessible only by ferries, private boats and small planes, Ocracoke Island, most of which is part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, depends on a single, highly vulnerable highway stretching about 13 miles from the ferry dock on the north end of the island to the village.

The road, N.C. Highway 12,  has been protected by oceanside sandbags for years along one section about 5 miles from the northern ferry terminal known as the South Dock because of the link to Hatteras Island. But not only are the sand barriers unable to withstand the overwash during storms — the road was impassible and closed for several days after Hurricane Erin in August — the stacking lanes by the ferry dock have also suffered severe erosion.

“It’s very threatened,” Moore told Coastal Review. “I mean, we spend so much time thinking about the road, and yet (potential loss) at that terminal is a storm away, maybe two.”

The multiyear study, led by the UNC Chapel Hill researchers as part of a team that also included scientists from N.C. State University, Duke University and East Carolina University, as well as representatives from the N.C. Department of Transportation, the National Park Service, Hyde County and Tideland Electric Member Corp., is intended to provide information based on scientific modeling, and does not make recommendations or propose solutions.

“What we were charged with was to consider how different management strategies might influence the future landscape,” Moore said. “So, we have looked at different management strategies under different sea level rise scenarios, and we are able to say something about how the different strategies will likely influence Island width and island elevation and the persistence of the island in the future.”

In other words, as Moore explained, the study did not set out to design and test strategies; it instead modeled, which is essentially, “if you do ‘X’, this is what is likely to happen.”

“We’re really looking at relative differences between the management strategies in terms of their effects on the island,” she said.

Moore said that researchers studied current coastal conditions and processes and worked off data and prior research provided in the N.C. 12 Task Force report and NCDOT feasibility studies for guidance as the team developed the strategies to be reviewed: the status quo, i.e., dune road and/or sandbag rebuilding and maintenance; beach nourishment, i.e., widen or nourish the eroding shoreline with sand pumped from stored dredged material or offshore deposits; or road alternatives, i.e., relocate the ferry dock(s), which would eliminate the need to maintain hot spots on N.C. 12,  or build a bridge or causeway to Hatteras Island.

What the modeling revealed is that under the status quo, the island would continue to narrow until, within years or decades, it would become impossible to maintain the transportation corridor. With use of beach nourishment, there would be short-term improvement for 10 to 20 years. But elevating or bridging the road would help to rebuild the landscape.

It’s the first time that the coastal scientists have been able to customize a barrier island model that includes all these processes for a particular location, Moore said, as well as conduct hindcast to calibrate that model.

“Not only are we supporting the local community and the stakeholders … we’re also supporting the scientific community and barrier island communities more broadly because what we’re learning also advances the science so that we can do even better next time,” she said.” It’s really been a beautiful next step to both be coproducing the science in a way that contributes to the local conversation and also contributes to the scientific advancements so that other communities throughout the world on barrier islands can also learn from one another.”

The Ocracoke erosion and road problem has been the target of much study by several iterations of an N.C. Task Force, a multiagency panel of coastal scientists and engineers and government officials that focused on seven vulnerable areas — the “hot spots” — all but one on Hatteras Island. The most recent group was established by the Dare County Board of Commissioners in 2021, with a report released in 2023.

Back in 1972, renowned University of Virginia coastal scientist Robert Dolan, who died in 2016 at age 87, warned in a study published in the journal Science about the consequences of development on the Outer Banks.

“Barrier dune development has been encouraged by man along the Outer Banks of North Carolina to stabilize the barrier islands,” according to the study abstract. “This modification of a delicately balanced natural system is leading to severe adjustments in both geological and ecological processes.”

Dolan, who was credited with being the first scientist to determine that the Outer Banks, rather than being anchored to coral reefs, was instead a 30-foot-deep shifting “ribbon of sand,” later elaborated, saying that the islands’ dune system “may be detrimental to the long-range stability of the barriers and may become more difficult and costly to manage than the original natural system.”

While other coastal scientists have built on Dolan’s research, including Moore, it is undeniable that the complex tension between natural forces and humanity’s need to control them where they live is becoming more difficult in places like Ocracoke.

“And so, the only reason the barrier islands exist in the first place is because of these processes that move sand from the front to the island interior,” Moore said. “That’s what formed these islands, right? And so now that things are changing more rapidly, we’re just really getting pinched in a way that we haven’t seen before.”

In simple terms, barrier islands are built higher and broader by overwash and wind carrying sand over the land. Where the ocean is battering away at the shoreline, the swath of land from the ocean to the sound side collects the sand, unless it’s blocked.

“We are understandably wanting to protect road and roads and infrastructure,” she said. “It makes perfect sense from that perspective, to build a dune to protect the road.”

As sea levels are getting higher, and storms intensify, the battering is more powerful. “And if we don’t allow the island elevation to build up, it will eventually become fragmented and drown in these areas,” Moore said. “So we’re kind of fighting a losing battle, unfortunately.”

Sea levels have been rising ever since the islands formed, she added. But it’s now rising much faster. Between the year 2000 and 2050, seas have been expected to rise 12 inches, a rate Moore called “very significant.”

“It’s so unfortunate, but if we can’t quickly slow the rate of sea level rise, we’re definitely going to have to find different ways to live at the coast,” she said. “In the case of barrier islands, if we want them to persist, we need to find a way to allow them to shift underneath us or accept that we may lose the ability to live on them at all.”

Still, with adjustments, there is hope, Moore said. Citing the 2.4-mile Rodanthe “jug handle” Bridge” and, farther north, the 2,350-foot-long Richard Etheridge Bridge as examples, she said sand will rebuild the island and the shoreline when the natural processes are allowed to happen.

The main goal of the research is to provide the scientific models of several scenarios so the community can work with partners in planning their island’s future.

“It’s really an opportunity to be an incredible example and posterchild leading the way for coastal communities broadly, because they are at the forefront,” Moore said.

Naturally, islanders can see that conditions are changing, and something has to be done, said Randal Mathews, chair of the Hyde County Board of Commissioners and an Ocracoke resident. For the time being, he said, the consensus seems to be to do beach nourishment.

“Well, it’s going to buy some time, because there’s no long-term plan, and there’s no real good short-term plan.”

What could be a reasonable solution, he said, is to “harden” the area with a jetty by the South Dock Ferry Terminal.

What the island folks don’t want to do is move the ferry terminal toward the Pony Pens in the middle of the island, as has been proposed in the recent past.

“They did a survey, and it was 90% of the people don’t want to move south and don’t want to lose access from Hatteras, because they know, like after Dorian, that’s what it was like here, logistically,” he said. “We were dying.”

Mathews said he is truly grateful for Moore’s and her research team’s work, and islanders are listening. But meanwhile, Ocracoke can’t withstand repeated hits to its economy, and the ferry system and road access are major concerns. And he knows that they need political support and funding.

“You know, in the big picture, there’s a lot of moving parts that we have to address, we have to come up with these short-term solutions,” he said. “And we’ve got to  go to Raleigh, and we’ve got to go begging, you know, and that that’s how it works.”

Researchers found in a recent study that, over the long term, bulkhead structures have a “significant negative effect” on marsh habitat size.

Using high-resolution imagery from 1981 of Carteret County’s Bogue and Back sounds and Newport and North rivers, the team measured the marsh extent, or total marsh area, at 45 sites with bulkheads and 45 natural sites, or those without the type of hardened structure. The 1981 measurements were then compared to the data from images collected in 1992, 2006 and 2013 of the same 90 sites.

The study found that all 45 bulkhead sites experienced marsh shoreline erosion during the 32-year study period, with complete marsh loss at 11% of the sites with bulkheads. More than 80% of the 45 natural marsh control sites experienced shoreline erosion, but at seven sites, around 15%, the marsh shoreline accreted waterward. None of the control sites experienced complete marsh loss.

“Our study found bulkheads nearly tripled the rate of marsh loss over a 32-year period. All of the 45 marshes we studied in front of a bulkhead got smaller or disappeared entirely,” Principal investigator Brandon Puckett explained to Coastal Review.

Puckett is a research marine biologist for the Coastal Resilience, Restoration and Assessment Branch in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, which partnered with Duke University and North Carolina Division of Coastal Management on the study.

“At the 45 natural marsh sites without bulkheads, the story was different. While many of them also eroded, more than a third actually held their ground or even grew by migrating inland into upland habitat. Bulkheads prevent marsh migration leading to a process known as ‘coastal squeeze’ whereby the marshes are not only eroding at the front edge, but are also blocked from migrating upland,” the Beaufort-based scientist said.

The study, “Bulkheads Reduce Salt Marsh Extent: A Multidecadal Assessment Using Remote Sensing,” was published this summer in the nonprofit Coastal Education and Research Foundation’s Journal of Coastal Research.

“Think of it this way,” Puckett continued. “Over the 32 years of our study — close to the length of a mortgage — the average marsh in front of a bulkhead lost about 15 feet of width. A natural marsh, on the other hand, lost only about 5 feet of width on average, because it could often make up for erosion by migrating upland.”

Of Carteret County’s 1,530 miles of estuarine shoreline, salt marsh accounts for about 1,270 miles, roughly 87 miles is hardened with bulkheads, and the remaining 11% is a different shoreline type or hardened structure other than bulkheads, like riprap.

The Division of Coastal Management, which is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, calls bulkheads the “most commonly used estuarine shoreline stabilization method” in the state “but could have deleterious impacts on the marsh habitats where they are being constructed.”

Factors contributing to the deterioration of salt marsh habitats include sea level rise and coastal development, which often result in hardened shoreline stabilization structures like bulkheads or seawalls constructed to protect against coastal hazards such as erosion, flooding and subsequent property damage, according to the study. “Concurrently, the many ecosystem services salt marshes provide, such as storm surge protection, carbon sequestration, improved water quality, and nursery habitat, are also diminishing.”

Authors state that the study is intended to offer a better understanding of how hardened shorelines like bulkheads “can have a significant negative effect on marsh extent through increased erosion of the waterward edge and prevention of landward migration with” sea level rise.

Why look at bulkheads and marsh loss?

Puckett told Coastal Review that the team decided to pursue the study after they realized they were “watching two powerful trends collide: the decline of essential marsh habitats and the increase in shoreline armoring,” provoking the question “’Is the solution to one shoreline erosion (bulkheads) actually making the other problem — marsh loss — worse?’”

He noted that scientists have long suspected that the hardened structures harm marshes but there wasn’t a lot of long-term data demonstrating these impacts. “We wanted to look back in time to objectively compare the long-term rates of change in marsh loss in locations with and without shoreline armoring.”

To get what Puckett called a “fair, apples-to-apples comparison,” the team “essentially became historical detectives” using the old aerial photographs, which were taken around low tide, when marsh shorelines were most visible. The study area was chosen because the historic aerial imagery was available.

They pored over the 1981 photos to find 45 locations where a fringe of salt marsh already existed with a bulkhead behind it. Then, for each of those 45 bulkhead sites, they located a nearby natural marsh without a bulkhead.

“We were careful to select control sites that were exposed to similar wave and wind conditions so that we were comparing like with like,” Puckett continued. “We meticulously traced the waterward and landward edges of the marsh at each site for each of the four imagery sets. By comparing these digital outlines over time, we could precisely measure both the erosion at the front of the marsh and its migration (or lack thereof) at the back.”

One of the more striking surprises from the study, Puckett said, is that the negative effects of bulkheads are almost invisible over shorter time spans.

“When we analyzed the data in smaller chunks — say, over a seven- to 14-year period — the difference in erosion rates between the bulkhead and natural sites wasn’t statistically significant. It was only by looking across the entire 32-year period that the dramatic, long-term impact became undeniable,” he said. It’s a true ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ and it tells us that short-term assessments can easily miss the entire story.”

The discovery also raises a new question about what’s driving erosion.

“We found that the fastest erosion rates occurred between 2006 and 2013, the period during our study with the highest rate of relative sea-level rise,” he said, “but not the stormiest from a tropical storm and hurricane perspective. This suggests that the constant, daily pressure of higher water levels might be a more powerful force in eating away at marsh edges than the occasional big storm, which challenges some common assumptions.”

‘Study is unique’

Authors state that this study is “the first to investigate the long-term impacts of structures on loss of marsh extent and provide useful information for better understanding the effects of shoreline hardening on salt marsh ecosystems,” which Puckett expounded on for Coastal Review.

“This study is unique for a few key reasons,” Puckett said. “Conceptually, we’ve known that bulkheads can expedite loss of marsh through reflecting wave energy and preventing migration, but this is one of the first studies to provide empirical evidence to support our conceptual understanding.”

The study analyzes more than 30 years of data, enabling the team to illustrate the slow, cumulative impacts that shorter studies could miss. “Environmental changes often don’t happen overnight, and this long-term view is critical,” he continued.

The research specifically focuses on what happens to the existing marsh that is left in front of a bulkhead, as well.

“Many people might think that as long as you leave some marsh, you’re preserving its function. Our work shows that while this may be true in the short-term, this leftover fringe marsh is often living on borrowed time because it can’t easily adapt to rising seas,” Puckett said.

And lastly, the team didn’t just measure erosion at the water’s edge, but also measured the movement of the landward boundary.

“This allowed us to calculate the net change in marsh area and definitively show that preventing landward migration is a critical factor that turns a shoreline erosion problem into a catastrophic loss of habitat. It’s this comprehensive look at both sides of the marsh over such a long period that is a unique component of this research,” he said.

Though disheartening, Puckett said it’s crucial to know that “this isn’t just a story about loss. It’s also a story about resilience and hope. The ‘good news’ from our study is that where marshes had space to move, they did.”

In the 45 natural sites studied, more than a third of the marshes were stable or even grew by migrating into upland habitats, both proving that marshes are naturally resilient and can adapt if given the room and pointing to a path forward to help address marsh erosion and migration.

“First, to combat erosion at the water’s edge, we can use living shorelines. Instead of hard walls, these solutions use natural materials like oyster reefs and native plants to slow wave energy while maintaining the vital intertidal connection between land and water. This helps preserve the marsh’s front edge. However, a marsh still may need room to move inland to adapt to sea-level rise,” Puckett said.

And a “second, equally critical part of the solution is to protect marsh migration corridors through land-use planning and conservation,” he added.

The corridors are undeveloped land set aside to allow marshes to move upland to survive rather than drowning in place.

“It is the combination of using living shorelines to reduce erosion and allowing for landward migration that can reduce the effects of coastal squeeze. We have a chance now to help protect our salt marshes that are the nurseries for our fisheries, our buffer from storm surge, and our natural water cleansers,” Puckett said.

Featured Image

A wall of sandbags extends along the roadside far into the distance aside N.C. Highway 12 on the north end of Ocracoke Island. This is where washouts and erosion from storm surge repeatedly chew away at the barrier island beach and roadway, part of the normal ocean dynamics that humans often try to control. Photo: Dylan Ray

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.”

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.

Guest Commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. 

The Outer Banks is known for its beautiful coastline and rich ecosystems, drawing millions of visitors each year. Millions of dollars in tax and business revenue are collected as a result. Unfortunately, beach erosion poses a significant challenge to homeowners, business owners and vacationers along the barrier islands, particularly those in Rodanthe. Last year, the community lost seven oceanfront homes, a record high and an indicator of a worsening problem.

Beach erosion, which has occurred for millions of years, is the defined result of changing sea levels, currents, wind patterns, and severe weather events. In fact, the Outer Banks would not exist if not for this natural process. However, erosion is consuming as much as 15 feet of shoreline each year along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

To preserve structures in place, federal, state, and local governments have launched coordinated responses, investing heavily in beach nourishment, inlet relocation, and terminal groin projects in a race against the sea. To put the severity of this issue into perspective, a 2020 review by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s (NC DEQ) Division of Coastal Management found that nearly 9,000 oceanfront structures are at risk.

Despite the growing problem, many property owners are forced to wait until their home collapses before they can file a claim through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Shoreline erosion damages are excluded from standard homeowners’ insurance, and the NFIP only covers flood-related damages, creating confusion and prohibiting proactive planning.

That is why I introduced the Preventing Environmental Hazards Act, a commonsense bill to address the unfortunate reality of beach erosion coastal homeowners face. The bipartisan legislation would authorize NFIP compensation for structures condemned due to chronic erosion or unusual flooding and allow advance payouts for demolition or relocation of up to 40% of the home’s value, capped at $250,000 – the same terms as current NFIP policy. The purpose here is to use the money to remove the structure before it collapses, rather than wait until it creates an environmental disaster.

As erosion continues to accelerate, thousands of homes across the Outer Banks are at severe risk of being swept away by the sea. Additionally, when a home collapses, debris can spread up to fifteen miles along the coast, contaminating groundwater through failing septic systems, harming aquatic species, shorebirds, and their habitats, posing safety risks to beach visitors, and creating other serious environmental hazards. Our coastal communities cannot afford a delay any longer for proactive solutions to address these challenges.

Since coming to Congress, I have worked tirelessly to address the challenges created by our shifting shoreline, meeting regularly with local officials, representatives from NC DEQ, and the National Park Service. It is a privilege and a top priority of mine to secure federal funding to help cover the cost of projects to protect our beach communities. However, mitigation programs intended to protect threatened homes are often slow, suboptimal, and difficult to access. Advance NFIP payouts will empower homeowners by providing flexibility to prepare for or recover from natural disasters while at the same time mitigating risks to beachgoers and mariners.

Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

The public meeting on stabilizing a mile of shoreline at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site has been rescheduled for Feb. 12 and the comment period extended by two weeks.

Like the meeting originally planned for Jan. 23, which was postponed because of winter weather conditions, the Feb. 12 meeting will begin at 6 p.m. in Fort Raleigh’s visitor center in Manteo, National Park Service officials announced Wednesday.

Related: National Park Service looks to protect Fort Raleigh shoreline

The public comment period that was set to end Feb. 7 now ends Feb. 21.

Comments may be submitted electronically, the preferred method, or mailed to Superintendent, 1401 National Park Drive, Manteo, NC 27954.

The three preliminary alternatives for stabilizing about a mile of shoreline can be viewed in the public scoping newsletter at parkplanning.nps.gov/FORA_shoreline.

COROLLA — Officials with the Donal C. O’Brien Sanctuary and Audubon Center at Pine Island hope to add to their toolkit for mitigating the effects of sea level rise on marsh environments with help from a recent $3.05 million grant.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation awarded the money to the sanctuary in Currituck County in late 2024, “to fund innovative marsh restoration pilot projects.”

Marsh islands that once protected Currituck Sound shorelines along the Outer Banks and in mainland Currituck County are disappearing. The marsh itself is retreating, and slowly, incrementally, Currituck Banks are becoming narrower.

The marsh, in order to grow as water levels change, needs a steady supply of sediment, but the main source of that supply has been choked off by efforts to control ocean beach erosion.

“By fixing the (Outer Banks) in position, we are limiting these over water dynamics,” Dr. Sid Narayan, assistant professor in the East Carolina University Department of Coastal Studies, told Coastal Review recently. There is still sediment that comes from rivers, but, he explained, “that’s more limited.”

Pine Island Audubon Center Director Robbie Fearn has spent more than 10 years on Currituck Sound, and he has seen the effects Narayan described.

“You don’t get the overwash anymore,” Fearn said. “A lot of what we’re struggling with out here is that we don’t have much sand. It used to be, with barrier islands all being barren, the sand would just blow in. Now it doesn’t blow in, so there’s no sand source from here, either overwash or blown sand. It’s a real challenge.”

Narayan said the situation is not hopeless, but it does require new ways of thinking. Fearn agreed.

“I  think what we need to get creative with is to find ways in which we can start to introduce as much of these ocean-to-sound dynamics as possible,” Fearn said, retrieving a U.S. Geological Survey map from a drawer, spreading it across a table and pointing to a series of small islands of the Currituck Sound marsh called Shoe Hole Bay.

“All of this area out here is falling apart. It’s not much of a bay anymore,” Fearn said.  “Once we lose those, then all of this inner marsh complex gets exposed to that high fetch, and this is where the marsh birds like to nest, in protected high marsh.”

Fearn then moved his finger across the map, pointing to an island opposite from Shoe Hole Bay that forms the eastern boundary of Poplar Branch Bay and the community of Walnut Island that borders it.

“This island, Marsh Island, actually protects all of Walnut Island from storm surge,” Fearn said, noting that on the north end of the island the waters of Currituck Sound are “trying to break through.”

‘Years of hard work’

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, or NFWF, is a nonprofit conservation organization that Congress created in 1984. A 30-member board of directors approved by the Secretary of the Interior governs the private organization.

The NFWF grant is the latest in a series of grants awarded to the Pine Island site for restoration. In 2019, the North Carolina Attorney General’s office awarded an Environmental Enhancement Grant to the Audubon Society that created the framework for the NFWF grant.

“This is the culmination of many years of hard work and partnership across many different organizations and engineering firms and researchers,” said National Audubon Society Senior Coastal Resilience Program Manager Cat Bowler.

Those organizations will be invaluable in moving a project forward that will look to new ways to approach restoring the marsh.

“These projects are some of the first of their kind in Currituck Sound and in some cases, in the state of North Carolina. We want to do everything that we can to learn as much as we can about these marsh restoration techniques so that we can share what works well and what doesn’t work well,” Bowler said.

One of the issues confronting marsh restoration in Currituck Sound is that it is an environment unlike almost any other. Techniques that may have been successful in the Pamlico or Albemarle sounds often will not work at Pine Island.

“The majority of these coastal restoration projects, particularly in North Carolina, have been done in saltier-water environments, so they tend to depend heavily on oyster reefs and that sort of thing. In this very low-salt environment (at Pine Island), nobody really knows what works,” Fearn said.

The grant calls for Audubon to test and evaluate three different approaches. Two of the methods that will be tested are deemed low-tech and inexpensive. For Fearn, that is particularly important. He said that, although the testing will be done at the Pine Island marsh islands, if successful, they could offer less-costly restoration alternatives to surrounding areas.

“We really wanted to pilot some techniques that perhaps a farmer could use to protect their fields or some other landowner could utilize to protect their property that was not at that high price point of a living shoreline,” he said. “If you’re putting in rock or you’re putting in those vinyl breakwaters, the vinyl breakwaters are probably $125 to $250 a linear foot (to build). Well, if you got a lot of shoreline, you’re talking $100,000.”

The two less expensive systems that are being used are, according to information from Audubon, “coir logs, which are made of woven, biodegradable material and are placed on bare mud in front of a marsh to help dampen the force of waves,” and “pine tree breakwater(s) will be created by laying recycled trees between pilings in front of marsh islands.”

The coir logs are a coconut fiber log, and if the technique works, could be a simple method to rebuild the marsh in the right circumstances.

“We are looking at things like the coconut fiber log, because that can be installed, once you have the permit, by anybody,” Fearn said.

The pine tree breakwaters are a more complex installation, but still relatively low cost, especially compared to a living shoreline.

“The Christmas tree breakwater is a little more advanced, but once again, it’s low-tech installation,” Fearn said, explaining that after pilings are in place, “you place the Christmas trees.”

But, he added, there is research that has to be done.

“Does having that much pine in one area create a change in the water chemistry in that area?” was a question Fearn posed.

Perhaps the most ambitious — and expensive — method funded is thin-layer placement.

Thin-layer placement is a “novel technique,” Bowler said, “which has been used successfully in other coastal states, but is still very new in North Carolina.”

Audubon describes the technique as applying dredged sediment in thin layers on the marsh surface. This has been successful in Louisiana and other coastal states, but has not been tested at scale in North Carolina. The process, which requires dredging silt and placing it in the marsh environment, is significantly more expensive and requires far more technical expertise than either coir logs or pine tree breakwaters.

Marsh Island, where it borders Walnut Island and Poplar Branch Bay, was identified as the site to test the thin-layer component. When first conceived, planners looked at Oregon Inlet as a source for silt, but “it was just terrible for the ecology and the cost for moving all that sand up here was ridiculous,” Fearn said.

Instead, the dredging will happen at two locations much closer to the marsh and will have added benefits, Fearn explained.

“We wanted to have community benefits as well. We’re in a place with lots of channels, (and) we found just north of the Poplar Branch boat ramp is a shoal area. In fact, they’ve got markers to warn people,” he said. “If we can lower these shoals, we have a navigational benefit and the Walnut Island community has these channels that are silting in cleared.”

The grant project is still in its initial stages. Permits are still needed and it may take longer than usual because of the experimental nature and because regulators and Audubon want to be sure it is be done correctly.

“The regulators are very much interested in these projects, because they are groundbreaking in many ways, and we need as many tools in the toolbox as we can get to address these changes that are happening to our coast,” Fearn said.

“We’re very much committed to working in partnership with the regulatory community to make sure that we get these projects right, and that we learn as much as we can from these pilot techniques,” Bowler added. “We are planning to have those permits in hand by summer. That’s our goal.”

Guest commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. 

Each winter, as lights and decorations are packed away, holiday trees are typically discarded or sent to landfills in most areas. But in the Wilmington region of North Carolina, the Cape Fear Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation has been doing something different.

For the past 11 years and this past Saturday, this chapter has led the community in repurposing Christmas trees to rebuild dunes in critically eroded stretches of the coastline. These efforts not only help restore the natural landscape, but also educate the community about one of North Carolina’s most pressing challenges: protecting our coastline in the face of sea-level rise and intensifying storms.

The threats facing Cape Fear’s beaches are not unique. Across North Carolina, rising seas and worsening coastal erosion jeopardize the Tar Heel State’s ecosystems, communities, infrastructure, and economies. Climate change has led to higher tides, more frequent flooding, and even homes collapsing into the ocean due to severe erosion and storm damage.

North Carolina’s coastal property owners and communities have typically addressed chronic erosion and storm damage through beach renourishment or replenishment. This short-sighted “solution” disrupts natural sand movement and processes, frequently smother adjacent ecosystems and wildlife, and can cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, or more, to maintain in the long term. One storm event can easily wipe out a multimillion dollar project in a matter of a few hours, leaving North Carolina’s coastal habitats at risk of permanent loss due to sea level rise and flooding.

This is where nature-based solutions come in.

Nature-based solutions restore and conserve ecosystems by leveraging natural processes and resources to enhance biodiversity, protect habitats, and promote resilient communities. They also help mitigate disaster risk, including the effects of sea level rise, flooding, and storm surge.

In the case of the Cape Fear Chapter’s annual dune restoration event, volunteers place Christmas trees collected by the city along coastal areas in need of protection and rebuilding. Working closely with local government, community members, and wildlife advocacy groups, Surfrider ensures the trees are positioned to maximize sand capture while avoiding harm to wildlife. Once staked in place, the trees act as natural dune infrastructure, capturing sand and fostering the regrowth of critical dune plants and ecosystems.

In 2024, the Surfrider Foundation launched its Climate Action Program to focus on implementing nature-based solutions for climate impacts in coastal areas from Cape Fear to Hawaii, and everywhere in between. While the official program is new, volunteers across the country have long been leading efforts to address these challenges in their communities through the Surfrider Foundation. The Cape Fear Chapter exemplifies this approach, demonstrating how grassroots action can drive meaningful coastal change.

Across Surfrider’s network, volunteers are championing local initiatives to combat the impacts of climate change. From advocating for living shorelines and marsh restoration to promoting managed retreat, Surfrider’s activists are showing how nature-based solutions can address erosion and flooding sustainably.

The annual Christmas tree dune restoration event in Cape Fear serves as an entry point to educate the community on how nature-based solutions can mitigate climate-driven impacts. Through hands-on volunteer opportunities, Surfrider emphasizes the need for widespread adoption of sustainable practices along our coasts. These efforts empower community members to advocate for long-term, science-based policies, calling on decision-makers to prioritize the resilience of their communities.

As we welcome 2025, let’s make this the year we reimagine our relationship with North Carolina’s coast. By embracing nature-based solutions and working together to protect what we love, we can create a thriving, resilient coastline for generations to come.

To get involved with the Cape Fear Chapter’s dune restoration event next year — or to find volunteer opportunities with other Surfrider chapters along the coast — visit surfrider.org/volunteer.

Let’s make the health of our coasts a shared New Year’s resolution.

Surfrider Southeast Regional Manager Kayla Huff contributed to this piece.

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.

Update Feb. 5: The Fort Raleigh National Historic Site shoreline stabilization public meeting has been rescheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12. The comment period was extended to Feb. 21 because of the weather-related meeting postponement.

Update 8:45 a.m. Jan. 23: National Park Service officials announced Wednesday night that the shoreline erosion public meeting, originally scheduled for Thursday has been postponed because of hazardous weather conditions. A new date will be announced.

Original post:

For the first time in close to 50 years, National Park Service officials are looking to stabilize the eroding shoreline at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site that, if not addressed, could jeopardize the cultural and natural resources stewards of the 355-acre site in Manteo aim to protect.

Park service staff are considering three different structures to protect the about a mile of shoreline and invite the public to share their thoughts through Feb. 7.

Established in 1941 on the north end of Roanoke Island where the Albemarle, Croatan and Roanoke sounds converge, Fort Raleigh is the last known location of the 116 English settlers that disappeared in the late 1580s, referred to as the “Lost Colony.”

Before Sir Walter Raleigh led English expeditions to the “New World” in the late 1580s, the land was home to Carolina Algonquians. During the American Civil War in the 1860s, formerly enslaved people established the Freedmen’s Colony on the island nestled between Manns Harbor and Nags Head.

The alternatives detailed in the public scoping newsletter include a rock revetment against the shoreline escarpment with fill material to create a slope; a 5- to 10-foot-high rock berm with a 20- to 40-foot-wide base at the toe of the existing slope on the beach possibly backfilled with natural materials; or a site-specific combination of the two along the mile stretch.

Comments can be submitted electronically or by mail to: Superintendent, 1401 National Park Drive, Manteo, NC 27954. The comment period began Jan. 8. A public meeting on the project is set for 6 p.m. Thursday at the site’s visitor center, 1500 Fort Raleigh Road, Manteo.

Project documents indicate that erosion has been an issue since the park was established. Wooden groins were built in the 1940s along the shoreline, and in the 1960s, an offshore breakwater was installed.

In the late 1970s, around 1,500 feet of riprap was placed near the Dough Cemetery, which dates to the mid-19^th century and faces the Croatan Sound, and along the shoreline around the Lost Colony Waterside Theater, where “The Lost Colony” dramatization of the 1580s interaction between the Algonquian and English has been performed nearly every summer since 1947.

Mike Barber, public affairs specialist with the National Park Service, said that 1979-80 work was the last shoreline-stabilization project at the cemetery and theater, and no maintenance of existing shoreline-stabilization measures has taken place to since, as far as anyone seems to know.

“Erosion along the remaining exposed shoreline, including 4500 feet of unstable, undercut cliffs as high as 25 feet, poses a serious threat to potential archeologically significant sites and park facilities,” the scoping newsletter states. “Without action, the erosion will most likely continue, causing continued loss of park lands, vegetation, archeological resources, and ultimately park facilities such as roadways, parking areas, and buildings.”

Barber expounded that, right now, mature trees near the shoreline are falling, and potential archeological resources may be washing away without intervention.

Barber said that the Waterside Theater parking lot, Pear Pad Road and the utilities that run along it as well as the National Park Service employee housing on the southern side of the road are along segments of shoreline that have not been stabilized and are the most vulnerable.

The three alternatives were determined using data from previous related studies, evaluating existing topographic conditions, and assessing existing jurisdiction, and “A preferred alternative has not been selected to date,” he said.

He added that the environmental assessment “is being developed to analyze the impacts of each alternative to guide the selection of a preferred alternative based on environmental impacts to the historic site’s natural and cultural resources.”

An environmental assessment evaluates the potential environmental impacts of a proposed action and is required by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

Barber said that the environmental assessment is expected to be released for public review this summer with a goal of publishing the final version before the end of the year.

Barber said that if all goes as planned, it may be several years before project work begins.

“Prior to starting a project to stabilize the shoreline, we will need to finalize — with public feedback — the environmental assessment, enter into a contract to design the stabilization based on the selected alternative, and hire a contractor to perform the stabilization work,” he said.

Michael Flynn, physical scientist for the National Park Service, explained that while they don’t have an estimate of shoreline change since the 1940s, a1972 study reported that the northern end of Roanoke Island may have receded by as much as 928 feet from 1851 until 1970, losing around 7.25 feet a year, and 158 feet from 1903 to 1971, or around 2.32 feet a year.

More recent shoreline change rate data is provided within a park service technical assistance report published in 2010. That report describes the segmentation of the shoreline that took place because of stabilization methods employed between 1950-1980, Flynn said.

The report cites a 2003 study that estimates erosion rates for unmodified bluff segments between highly modified sediment bank shorelines is as high as 21 to 23 feet a year between 1969 and 1975, which motivated the riprap placement in 1980.

Natural rates of erosion along unmodified segments are estimated to be between 2 and 3 feet a year, with more severe rates of erosion located down drift of stabilization methods, Flynn explained.

Flynn said that the park is generally planning for a foot of sea level rise in the next 30 years based on the Sea Level Rise Technical Report released in 2022. He said park officials recognize that sea level rise will increase the frequency and magnitude of flooding and storm surge, exacerbating erosion and its impacts to resources and infrastructure.  

“Specific sea level rise scenarios used for engineering designs will be selected following the completion of the (environmental assessment),” he said.

RODANTHE – The North Carolina Department of Transportation is set to begin work Friday rebuilding dunes and placing sandbags on a severely erosion-threatened stretch of N.C. Highway 12 here.

Department officials are calling the $400,000 project on an 1,100-foot stretch of highway “a temporary solution to protect the highway from ocean overwash caused by extreme tides and storms.”

Officials said the project near the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge visitor center is meant to mitigate the type of overwash that caused the highway to be closed for a period in mid-November. They said it would also add a layer of protection for the road itself, helping to prevent the type of undermining that could damage the pavement and cause a long-term shutdown of the only roadway link between the mainland and Hatteras Island.

“We know this is only a temporary fix,” said N.C. Department of Transportation Division Engineer Win Bridgers. “But it’s vital for us to do everything we can to keep N.C. 12 open and accessible while we seek a more permanent solution.”

The sandbag project will take about a week to complete, with alternating single-lane closures in the area while the work is ongoing.

The Coastal Resources Commission in December approved a variance from Coastal Area Management Act development rules to allow the sandbag placement.

The November storm had washed away 1,000 feet of dune and exposed the highway’s pavement high surf. Roadway flooding and pavement drop-off produced hazardous traffic conditions, prompting the temporary road closure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

Like a slow-rolling disaster, the third house in four days collapsed Tuesday afternoon into the surf along the village of Rodanthe, casting tons more construction debris into the Atlantic and onto the beaches for miles within Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

“We have 30 people that are out there right now,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review Wednesday in an interview, referring to park service staff who are racing the wind and tide to pick up debris, working alongside dozens of contract workers and volunteers.

Hallac described the state of the beach after the house fell Tuesday as a “total mess.” The ocean claimed two houses on Friday.

“I would say the debris field was so dense and thick, for the first quarter-mile south of the house collapse site that it was difficult to actually walk,” he said. “And that debris field continued to be fairly significant, actually, past the Rodanthe Pier.”

The superintendent also observed a large amount of “extremely hazardous” debris in the surf being “thrown all over the place as the waves were breaking.”

According to a National Park Service press release, the park has temporarily closed the beach from G A Kohler Court to Wimble Shores North Court in Waves, including the Dare County beach access on N.C. Highway 12 in Rodanthe.

Swimmers and surfers have been warned to stay out the ocean in front of the villages of Rodanthe, Waves and Salvo, and pedestrians have been cautioned to wear hard-soled shoes in the vicinity of the beach and ocean.

The latest house collapse at 23039 G A Kohler Court follows one at 23001 G A Kohler Court that fell Friday morning and another to its south at 23009 G A Kohler that collapsed shortly after 9:15 that night.

Each of the wooden houses, built on tall pilings, were unoccupied at the time of their collapse.

In a frustrating twist, plans were in the works to proactively demolish the house that collapsed Tuesday.

Hallac said the house had been foreclosed on and the bank had hired a real estate agent, who in turn hired a local contractor to tear it down. The contractor, W.M. Dunn Construction in Powells Point, was ready to go, he said, but the work was delayed by the very same high tides and powerful currents — pumped up by a couple of offshore storm systems and the full moon — that ultimately took it down. The same house had already been damaged Friday when the nearby house at 23009 collapsed.

So instead of the demolition, the contractor will be doing the cleanup of the house debris, Hallac said.

“Trying to secure the bulk of debris between the tide cycles after the third house fell,” a Tuesday post said on the contractor’s website.

A total of 10 houses have collapsed in the last four years in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and W.M. Dunn and company owner Mike Dunn have been contracted to clean up most of them. 

Although homeowners are responsible for hiring the contractor to clean up the debris from their house, the situation is complicated not just by the fact that it doesn’t stay where it fell, but also that it is mixed with debris from other collapsed houses.

Homeowners are billed by the park service for the time that park service staff dedicates to cleaning debris, Hallac said. They are also asked to move or demolish houses on the eroded shoreline that are at risk of being destroyed by the ocean. But the agency, he said, is not out to punish homeowners, many of whom bought their houses when they were far back from the ocean.

“We’re focused on working with the homeowners and finding constructive solutions,” he said. “Many of these owners have owned these houses for a long period of time.”

In the first two recent collapses, remains of the structures and whatever they contained could be found 20 miles down the beach, Hallac said.

Once debris gets into the Atlantic, it’s nearly impossible, or certainly much more difficult, to retrieve. Huge boards with nails in them and pieces of fiberglass, strands of wire, broken windows — anything and everything found in a house — could bob around the ocean, be taken far away by currents or sink into the sandy bottom.

Although the ideal solution would be getting every house off the beach before it falls, the reality is that a combination of private property rights versus public safety concerns, coastal regulations and policies, insurance compensation, legal constraints, and multiple jurisdictional issues make efficient and effective responses to eroding shorelines and other climate change complexities extremely difficult.

A report released in August, “Managing Threatened Oceanfront Structures: Ideas From An Interagency Work Group,” was the culmination of multiple meetings the work group held over two years. The group was co-chaired by Hallac and Braxton Davis. During this time, Davis was the director of the Division of Coastal Management, under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. Since February, Davis has been the executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

According to the report, in 2020 more than 750 of about 8,777 oceanfront structures on the North Carolina coast were at risk from oceanfront erosion, a term that was defined as lacking dunes or vegetation between the structure and ocean. It also noted that “the situation is anticipated to worsen with increasing sea level rise and coastal storms.”

The task force reviewed existing policies, laws, grant funds and coastal programs, and discussed tweaks or additions to them.

None of the numerous short-term or long-term proposals detailed in the report included simple or quick solutions. For instance, one idea was updating and revising the National Flood Insurance Program, but that could require an act of Congress. Still, the report broadly outlines options and goals.

With the recent collapses, Hallac said the report is getting more attention from their partners with the state and Dare County, among others.

“Definitely, our colleagues are reading the report, and we’re having a lot of discussions about certain options that are in the report,” he said.

For instance, there is more interest in scaling up a property-acquisition program, similar to a grant program the National Seashore used recently to acquire and demolish two other threatened oceanfront structures.

“So I think there’s a lot of momentum behind the report,” Hallac said. “I can’t say there’s a specific action that has come out of it, but it has definitely been a platform for having more discussions and working towards solutions. But I will continue to say that I’m not sure there’s going to be a silver bullet,” he added. “It’s a matter of, I think, all of the ideas that are in that (report) have merit. They’re worth further discussion.”

Meanwhile, two more houses remain standing — for now — in the surf near where the other three just fell.

BEAUFORT — The state Coastal Resources Commission is pushing ahead a proposed rule change to allow wheat straw bales to be placed on ocean shores as a means of protecting dunes.

The commission, which adopts rules and policies for coastal development in North Carolina, on Wednesday unanimously approved the fiscal impact analysis of the proposed rule during its quarterly meeting.

The fiscal analysis, which measures how a rule may affect a government’s revenue and expenditures to help prepare for or prevent budget shortfalls, has also been approved by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and Office of State Budget and Management, or OSBM

The proposed rule change may save local governments, state and federal agencies and large, oceanfront homeowners associations, or HOAs, the headache of waiting for sand fencing to become available during times when it is in high demand, according to Heather Coats, Division of Coastal Management, or DCM, beach and inlet project coordinator.

But the division does not expect a significant uptick in the use of straw bales, she said, because they tend to cost more than traditional sand fencing, would need to be replaced more frequently than fencing, and the verdict is still out on how efficiently bales trap sand.

The cost for a 10-foot section of wheat straw bales ranges between an estimated $30 to $72, according to information gathered by DCM staff with input from the OSBM. A 10-foot section of traditional sand fencing costs an estimated $12 to $24.

Commissioners approved the proposed rule change at their April meeting.

Only local governments, state and federal agencies and large, oceanfront HOAs are permitted to use straw bales under the proposed rule, which includes additional review requirements by wildlife agencies because little is known about their potential impact to nesting sea turtles.

Under the proposed rule, bales cannot be placed in sections more than 10 feet long, 2 feet wide and 3 feet high. A minimum of 7 feet must be between each section. Ties or binding have to be removed from the bales.

Ocean Isle Beach became the first in the state to test whether straw bales might be an effective alternative to sand fencing after the Coastal Resources Commission last year granted the town a variance allowing straw bales to be placed at six areas on the eastern end of the Brunswick County island.

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

“Most of them covered up fairly quickly,” she said. “In my opinion, it’s more environmentally friendly.”

This fall the town will begin a dune construction project along the east end of the ocean shore from the area of High Point Street to the east of the East Fourth Street beach access, shortly beyond the terminal groin.

Smith said town officials have not decided whether to use straw bales or sand fencing once construction, which will include vegetating the dune, is complete.

“Today we have no project planned to do either one, but when we get through hurricane season that may change,” she said.

The proposed rule change will now go to a public hearing. If it receives final approval, Division of Coastal Management staff anticipate that the rule amendment would become effective April 1, 2025.

The coastal commission also tackled other rulemaking measures on Wednesday, one of which also pertains to Ocean Isle’s dune construction project.

That proposed rule will align with a law passed earlier this year by the North Carolina General Assembly that allows any beach towns that receives a permit to build a terminal groin to establish a measurement line for dune building projects.

The line would “represent the existing location of the first line of stable and natural vegetation” included in a dune building and beach planting project, according to the division.

The current rule establishes a line from where the ocean hazard setback is measured for a stretch of unvegetated beach.

Under the proposed rule, the line would have to be set in coordination with the division, be applicable for no less than two years after a project’s completion, and would apply in areas of a beach significant impacted by erosion and overwash from a storm.

The commission’s approval of this rule as “temporary” allows Ocean Isle Beach to move forward with its dune construction project. Division staff recommended the commission adopt the rule as permanent.

Commissioners also approved pushing ahead with making permanent a rule that deals with general permitting for bridge and culvert replacements in estuarine waters.

Cathy Brittingham, division transportation project coordinator, explained that a rule pertaining to the Coastal Area Management Act general permit for replacing bridges and culverts was mistakenly changed a couple of years ago.

As it stands, the permit has a 120-day expiration date, well below the time it takes to replace a bridge.

The proposed rule amendment would reinstate the expiration date of two years and would require an applicant, which in these cases are predominately the North Carolina Department of Transportation, to provide a project narrative and dates plats of existing and proposed developments in an application.

The commission also approved amending a rule to allow a property owner to rebuild docks and piers damaged or destroyed in storms, fire, or normal deterioration to its pre-damaged condition without having to obtain a CAMA permit.

The General Assembly earlier this summer passed a law setting forth this rule. The permit exemption does not apply to docks and piers wider than 6 feet, larger than 800 square feet, or those adjacent to a federal navigation channel.

Once rules are adopted by the coastal commission as permanent, those rules then go to the Rules Review Commission.

The Rules Review Commission last October objected to 30 of the coastal commission’s longstanding rules, a move that subsequently got the rules removed from the state Administrative Code.

In March, the coastal commission re-adopted more than a dozen of those rules coastal management officials said are crucial to day-to-day operations as temporary as a means to get them back into the code for one year or until they are reinstated as permanent.

The coastal commission and DEQ filed a lawsuit against the rules commission. That lawsuit is ongoing.

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Monday in observance of Labor Day.

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.

Bald Head Island could be the first beach town in the state to have two terminal groins now that the North Carolina General Assembly has amended the law that governs the number of such structures allowed on the state’s coastal shores.

Village officials were quick earlier this week to say that Senate Bill 607 gives them the option to pursue a study on whether a terminal groin would be a viable method of controlling chronic erosion at the east end of the island’s south beach.

Whether the village will move forward with such a study remains to be seen as the bill, which was ratified Friday, awaits Gov. Roy Cooper’s decision to sign, veto or let the bill become law.

Bald Head Island Village Mayor Peter Quinn on Monday sent an email to island property owners explaining why village officials had requested the change in the law, what the change means for the village and next steps.

“Such projects are very expensive and take years,” Quinn wrote. “The Village would not undertake such a study without any basis for a helpful solution. Any structure would be subject to extensive design, environmental study, public input, and state and federal permitting.”

A terminal groin has not been designed, planned or proposed, he wrote, and a multi-year investigation into whether such a structure would keep erosion at bay “will not be rushed.”

A terminal groin, as defined by bill, is one or more structures constructed at the terminus of an island or on the side of an inlet, or where the ocean shoreline converges with Frying Pan Shoals.

“Work to find a viable, financially responsible long-term answer needs to be environmentally sound,” Quinn stated. “Our community has, and hopefully always will, embrace the role of a steward whose actions are in harmony with its natural surroundings. We depend on this mutual idea and agents like the Conservancy to keep us on course.”

He is referring to the Bald Head Island Conservancy, an environmental and educational nonprofit that has publicly opposed the change to the law.

Last month, Bald Head Island Conservancy Executive Director Chris Shank was invited to make a presentation to the village council in which he argued whether a hardened structure would control the movement of sand on the east end of south beach, an area where sand is shifted by storms, which are unpredictable in frequency and strength.

Shank said in an email Monday afternoon that the conservancy was “very disappointed” legislators had passed the law, which also gives the village the option to explore replacing a series of fabric, sand-filled tubes on the west end of south beach with rock structures.

“I don’t believe the Village of BHI leadership or the NC legislators appreciate the monumental shift in approach to managing and protecting NC’s spectacular barrier islands that this legislation could bring,” he wrote. “Our barrier islands have always been one of our state’s most special resources, including our dynamic cape system whose constantly changing sands bring awe and wonder to those who experience them. Further, I doubt that North Carolina citizens want to armor their beaches to protect a limited number of private properties in the short-term in exchange for potentially much longer-term negative impacts to the rest of our beaches. I wish the Conservancy along with our research partners in the coastal physics and engineering fields had been offered the opportunity to discuss the potential consequences of this legislation with those who crafted and voted upon it. Then, at least, this baseline shifting decision would have been given the respect that it deserved for the citizens of Bald Head Island and throughout North Carolina.”

Bald Head Island was the first North Carolina beach community to build a terminal groin after the General Assembly repealed a decades’ old law prohibiting hardened shoreline erosion control structures on North Carolina’s coast.

The 2011 law authorized the Coastal Resources Commission to permit the construction of no more than four terminal groins under a pilot program. Legislators would later add that two additional terminal groins may be permitted. Senate Bill 607, if approved by the governor, will up the allowable number of terminal groins that may be permitted to seven.

Bald Head Island and Ocean Isle Beach are the only towns that have built terminal groins.

Village voters in 2014 overwhelmingly passed an $18 million bond to secure funding to build a 1,300-foot-long terminal groin at the western end of south beach, an area where the widening and deepening of the entrance to the Wilmington Harbor channel exacerbated sand loss.

“Changes in the island’s morphology at Frying Pan Shoals over the past few years have seen dramatic erosion and loss of beach habitat and property on the east end of South Beach,” Quinn stated in his letter to property owners.

The village spends anywhere from $1 million to $2 million about every five years to replace the cloth sand tube groin filed at south beach, he said. That groin field has been there since 1995.

“Replacing the cloth tubes with rock structures would save substantial public funds,” Quinn wrote. “These are not new or disappearing conditions.”

Village Manager Chris McCall described the tubes as, on average, stretching about 300 feet long.

Those tubes have proven to slow the rate of sand flow, he said. The law specifies that the field of rock structures may be groins, including T-head or lollipop groins, or breakwaters. The rock structures cannot be larger than the existing cloth tubes or greater in number.

These structures would have to be approved by the Division of Coastal Management or by variance from the Coastal Resources Commission.

Quinn said the village will dedicate a page on its website to keep property owners updated on its analysis of potential erosion control methods on the beach and when the public can provide input.

Note: Coastal Review will not publish Thursday in observance of Independence Day, a federal holiday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congressman Greg Murphy, R-N.C., was joined this week by another East Coast congressional leader in introducing legislation that would authorize federal flood insurance payouts for structures on the brink of collapse from chronic erosion.

Murphy and Rep. Shellie Pingree, D-Maine, rolled out the Prevent Environmental Hazards Act, which aims to take a proactive approach in preventing structures threatened by persistent erosion or unusual flooding from tumbling down.

“Homeowners should not be forced to wait for their home to cause an environmental hazard before the National Flood Insurance Program is implemented,” Murphy said in a release. “As many in our coastal communities understand, ocean currents and weather systems are unpredictable. As an example, beach erosion in Rodanthe, NC has destroyed six properties in the last four years, causing massive environmental and personal hazards before the homeowners were able to receive National Flood Insurance compensation. Proactive planning will better serve eligible beneficiaries, improve public safety, save taxpayer dollars, and protect the surrounding environment. This effort gives homeowners more options to protect their livelihoods and expands forward-thinking approaches to the many coastal challenges we face. Additionally, it prevents environmental hazards along our pristine coastlines before they occur.”

Structural damage caused by shoreline erosion are not covered under standard homeowners’ insurance and the National Flood Insurance Program covers flood damage only.

“This delay causes public health, safety, and environmental issues from debris and pollutants, leading to hazardous cleanups,” according to a release from Murphy’s office. “Existing mitigation programs to address threatened homes are slow and inaccessible to homeowners.”

The proposed legislation authorizes flood insurance payouts to owners of structures condemned because of chronic erosion or unusual flooding and allows advance payouts for demolition or relocation for up to 40% of the home’s value or $250,000. Its sponsors said it would reduce confusion in attributing damage to specific floods and encourage proactive demolition or relocation to prevent collapses and reduce cleanup costs.

Payouts would be limited to 40% to owners who neglect to act before a collapse.

“Coastal communities in Maine know all too well how devastating the impacts of the climate crisis can be,” Pingree said in a statement. “Over the last year, Maine has been hit with multiple major storms and climate emergencies are continuing to increase across the country. Our Prevent Environmental Hazards Act gives homeowners the ability to tackle coastal erosion before losing their homes by authorizing the National Flood Insurance Program to give payouts for condemned structures and allowing advanced demolition or relocation funding. Giving our coastal communities more funding options is crucial to mitigating future climate change impacts and I am happy to be a part of this bipartisan effort.”

Cosponsors of the legislation include Reps. David Rouzer, R-N.C., Don Davis, D-N.C., Jen Kiggans, R-Va., Rob Wittman, R-Va., and Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y.

As the holiday season comes to an end, the stockings that were hung by the chimney with care are back in the box along with the keepsake ornaments and strands of lights that were just adorning the branches of your natural Christmas tree.

Now, what to do with the tree itself?

There are quite a few options here on the coast for proper disposal, from putting the tree on the curb for your town to pick up to donating it for dune stabilization. All require the tree be free of any decorations, including tinsel, lights, garland, hooks and ornaments.

The trees also can be used as a substitute for traditional sand fencing.

“The use of Christmas trees as a sand fencing alternative is a long-standing practice on our beaches to help stabilize and grow the dune system,” Division of Coastal Management regulatory section chief Jonathan Howell told Coastal Review.

There are rules for how the trees should be placed. Rows should be the width of a single tree, installed at a 45-degree angle to the shoreline, no more than 10 feet seaward of the toe of the natural dune, and there should be a minimum of 7 feet between trees. Trees should not impede emergency vehicle and public beach accesses or endanger sea turtles during nesting season, which kicks off in a few months.

“Following the sand fencing rules ensures the placement of Christmas trees allows for the continued enjoyment of the beach by the public and the protection of existing vegetation and habitat,” Howell added.

Audubon North Carolina Coastal biologist Lindsay Addison reiterated in an interview that following the division’s rules or obtaining the proper permit is the only legal way to leave your live Christmas tree on a beach or barrier island.

“There are rules about how sand fencing is set up to minimize harm to sea turtles and native beach ecosystems,” she said.

She said a few years back, there were about 50 trees left on a protected island, prompting Audubon to post signs reminding visitors not to leave trees.

“People think they’re doing good when they dump their natural trees on beaches or barrier islands, and I appreciate the thought but it’s just not helpful in the long run,” she said. “I’ve seen trees washed into the marsh, out on the beach and half buried in the foreshore where it’s an impediment to sea turtles.”

Though the tree is essentially debris and can cause harm to the wildlife, “there are many things you can do with your Christmas tree that’s positive,” Addison said, including composting the tree or donating it to a dune stabilization program.

Onslow County Extension Agent Emilee Morrison agrees that recycling the Christmas tree is a great way to help the environment.

“By repurposing your tree, you could improve your garden, provide wildlife habitat, create fish habitat, or even help stabilize sand dunes. Live trees take years of care and maintenance to grow to the size you purchase them as, so why not add that resource back to the environment rather than taking them to the landfill,” she said.

Morrison suggested in a guide for recycling trees a handful of options including using a chipper to reduce small limbs to compost, place branches on top of landscaped beds, submerge the tree in a private fishpond to become a fish feeding refuge, check with area wildlife shelters to see if they can use the tree, or donate the tree for dune stabilization efforts.

Addison said Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach “is a great example of a Christmas tree program.”

The state park has collected trees since the 1960s for dune stabilization.

Park Ranger Benjamin Fleming reiterated that tinsel and Christmas lights should be removed before dropping off the tree at the designated area in the parking lot.

“We continue to receive lots of trees that have both left on and we have to spend hours pulling it all off. And usually, the lights are in working condition,” he said.

Also on the island, Surfrider Bogue Banks is collecting natural trees at the corner of Islander and Emerald drives in Emerald Isle now through Jan. 26 as part of their seventh annual holiday tree collection.

“We ask that volunteers please drop off clean, live trees for us to recycle and use in essential dune creation at The Point in Emerald Isle,” Chair Jen Welborn said, adding the request that all lights, ornaments, plastic, tags, garland, tinsel and other decorations be removed from the trees before they’re dropped off.

The dune restoration event is scheduled for 9 a.m. Jan. 27. Volunteers will help move and secure all of the trees at The Point, the western most beach in Emerald Isle. Volunteers are needed, including those with pickup trucks, work gloves and rubber mallets.

“Last year we collected 336 trees with a grand total of over 1,000 since this projects’ inception in 2018. We are expecting even more trees this year as many local businesses and municipalities will be participating,” she said.

Jason Holland at Gimme Some Mower Lawn Care, LLC has volunteered to pick up trees for those who are unable. He can be reached at 919-623-0653.

For a $10 suggested donation, Sea Scout Ship and Maritime Explorer Club 7730 will collect discarded trees for Fort Macon State Park or Emerald Isle.

Those interested in volunteering can email volunteercoordinator@boguebanks.surfrider.org.

Cape Fear Surfrider is working with Carolina Beach for the organization’s ninth dune restoration event. The town will collect the Christmas trees to be used for restoration during scheduled yard debris pick up.

“This event is always a great way to kick off the year by helping to stop erosion of our dunes and reduce spending on beach re-nourishment, and also helps to rebuild natural habitats, protect ocean front property, and divert old trees from the landfill,” organizers said. Coffee and donuts will be provided. Bring a shovel, tape measure and scissors.

Better Beaches OBX expect a large shipment of Christmas trees in the coming days. Organizers will announce when volunteers are needed to help place the trees on dunes through its Facebook page.

A handful of wildlife rescues can also make good use of your natural trees including SkyWatch Bird Rescue in Castle Hayne at 855-407-3728, Wild at Heart Wildlife Sanctuary in Richlands at 910-430-0794, Possumwood Acres Wildlife Sanctuary at 119 Doe Drive, Hubert, and Outer Banks Wildlife Shelter at 100 Wildlife Way, Newport.

By County

Beaufort County does not offer Christmas tree recycling but the residents can dispose of the trees in their regular yard waste.

Brunswick County Landfill in Bolivia will accept live trees at no charge from Jan. 2-31.  After Jan. 31, normal tipping fees apply. Live Christmas trees are accepted for $5 per tree at the convenience centers from Jan. 2-31. All ornaments, lights and decorations must be removed..

Camden County does not currently have a county-run program for natural tree disposal or recycling.

Carteret County officials recommend donating live Christmas trees to Fort Macon State Park or explore options provided by towns across the county that accept trees for recycling.

Beaufort collects live Christmas trees from the curb, separate from yard debris by 7 a.m. every Monday this month. Cedar Point will collect live trees free of decorations from curbsides. Both will deliver the trees to Fort Macon.

Residents of Chowan, Perquimans and Gates counties can recycle their live Christmas trees by in the yard waste containers at one of the many convenience sites or taking the tree to the PCG Transfer Station in Belvidere.

Live Christmas trees are used in the composting program, which turns trees and yard debris into compost and mulch. Compost and mulch produced through this program are available free to community members and those living in the surrounding areas.

Edenton allows residents to put the natural trees for collection at the curb. Public Works delivers the trees to the American Legion Fairgrounds for the Edenton-Chowan Educational Foundation to host an annual bonfire using the trees as a fundraiser for the school system.

Craven County Solid Waste Director Steven Aster said there are several options for disposing of a natural Christmas tree.

Residents can take natural trees to any of the seven convenience centers in Craven County which are open from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and 1-6:30 p.m. Sunday. Craven County will deliver the natural trees to the landfill for composting or chipping.

Residents of the county’s municipalities should check with their town about curbside collection.

New Bern residents can place their natural Christmas trees free of all decorations, lights and the tree stand on the curb for pickup. The trees must be no more than 5 feet in length and 5 inches in diameter so that the town’s equipment can pick them up. These trees will be mulched to use in city landscaping projects.

Currituck County has eight recycling centers and each will accept live Christmas trees with all decorations and tinsel removed.

Dare County residents in unincorporated areas can take their undecorated Christmas trees to be turned into mulch to Manns Harbor Transfer Station at 1603 Cub Road or to the Dare County Public Works Compound on Roanoke Island.

Duck is collecting trees from the roadside Jan. 8 and Jan. 15. Undecorated and tinsel-free trees should be placed on the curb the night before for their scheduled collection day.

In Southern Shores, Christmas trees may be placed in limb/branch piles for collection during scheduled pickup. All metal and decorations must be removed.

Kitty Hawk residents should place their undecorated trees on the curbside on their normal trash collection day.

Kill Devil Hills will be collecting Christmas trees beginning Wednesday, Jan. 10. Trees must be placed in the street right-of-way no later than Tuesday, Jan. 9. No artificial trees or other bulk trash items will be collected.

Nags Head will collect undecorated Christmas trees as a part of the town’s monthly bulk item/brush roadside collection service.

Manteo will collect undecorated Christmas trees from roadsides as a part of the town’s regular Monday and Thursday sanitation runs.

New Hanover County residents who do not have residential trash and yard waste pickup from Wilmington can recycle their Christmas trees for free through Jan. 31.

“We know a lot of people take great pride in decorating for the holidays, but once the season is over many don’t have a way to dispose of their natural décor,” Recycling and Solid Waste Director Joe Suleyman said in a statement. “We’re grateful for this longstanding partnership with The Home Depot which makes sure that real Christmas trees, wreaths, and garlands are recycled into mulch and composted for use in New Hanover County parks, gardens and grounds. This program helps reduce waste in our landfill and keeps our environment clean.”

The yearly program is a partnership between the county’s recycling and solid waste department and Home Depot stores in the county.

The drop-off locations are at the Home Depot, 5511 Carolina Beach Road, The Home Depot, 210 Eastwood Road, and New Hanover County Landfill, 5210 US Highway 421 North.  

Residents utilizing this service will see fenced-in areas in The Home Depot parking lots marked with signage to drop-off locations. At the drop-off site, residents are asked to stack materials as neatly as possible due to limited space.

All trees, wreaths and garlands must have lights, ornaments, stands and tinsel removed. Artificial trees and decorations will not be accepted.

Onslow County will accept real Christmas trees at the landfill and convenience sites at 122 Carver Drive in Jacksonville and 320 Old Folkstone Road in Holly Ridge. 

Cost is $3 per tree at the convenience sites and $31 per ton at the landfill, which equals to $0.31 per 20 pounds. 

Used Christmas lights may be placed in the red Christmas lights bin at the landfill for recycling.

All sites accept artificial Christmas trees as recyclable metal at no charge.

Jacksonville’s sanitation crew picks up Christmas trees as part of their yard waste collection and takes them to the county landfill. 

Swansboro residents can place their undecorated trees curbside Jan. 2-19 or drop them off at the public works yard outside the fence. Pickup will occur daily, however on Wednesdays, when yard waste collection occurs, ensure that the trees are placed curbside separately from yard waste.

Hammocks Beach State Park in Swansboro will not be accepting trees this year.

North Topsail Beach is having the “Grinding of the Greens” Jan. 17. Residents can drop off live Christmas trees at Jeffries parking lot, 316 New River Inlet Road, by Jan. 14. Free mulch will be available for pick up after Jan. 17.

Pamlico County residents can dispose of their Christmas trees at the county landfill at cost of disposal.

Pasquotank County residents can dispose of their natural tree at one of the county’s convenience sites or the landfill. Trees will be placed with other yard waste and chipped into mulch.

Pender County residents may dispose of their Christmas trees at the county’s convenience centers for three weeks following Christmas.

The Rocky Point Convenience Center at 16232 N.C. 210 is open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The Hampstead Convenience Center at 250 Transfer Station Road is open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 7 p.m. Sunday.

Christmas tinsels, ornaments, lights, ribbons, etc., should be removed from the trees before being disposed of in the designated cans.

Washington County Landfill will accept real Christmas trees with all decorations removed.

RODANTHE — Early in the last virtual meeting of the Threatened Oceanfront Structures Interagency Task Force Oct. 12, Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent David Hallac provided details about a pilot program in which the agency recently used nonprofit conservation trust funds to purchase two endangered oceanfront houses in Rodanthe.

The plan sounded like it could be the kind of solution the task force had long been seeking: The owners agreed to the deal, and the National Park Service is keeping tons of debris from another inevitable house collapse from scattering into the Atlantic and for miles on the public trust seashore and nearby private property.

But comments on an Oct. 16 article in the Washington Post illustrate why the task force was assembled in the first place: to remedy government paralysis and address overlapping rights and inadequate regulations to protect public resources that affect private property, a contentious and complicated consequence of climate change involving money, power and unequal misfortune. 

Since an oceanfront house in Rodanthe fell Feb. 9, 2022, three others nearby have collapsed onto the national seashore, where numerous structures still standing on 2 miles of eroded shoreline are also threatened. 

“They knew the risks, now pay the piper,” commenter “cat whisker” wrote in response to the article. “Declare eminent domain and pull those houses down, no buyouts. Why should tax payers subsidize greed and stupidity?”

Others expressed similar sentiments.

“Your insurance is subsidized by the insurance of others, who do not live in high-risk areas,” “doggone 1” wrote. “Many of us who put a lot of thought into buying our homes resent those who obviously did not, and who now expect a bail-out of some sort.”

While Rodanthe is hardly the only beachfront community in the U.S., it is an early — and dramatic — illustration of the impacts of climate change on coastlines as sea levels continue to rise.

Much of the response and planning for climate impacts is being done on a local and state level, while integrating with federal programs and funding. Rodanthe is unusual in that it’s a blend of local, state, federal and private interests in one concentrated area that affects many thousands of visitors to a national park with vital natural resources and popular attractions.

Although Rodanthe has one of the highest erosion rates on the Outer Banks, the beach in front of the problem houses had been relatively wide and stable until recent years, when the beach erosion rate accelerated over a short span of time. Soon, it became evident that no level of government was equipped with the clear authorities or incentives to get people to remove their threatened houses before the ocean took them.

In two previous meetings held since March, the task force has discussed issues with federal flood insurance, private insurance, septic systems and grant programs, among others. The focus of the most recent workshop was on government’s role, its potential actions and limitations and its effects on private property protections and rights. 

“We collectively found that few if any federal funding programs were available for property owners voluntarily or local governments to address erosion-threatened structures, through removal of the structure or relocation of the structures, especially where those structures were second homes or investment properties,” North Carolina Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis told the task force.

The authority of the National Park Service “is very limited,” said Trish Cortelyou-Hamilton, an attorney with the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The ambulatory boundaries between mean low and mean high water are difficult to nail down precisely, making them difficult to enforce, she said.

“So there’s no rules or federal statutes related to requiring these folks to relocate,” Corelyou-Hamilton said.

And some houses were originally built much farther back from the beach, Hallac added. 

“But for those 2 miles of Rodanthe, there’s this collision of private properties and our seashore boundary,” he said.

Corelyou-Hamilton said that litigation by conservative law groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation represent plaintiffs suing over regulatory takings under the Fifth Amendment at little to no cost to the homeowner. Often the goal is to further national case law, making potential resolutions or settlements more difficult. 

To Corelyou-Hamilton’s point, Nags Head’s town manager Andy Garman said that the town has the authority to condemn an oceanfront structure and require repairs that make it safe. But the dilemma the town has faced is when the owners do the required repair, “many” have let the house sit on the beach.

“And we’ve had some for more than 15 years on the beach that are essentially uninhabitable the entire time,” he said.

Part of the reason the town’s hands are tied is because of a lawsuit that the town lost over its attempt to have an owner remove their house from the beach.

Even if there was additional authority, Garman said he would expect lawsuits to test it, meaning additional litigation over takings claims.

“So a lot of the burden has been put on local government to deal with these issues,” he said. “And having some sort of coordinated statewide approach — I know that’s the purpose of this group — would be much appreciated from our perspective.”

Other states have been grappling with houses collapsing on the beach, including in California where they fall off cliffs undermined by erosion. Some states have stricter measures in place than North Carolina when it comes to owner responsibilities for cleanup.

For instance, Hawaii, which experienced similar house collapses around the same time as Rodanthe, just passed new statutes that address debris removal and other concerns, North Carolina Coastal Federation Coastal Advocate Alyson Flynn told the task force. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

In addition to setting up penalties, she said, the new laws also grant authority for the state to tap the private property value to cover costs of removal of illegal objects on public land, and provide drones to view the subject area. 

Overall, the panel agreed that more innovation, collaboration and cooperation will be needed going forward.

“Local governments been given a lot of authority, but it’s basically been very piecemeal,” said Webb Fuller, a former Nags Head official and a member of the state Coastal Resources Advisory Committee. “And when local governments requested the state to come in and help us on stuff, the state has always been very reluctant to do that.”

Hallac said that the working group will provide a report summarizing the ideas, challenges and recommendations by year’s end.

Whatever the recommendations, private property and public resources, they will not be a one-size-fits-all solution, he said. Nor is there a bad guy to blame when a house collapses in the surf. 

“Whether or not you end up in the ocean within a week, a month or five years, it’s just going to happen on beaches where there is a long-term trend of erosion — it’s going to happen,” he said. “And so to me, that has to be some level of threshold in government’s work, hopefully collaboratively with owners to find a solution.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management and the Cape Hatteras National Seashore are set to host an interagency workgroup meeting Oct. 12 by web conference to discuss government authorities for managing threatened oceanfront structures.

The public may listen by computer or phone. The originally scheduled meeting was postponed due to the state of emergency issued by Gov. Roy Cooper in preparation for Hurricane Idalia.

The workgroup was established in August 2022 to engage with partner organizations and stakeholders to identify, research, and recommend policy and/or program improvements to establish more proactive, comprehensive, and predictable strategies for addressing structures at immediate risk of collapse.

The meeting is at 1 p.m. Oct. 12. Join by computer using the Webex platform. The meeting number is 2434 944 6635 and the webinar password is IWGOCT1223. Or join by phone at 1-415-655-0003, using access code: 2434 944 6635 and password: 49462812.

Interested parties may submit comments by email to DCMcomments@deq.nc.gov. Please list “Threatened Oceanfront Structures” in the subject line.

RODANTHE — Dare County commissioners voted last month to provide about $1.5 million to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility of a beach nourishment project in Rodanthe, where five oceanfront houses since 2020 have succumbed to the sea, with more still at risk.  

North Carolina 3^rd District Republican Rep. Greg Murphy told the county that the three-year study is required to obtain any congressional funds for a beach nourishment project, and the county must pick up half the tab.   

“I am delighted to work with Dare County to provide the funding necessary to advance beach nourishment for Rodanthe,” Murphy said in a prepared statement dated July 27. “Preservation of the Outer Banks and its vibrant communities is one of my top priorities in Congress, and I’m grateful to work on delivering the resources necessary to do so.”  

Although commissioners expressed uncertainty about how the study would proceed, Murphy said through a spokesman that the study has been authorized since 1990 and the Corps has assured that it is committed to conduct the study if it is funded.    

The Corps would be able to begin work once the first increments of the study are funded, Murphy’s spokesman Alexander Crane said in a July 29 email response to Coastal Review. The county’s share would be expected after the Corps has the federal funds in hand, he explained. 

“Yes, the study is a precursor to requesting federal funding for beach nourishment,” Crane wrote. “The amount of federal funding for beach nourishment will be determined later on by Congress and the results of the feasibility study.” 

Crane said that the next step in the process would be an appropriations request by Murphy in the February-March time frame of next year, to be included in the fiscal 2025 budget. Those dollars would fund the federal portion of the feasibility study. 

Property owners along the severely eroded shoreline on the north end of Hatteras Island started asking for the project years ago and with dramatically increased urgency as erosion worsened, especially at Mirlo Beach, the village’s northernmost subdivision. Even before the $145 million “jug-handle” bridge opened last summer, bypassing Mirlo and the section of N.C. Highway 12 that was frequently damaged by ocean and sound storm tide, the houses located farther south near the Rodanthe pier started collapsing into the ocean.  

For months, federal, state and local officials have struggled to address a multitude of issues exposed by the tenuous and ongoing situation — property insurance, private property rights and liabilities, public safety and health, governments’ roles and responsibilities to protect public shorelines and accelerating climate change hazards — with few answers.  

For numerous reasons, nourishment has not been considered a viable option for Rodanthe. Some coastal geologists have long argued that with Rodanthe’s extraordinary erosion rates on both ocean and sound sides, the village had no business being developed in the first place. 

 “An aerial view shows that Rodanthe is actually on a small, deteriorating cape extending out to sea,” according to a description in “The North Carolina Shore and Its Barrier Islands, Restless Ribbons of Sand.” “Rodanthe is an extremely high-risk community.” 

The book’s six authors, coastal scientists who included Orrin Pilkey from Duke University and Stan Riggs from East Carolina University, now both semi-retired, warned that Rodanthe was rapidly narrowing, with an average annual erosion rate of 5 to 22 feet, and was at risk of becoming an inlet.   

“THIS AREA IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND SHOULD BE AVOIDED!” the authors wrote, emphasizing the statement with an unusual use of bold, uppercase letters.  

And that was the assessment of coastal scientists 25 years ago, when the book was published in 1998. Since then, the average annual erosion rate in Rodanthe has not only increased, it seems as if it has worsened faster in some areas, such as where the houses are falling.  

In May, Columbia, South Carolina-based Coastal Science and Engineering released an updated report requested by Dare County on a sand analysis it had done in 2014 for the county at Rodanthe. According to the report, a 5.7-mile-long critically eroded area between the south end of Pea Island and the north end of the village of Waves, has a baseline deficit of 2.3 million cubic yards of sand, and it’s losing about 300,000 cubic yards a year. At that rate, it would require about 3.8 million cubic yards of sand at today’s cost of about $40 million to offset five years of erosion.  

Patrick Barrineau, coastal scientist and project manager for Coastal Science and Engineering, said the report, which compared the condition and the location of the beach in 2023 to that of 2014, was intended as an initial step toward a more comprehensive analysis.  

For instance, he said, if the Corps does its study, it will likely include an economic cost-benefit analysis, a sea level and climate analysis and analysis of more physical surveys. Also, the report looked qualitatively at what to expect with different sea levels.  

“A more complete modeling analysis would put quantitative measure on those predictions,” he told Coastal Review.    

In looking at the changes in volume of sand, which is measured from the beach out into surf, there was still some sand remaining — “Probably not very much,” he added — from an emergency nourishment project the Corps had done in 2014 to protect N.C. 12 until the new Rodanthe bridge was built.   

The volumetric changes were measured out into 40 to 50 feet of water, which details “sort of a three-dimensional change in the beach surface,” he said. Horizontal changes are just looking at the high-water line. Most people would describe the erosion rate with the horizontal measurement. Today, the annual erosion rate in the critical area ranges from 14 feet to about 20 feet.   

According to the report, the variations in volume can be attributed to the coastal dynamics: Overwash at Pea Island draws sand from the beach system and stores it, reducing it in Rodanthe; and the most eroded shorelines are situated near closed breaches, such as at Mirlo, making them vulnerable to again becoming inlets. 

Bottom line, it would take a lot of sand and frequent nourishment to keep a wide beach in Rodanthe, Barrineau agreed.

“Yes, definitely,” he said. “I mean it’s going to take on the order of millions of yards of sand to maintain the shoreline in a place where it’s naturally eroding at the rate that we see at Mirlo Beach just to accommodate for that and year-to-year change in the sand volume on the beach.”  

Adding the impacts of sea level rise, especially where there is minimal dune, could exacerbate the issue with storm-cut channels and overwash, he said. But unlike for some beaches along the southern North Carolina coast, Barrineau said he doesn’t think there’d be a problem finding sand borrow areas to keep up with the nourishment demand.  

“There’s a lot of sand out there,” he said.   

If a groin — a wall that traps sand — were to be added to the project, it would cost about $15 million and could prolong the length of time the beach would stay put. Over a 30-year period, the report said, a nourishment-only management strategy would cost about $40 million more than a strategy using groins as well as nourishment. 

“We’ve seen that in other sites where the groins can slow erosion along a project site and in doing so, they can extend the project lifetime,” Barrineau said. “And so, while it’s more expensive up front, it may be cheaper over a 30-year time horizon to have those in place.” 

Hardened structures like groins and jetties, however, are not permitted in North Carolina. They were included in the analysis to “have in the tool box,” he said.   

But barring a change in state law, groins aren’t going to be an option if a beach nourishment project ever does get approved and funded for Rodanthe. Barrineau said that the best chance for such geologically vulnerable locations to keep its beach is more substantial dunes that are taller and wider to be able to withstand pounding waves.  

“It’s pretty unlikely that an entire project would be removed from a site in one storm,” he said. “Now, that being said, major Category 5-type storms do strange things. And it can be difficult to predict.” 

Corps projects are not eligible for emergency federal funds for renourishment after storms, he added.  

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten said that the county has about $8 to $10 million available for a new project from money set aside for beach nourishment done in the county and its oceanfront towns.  

The county’s beach nourishment fund is restricted by state law to use a 2% share of Dare County’s occupancy tax, which totals 6%, for the placement of sand and planting of vegetation to widen the beach. In addition to the county fund, beach nourishment projects may also be funded by property and municipal service district taxes, and state and federal public assistance program funds.  

“In our preliminary modeling, if we had a $40 million project, then in three to five years, we would have enough money to build the project and maintain it,” he said, calculating on the fund’s current rate of growth.  

Outten said the county did not specifically ask consultant Coastal Science and Engineering to include data about the potential impact of sand-trapping groins on a beach nourishment project. 

“They know we can’t do groins,” he said, referring to the fact that “hardened structures” on shorelines are not permitted in North Carolina. But he doesn’t rule out asking in the future.  

If the feasibility study or a federally funded beach nourishment project do not move forward, then Outten said that the county would continue to look for other funding sources.  

Along with other coastal counties in North Carolina, he said, Dare County has asked the state to update the Beach Inlet Management Plan to help pay for shoreline-widening projects.  

“The idea is, we need a state fund for beach nourishment,” Outten said.  

North Carolina Erosion and Sediment Control Program officials say that because of construction and development, thousands of acres of land are left vulnerable to erosion each year, which can lead to waters polluted with sediment.

The state is working to reach the public and professionals about controlling erosion and preventing sedimentation through its erosion and sediment education program.

A part of the Erosion and Sediment Control program with the mission “to allow development within our state while preventing pollution by sedimentation,” the program is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources.

Sediment Education Engineer Rebecca Coppa explained to Coastal Review that erosion of exposed terrain — often land made vulnerable through human activity — strips away nutrient-rich topsoil, degrading the soil and making it less productive, leading to sedimentation, or when the eroded soil is moved and deposited by water or wind.

“It takes about 500 years to naturally replace one inch of topsoil,” Coppa said.

“Sedimentation can increase the risk of flooding by reducing the storage volume of water bodies and by clogging storm water drains,” Coppa continued, adding that sedimentation can clog fish gills, smother bottom-dwelling fish and their eggs, and cause turbidity, which is when the sediment makes water look cloudy, opaque or muddy.

“Turbid water negatively impacts recreational use of water, restricts the amount of sunlight reaching aquatic plants, and increases the cost of drinking water treatment since you need to filter all of that out,” Coppa said. “Harmful substances such as pesticides and fertilizers can also hitch a ride on the sediment particles that are washed off the landscape and into waterways, and can contribute to things like algal blooms, which can also harm aquatic life.”

One way to control erosion and prevent off-site sedimentation is to use best management practices, or BMPs. BMPs include replanting vegetation in disturbed areas, controlling rates of runoff and putting in place basins, rock dams and sediment traps.

Coppa said educating the public about erosion and BMPs is the mission of the erosion and sediment control’s education program.

“There are many avenues that we have to inform, educate and help the general public, residents, local and county governments or professionals,” Coppa said. These include keeping the Erosion and Sediment Education website current, having a Frequently Asked Questions page, providing forms, guidance documents and information packets to teachers and professionals, offering workshops for professionals, and attending events.

There are two workshops. The local program workshop is held annually by the department’s Land Quality Section to educate and train staff for their erosion and sediment control programs. For information on this workshop visit the Local Government Programs page. The North Carolina Erosion and Sediment Control Workshop is to educate design professionals, contractors and developers with new erosion and sediment control requirements and practices, and fulfills professional development hours. Registration and the agenda will be posted on the workshop’s event page as it becomes available.

Outreach to younger learners include special activities like the curriculum supplements “Erosion Patrol” for third and fourth graders, and “Where Is All Our Soil Going” for middle schoolers.  

One tool Coppa and other educators use is called Enviroscape. These 3-D educational models demonstrate how watersheds can become polluted and are sold through a private company.

Coppa said that she has been using Enviroscape since she began working with the state five years ago, and other educators have relied on it as well, including DEMLR Chief of Program Operations Toby Vinson.

Vinson said Enviroscape is a valuable tool he’s been using since 1994 to present the impacts of erosion and sedimentation and other pollutants to the environment, community and property to K-12 and college students, at workshops instructing contractors, developers and engineers and at community festivals.

Evangelyn Lowery-Jacobs, assistant regional engineer in DEMLR’s Fayetteville Regional Office, added that Enviroscape helps to translate technical concepts into real life, relatable terms. She mostly used the teaching aid with elementary and middle school students. 

“I did have one opportunity to visit a class to conduct a demonstration for developmentally challenged adults. Enviroscape allowed the students to observe and interact because of their ability to identify with things they had been exposed to in their personal lives,” she said. “The eagerness to answer questions was obvious and the model encouraged dialogue among everyone in the group. This encounter gave me a new perspective on the value of this model and its effectiveness for people of all ages and backgrounds.”

Coppa said interactive, hands-on educational activities help communicate the message because being able to see, touch and play with something “helps us learn about it so much better than just reading about it or listening to it in a lecture.”

During her presentation at the North Carolina Water Resources Research Institute’s annual conference earlier this year in Raleigh, Coppa shared how educators can enhance their Enviroscape activities with basic materials, like cocoa powder can simulate sediment.

She expanded in a recent email interview that the Enviroscape brand provides ideas for materials that can be found at low costs at many stores, which allows for flexibility.

“Personally, I like to use various sprinkles (jimmies if you’re from the north) to demonstrate different pollutants. Rainbow sprinkles for trash/plastic pollutants; chocolate sprinkles for feces (such as cow poop or dog poop); and sugar crystal sprinkles of various colors to represent fertilizers, pesticides and point source chemicals from factories,” she said. “Obviously, the chocolate sprinkles representing poop is the one that gets the best reaction from the students. But we also can’t forget what we use to represent the number one pollutant by volume to NC’s waterways: coco powder to represent sediment.”  

Other ways she enhances her lessons is by pairing Enviroscape with an erosion or stormwater walk, and incorporating activities through Project WET, or Water Education Today, a water education foundation. 

“I’ve paired the Enviroscape with a sediment jar activity and/or soil texture by feel analysis and discussed why soil texture is important in terms of erosion. Plus, then students get to play with both soil as well as the water on the Enviroscape model; all of the learning through play,” she said. 

Each of DEMLR’s seven regional offices throughout the state have an Enviroscape Watershed Model and while she’s the only staff primarily dedicated to education and outreach, regional office staff can visit as their schedules allow. 

“The expansion of virtual meeting software during the past few years has also increased our capacity to how far we can ‘travel’ if you’re willing for us to come to your classroom virtually. Virtual visits without travel time are often easier to fit into our schedule and we can send you activity instructions ahead of time so your students can follow along with what we are demonstrating on screen,” Coppa said.

She added to contact her with any education outreach requests and she will help coordinate visits with regional office staff if she’s unavailable to make it herself.

“Part of our role as nonformal educators is to be there to support the formal educators of North Carolina. So, if they have questions beyond what is already available on our website, we are a short email away and are happy to brainstorm with you about how we can work to fill in the gaps within our respective education programs,” Coppa said.

A graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a bachelor’s in environmental engineering, Coppa has been educating about sediment control for almost five years. 

“That four-year degree combined with my volunteer work with kids throughout my high school and college career and extracurricular work planning events made me a good fit for this job,” she explained. 

“The environment has always been something I’ve been passionate about, and my passion for environmental education, getting learners of all ages outdoors, and letting them learn through play, has only grown these past few years as I’ve been learning so much myself as I am pursuing my North Carolina Environmental Education Certificate,” Coppa said. “And as that passion has grown, I’ve made a conscious effort to bring the Enviroscape, soil or water or other things that the students can touch and play with if I can’t get the student’s outside. Because the more the students interact with the lesson and materials, the more I see them lighting up, becoming interested, and hopefully remembering what they learned for years to come.”

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.”

CHAPEL HILL — The torpidity of government bureaucracy could be illustrated with the picture of abandoned wooden houses on a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach, akimbo in the surf, beaten, weathered and left to the mercy of the ocean.

After more than a year since the first of five houses fell into the surf without significant action to mitigate the continued threat to the public resources at the eroded shoreline in Rodanthe, the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit environmental legal advocacy group, has sent letters on behalf of the North Carolina Coastal Federation to two relevant government agencies pressing for enforcement of existing law. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“Allowing the cycle of collapse and contamination to continue contradicts various laws and policies that govern the National Park Service’s management of its units, including the Organic Act, the Service’s mission statement, several federal regulations, and the National Park Service Management Policies 2006,” the group wrote in a letter dated May 25 to seashore superintendent David Hallac.

Related: Climate peril, insurance, sand costs: No easy fix in Rodanthe

In addition to the hazard created by construction debris scattered into the ocean and over miles of beach, the law center said that destroyed waste treatment structures can leak untreated human waste.

“NPS must act immediately to abate the exposed or abandoned septic tanks that can endanger the health of the public and the environment in Rodanthe before thousands of beachgoers are exposed to raw sewage,” the letter said. 

At the same time, the law center sent a similar letter to Secretary Kody Kinsley at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, asking the department to use its authorities to address the imminent dangers and to enforce its existing septic regulations to protect the public. 

“This untenable situation poses unacceptable health and safety risks to residents of Rodanthe and visitors alike, and the Department of Health and Human Services has an obligation to safeguard the public health and welfare of all persons in the affected area,” the center wrote.

Julie Furr Youngman, senior attorney at the law center, said in an email that the issues are complex and both agencies have committed to respond to the concerns.

“We (the law center and Coastal Federation) have already been working with the National Park Service and the state Division of Coastal Management in particular to grapple with the problem of collapsing houses and failing septic systems at the coast, to understand the causes, and to brainstorm solutions,” Youngman wrote. “We look forward to working with DHHS too, as well as other government bodies with responsibilities for safeguarding people at the coast.”

A spokesperson with the state Department of Health and Human Services said in an email that the department remains available to assist Dare County to address damaged septic systems and correct the issues as quickly as possible.

“(The department’s) mission is to provide essential services to improve the health, safety and well-being of all North Carolinians, including working with local health departments to address any impact on health from septic systems,” the spokesperson wrote. “NCDHHS is aware of the septic systems that are damaged and/or malfunctioning in Rodanthe, and Dare County’s Health Department has taken action to address the issues.”  

The National Park Service is also continuing to work with the state and local officials to address the situation, Hallac, the Cape Hatteras park superintendent, told Coastal Review.

“We appreciate the time that SELC took to analyze the challenges,” Hallac said, “and we look forward to reviewing their letter in detail.”

Guest commentary

The oceanfront shoreline of Rodanthe has one of the highest erosion rates on the U.S. East Coast (recently upwards of 20 feet per year). Many homes that were initially constructed well back from the beach are now at risk of constant flooding and imminent collapse. A typical response to this erosion in Dare County (and most coastal communities) would be the implementation of a beach nourishment project. It is unclear whether this is practical for Rodanthe, as the geologic setting is problematic.

With such high erosion rates, episodes of renourishment would be frequent, driving up costs significantly. A recently released report entitled: Rodanthe Sand Needs Assessment Dare County, North Carolina (Coastal Science and Engineering, 2023), recommends an initial project at a cost of approximately $40 million. Costs for long-term beach maintenance bring the total to about $120 million over the next 15 years. This assumes that the sand from each nourishment placement will last around five years, which may be a bit of a stretch along this shoreline.

The CSE study indicates there could be modest cost savings from the construction of groins along this shoreline. We did not consider this analysis since groins are not permitted by law on the North Carolina oceanfront due to the inevitable downdrift harm caused by the interruption of longshore sediment transport. Even with beach nourishment, there will be periods of time between sand placement episodes when the beach will narrow, and the most exposed homes will be in the waves.

On the other hand, doing nothing has resulted in numerous high-profile incidents of homes collapsing into the sea, while septic tanks are exhumed and broken open. These events cause both environmental harm and a risk to public safety and health (the intertidal beach in this area is a part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore). Clearly, doing nothing is the worst option.

One alternative solution to nourishment is to implement a buyout plan for highly exposed properties.

Buyouts are rarely a first choice within coastal communities for a variety of reasons, both practical and emotional. Property owners must be interested in selling, and it can be difficult to negotiate a price.

Unlike nourishment, buyouts provide a longer-term solution to erosion, allow for a continuous beach over many years, and eliminate the environmental and public safety hazards associated with collapsing homes. In some areas, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has carried out buyouts in conjunction with beach nourishment to allow for the construction of protective dunes.

To compare the costs of a possible buyout to the costs of beach nourishment in Rodanthe, we at the Western Carolina University Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines conducted a simple analysis to identify and estimate the value of highly exposed oceanfront properties.

The criteria we used identified 80 oceanfront parcels with a structure within 300 feet of the high-tide shoreline, over an alongshore area that is roughly the same footprint as the potential nourishment project. Assessed tax value was used to represent the current value for these properties. Detailed methods for property selection and fiscal analysis are described below.

Results from this analysis estimate that it will cost nearly $43 million to buy out all selected properties (at currently assessed value), and by removing these properties Rodanthe will likely have a viable beach for 15-25 years. Only one of the properties appears to be a primary residence. A number of parcels have lots that are deep enough to move the structure back (outside our buffer), at lower cost than buying the property and removing it.

The loss of tax revenue is a common concern expressed about buyouts. The 80 selected properties generated $171,068 of county property tax revenue in fiscal year 2023, which is only 0.25% of the Dare County tax base. The total lost revenue over 30 years could be $7-$10 million based on the very conservative scenarios outlined in the table below.

For example, we assume all 80 properties will still be around in 30 years. This is unlikely. Some of this loss will likely be offset by the additional tax revenue resulting from the increase in value of the remaining properties (e.g., certain second-row homes become oceanfront).

In this simple analysis the beach nourishment costs are significantly higher (roughly 3 times higher) over the next 15 years than buying the properties at current tax value. Of course, predicting the costs for shoreline protection and/or property acquisition over the next couple of decades is not an exact science.

The ultimate costs depend on factors such as sea-level rise, storms, and market forces for high-risk properties. An advantage of buyouts is that the process could be piecemealed. A buyout plan could happen gradually, targeting the highest exposure properties and willing sellers first (likely the most practical approach). The initial costs would be significantly smaller than beach nourishment, which will require substantial expenditure up front. In addition, buyouts could be initiated immediately, whereas beach nourishment will require substantial planning and permitting.

A more gradual buyout process may cost less than the estimated $43 million, as the market value of properties will likely decrease as erosion begins to threaten homes. While this study does not prioritize the order of acquisition, further analysis could certainly provide the data to do so.

The primary advantage of beach nourishment is that it may preserve the existing oceanfront properties for the next decade or so, along with their tax revenues. In addition, Dare County has experience implementing beach nourishment projects in a professional way. A disadvantage is that there will be multiple episodes of nourishment required over this interval, separated by periods of time when the beach is narrow, and homes are once again highly exposed. Buyouts would allow for a continuous, wide beach for a longer period of time.

We understand that there are obstacles to both buyouts and beach nourishment. This study is not intended to recommend either approach, but provides additional data that could inform the discussion of possible solutions. Looking at this narrowly, from a cost perspective, it is clear that buyouts are not a crazy idea.

A main reason that we conduct an analysis like this is because no one else does. We feel very strongly that, whatever is ultimately decided, projects funded with public funds must examine the costs/benefits of managed retreat through buyouts as one viable option.

This is abundantly clear: the status quo (taking no action) is the least favorable and most environmentally damaging option.

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.

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.”

Reprinted from the Outer Banks Voice

With the release in February of a three-year study of the shoreline in Currituck County, the only coastal county in North Carolina that has not nourished its beaches is looking at findings that place 158 homes at risk as the beach retreats.

The study by Coastal Protection Engineering was requested by the county commissioners in 2020 and examined the 22.6 miles of shoreline from the Virginia state line to the county line at Duck.

“In total, 158 houses were shown to be impacted over the 30-year horizon throughout the Corolla Section. These houses are all located between the Horse Gate and Wave Arch in the Ocean Lake community,” the report noted. Wave Arch is approximately a half-mile south of the Food Lion shopping center.

For Currituck County Chairman Bob White, the report was a call to action, and he indicated that beach nourishment is a real option.

“We’re going have to do something, is the bottom line. We can’t get to the point where Kitty Hawk did … where we have stuff dropping in the ocean and lose that tax base and people’s investment in Currituck,” he said. “We have to do something now.”

The report explained that that not all homes are in the most urgent need of protection. Using 10-year intervals as a measurement, it concluded that 11 homes will be impacted in the next 10 years, 66 homes will be impacted in the next 20 years and the remainder will be affected in the next 30 years.

Although the study concluded that the retreat in the four-wheel-drive area of Carova was minimal and that beach was accreting in some areas, a cautionary note was included.

“While the number of houses impacted in this section may not be significant, the retreat of the shoreline may create pinch points for traffic transiting north and south through these areas,” it stated.

The study’s authors also cautioned that its projections assume no major storm events, and that a major hurricane would place a substantial number of homes in immediate danger.

“In total, 43 oceanfront homes were determined to be vulnerable from a storm similar in characteristics to Hurricane Isabel,” the study observes.

For Corolla resident Ed Cornet, the study is welcome, if overdue.

“The key is … being happy that they (Currituck County) finally have gotten to this point,” he said. Cornet has been part of a lawsuit filed in 2019, Gerald Costanzo, Corolla Civic Association et al. v. Currituck County. The suit contends that Currituck County used occupancy tax funds that were supposed to be allocated for beach nourishment and shoreline maintenance for expenses typically covered through the general fund. The plaintiffs contend that is contrary to the intent of a 2004 law allowing the county to increase its occupancy tax to 6%.

The case was dismissed in superior court in January 2022 but is currently before the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Oral arguments in the case were held Feb. 13.

Cornet, who has a doctorate in physics, said the study was well done. “It’s a very thorough job,” he said, adding that it confirms what residents can see every day. “We could just say that science backs up our onsite observations.”

White agreed, saying, “You can walk out there and see where the problems are. You don’t have to have that report to tell you.”

The report outlines what the next steps might look like, making three suggestions: Continue to monitor the beach using the three-year study as a baseline, develop a beach management plan, and coordinate with Dare County on a regional sand resource investigation.

The beach management plan in particular is already moving forward.

“We’re getting staff to come back and put together a plan for us going forward so we can sink our teeth into it to figure out a beach management plan,” White said.

Asked about working with Dare County, though, White quickly dismissed the idea.

“The problem there is after they finish up these next couple projects … they’re out of sand,” he said. “For them, they need to come into our reserve areas, and I don’t see us going, ‘sure take the same sand we need to put on our beaches.’”

The management plan suggested by the study would include beach nourishment, but that would be one of a number of components. Nonetheless, White made it clear that nourishment is on the table.

Nourishment is expensive, and White, first noting that occupancy tax revenues will help to offset the costs, added that the municipal tax districts used by other towns to help pay for nourishment is a real possibility, noting that “we definitely have to bring in some local tax district to handle that.”

Cornet, who would be affected by such a Corolla tax district, agreed that combining the occupancy tax with a special tax district would be manageable.

“If they did a couple of miles every year, this (municipal tax districts) would pay for it,” he said.

If the county does decide to move forward with nourishment, the permitting and bidding process is at least a three-year process and more likely to take four to five years, which White acknowledged. He also sees an opportunity for Currituck County and other communities along the state’s shoreline to develop new ways to manage their beaches.

“We hired a lobbying firm. They have several coastal counties they represent getting the state to look at this,” he said. “And the state’s putting together a coastal caucus. I think we have better representation at state level to help us and other coastal communities out. We all share the same problem. Erosion is a real thing and sea level rises as well. We need the state to help out at some point and recognize the impact of tourism on the state and its tax base.”

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 environmental and lifestyle stories of interest about our coast.

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.

Reprinted from Island Free Press

Dare County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved at their Tuesday meeting in Manteo taking steps toward a new feasibility study to determine the precise costs of performing a beach nourishment project in Rodanthe. 

“We have a feasibility study from 2013, and obviously, the beach looks a little different since then,” Dare County Grants and Waterways Administrator Barton Grover said at Tuesday’s meeting. “So we would have a consultant or engineer go out there, resurvey the beach, and get the estimated volumes (of sand) that are being lost per year, and the erosion rate … With that, we will give you the estimated cost for a Rodanthe beach nourishment project.”

The study will begin in about six months, and the cost is in the $30,000 to $34,000 range, with the North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, or DCM, providing $25,000 of the funds required.

“If we do have any intention down the road of doing something — and as we’re trying to prioritize (beach nourishment) projects — we’ll have to know the scale to set those priorities,” County Manager Bobby Outten said at the meeting. “This is an opportunity for us to (have this exact information) and DCM is willing to help us.”

“It’s just one little small step to take a look and tell us what the costs are,” Grover said.

The study will be conducted by Coastal Science & Engineering Inc. based in Columbia, South Carolina, which has performed similar surveys for beach nourishment projects along the Outer Banks. The results will identify the total length of a project, likely in the 2-mile range, as well as the volume of sand that would be required. 

The study is an initial step in any Dare County beach nourishment project, but it does not guarantee that a nourishment project will occur. Instead, it will give the county an exact estimate of the costs involved, and will help with future decisions, if and when funds are available for additional projects.

Per a November Coastal Review article, Rodanthe has one of the highest beach erosion rates on the Outer Banks. Between 1998 and 2022, the average annual rate of erosion on Ocean Drive in Rodanthe ranged from 9 to 12 feet. In Buxton, another highly eroding shoreline that was renourished in 2022, the erosion rate over that same period averaged about 6.8 feet.

“We need an updated look at the erosion rates,” Outten said after the board meeting, noting that while the county’s beach nourishment projects tend to cost around $10 million per mile, a Rodanthe project would likely be more expensive. “The issue we have there is that the erosion rates are accelerated, so those costs are going to be more.”

Dare County’s beach nourishment projects usually take two to five years to come to fruition. After a feasibility study, applicable permits are needed to proceed, and a special tax district must be formed in order for residents in the affected area to pay for a portion of the costs. Residents in zones that border Dare County’s beach nourishment projects typically pay around 50% of the total cost of the project. 

“The tax base in Rodanthe is so small that it really won’t generate a significant amount of the costs – maybe a million dollars or less for what would be a $25 million or $30 million project,” Outten said. 

These details and more will be covered at a 6 p.m. Jan. 18 meeting in the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Community building. The meeting is to be livestreamed on YouTube.

Due to the six-month timeframe, the study’s results will not be available for the coming meeting. However, an overview of the logistics and funding models that have made previous beach nourishment projects possible will be presented at the Jan. 18 event.

“For our meeting down in Rodanthe on the 18th, (we have) a model so we can give the folks we’re talking to some idea of what we’re looking at, and what the obstacles are,” Outten said at the board meeting. “We obviously won’t have these real numbers by the 18th, but we’ll have a good ballpark number.”

The Jan. 18 community meeting was scheduled after several Rodanthe homeowners voiced their concerns during the public comment period of the Dec. 5 commissionrs meeting, and asked the board to orchestrate a new beach nourishment project in the Rodanthe area.

“We’re doing this to answer questions, and to let people know how the beach nourishment fund works, and how the model works to pay for future projects and for maintenance projects that have already been built,” Outten said. “We really need to get everyone educated on beach nourishment, so you don’t have rumors and conspiracy theories floating around.”

“The whole purpose of this is to let everyone know the facts as we move forward and work towards solutions, whatever they might be.” 

More details on the Jan. 18 meeting are included in the Coastal Review article, “Dare officials to host public meeting on Rodanthe erosion.”

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

From donating your natural, undecorated Christmas tree for dune restoration projects to dropping it off at a county convenience site to become mulch, there are options when it comes to disposing of a live tree after the holidays.

Fort Macon State Park has relied on natural Christmas trees to help stabilize its dunes since the mid-1960s. Unfortunately, donations have been lower in recent years, Park Ranger Benjamin Fleming said in an interview. 

The state park on Bogue Banks in Carteret County is collecting trees again this year to help with dune stabilization until Feb. 15, but Fleming said they’ll continue to take the trees if they’re dropped off after.

“We really need the trees to help with erosion control. We are still trying to rebuild dunes we lost during Florence,” Fleming said about the 2018 hurricane.  

Before dropping off the tree, Fleming said to remember to remove all ornaments and decorations. They find a few ornaments every year that were obviously important and special, like baby pictures, still left on the donated tree. He added that the park can’t use trees covered with silver plastic tinsel because the tinsel blows off the trees into the park or ocean, which makes the park look unkept and kills wildlife. 

Businesses should contact the park office at 252-726-3775 before bringing large loads for donation.

At the other end of the Island in Emerald Isle, Surfrider Bogue Banks will be collecting live Christmas trees at the corner of Islander and Emerald drives in now through Feb. 3. The organization will use the undecorated, natural trees to build dunes at the Point, or the westernmost portion of the island.

Sea Scout Ship and Maritime Explorer Club 7730 will collect trees for a $10 donation and take it to the drop-off area in Emerald Isle. Sign up for pickup at www.seascouts7730.org.  

On Feb. 4, Surfrider Bogue Banks will need volunteers to help haul and secure the trees on the beach. Email chair@boguebanks.surfrider.org to RSVP.

Not all beaches need trees though. In some cases, it can cause more harm than good.

Lindsay Addison, coastal biologist with Audubon North Carolina, told Coastal Review that a few years back, they found that people were leaving their old Christmas trees on Lea-Hutaff Island. In some cases, a large number were left. 

“This was concerning because we had not asked for trees to be brought to the island and they were not wanted for the island. We removed the trees including some that had washed into the marsh and were smothering the marsh grass and others that were taking up space in a Wilson’s Plover and least tern nesting area. We’ve seen them scattered on other local islands as well, not part of a planned effort,” she said.

Lea-Hutaff Island is a 5,641-acre undeveloped barrier island and marsh system that has remained undisturbed by development, dredged sand and off-road vehicles north of Wilmington between Figure Eight Island and Topsail Island, according to Audubon. 

Because Lea-Hutaff is an undeveloped barrier island, Audubon manages the site to be in as natural a state as possible, Addison explained.

“Barrier islands are supposed to move and change. When these natural movements threaten buildings on developed barrier islands, trees are sometimes placed there in the hopes that they will accelerate the regrowth of dunes. However, results are mixed,” Addison said. 

Trees can just as easily become coastal or marine debris, even if they are staked down, the dunes they create aren’t always stable, and they can impede the growth of native dune vegetation. The trees also can impede nesting sea turtles or take up habitat that would otherwise be good for nesting birds, Addison said. 

“Overall, they really don’t belong in a natural barrier island landscape,” she continued.

When the tree issue first came to Lea-Hutaff, Addison said they looked into pros and cons with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, rules.

“Based on that research, we concluded that unless a cost-effective alternative to sand fencing is needed, trees aren’t the way to go. We also learned that unless they are being placed in accordance with sand fencing regulations, they require their own permit from the state,” she said.  

In 2021, Addison said Audubon decided to put out signs to keep the problem from repeating itself. 

“We had some signs made and planned to put them out around Christmas. Last year was our first year of ‘No Trees, Please,’ and we had no trees left on Lea-Hutaff. We just put out the signs again for this holiday season and we hope we have the same results,” she said.

For people who really want to have their tree go toward dune stabilization, Addison suggested looking for a project organized by a town or agency and make sure they follow state rules. 

“Definitely don’t bring your tree to any site that isn’t asking for them. Alternatively, trees make great backyard habitat,” Addison said. Placed in a backyard, they create habitat for wildlife like wrens and sparrows.

Addison also recommended taking the trees to towns or counties that have a mulching program. These programs are great because not all store-bought mulch is responsibly sourced, she said.

The state Division of Coastal Management officials said in a release Monday that rules state that Christmas trees for sand fencing must be placed as far inland as possible and should not obstruct existing public access to the beach, recreational use of the beach or emergency vehicle access. If sand fencing is present, there must be 7 feet separating the trees and sand fencing sections.

For example, trees should be installed at an angle no less than 45 degrees to the shoreline, no more than 10 feet seaward of the toe of the natural dune, and no less than 7 feet between trees, officials said.

Trees should not be installed in a manner that could impede, trap or otherwise endanger sea turtles, nests or hatchlings when the nesting season returns in a few months. Rows should be single tree width and not installed in conjunction with sand fencing. Trees should not be placed at the seaward toe of unvegetated beach berms, starter dunes, or on the open beach.

For more information, contact the Coastal Area Management Act permitting authority or appropriate Division of Coastal Management district office.

Boy Scout Troop 117 on the Outer Banks and Hammocks Beach State Park in Swansboro are not collecting trees this year.

By county

Currituck County has eight convenience centers for recycling and trash collection where live Christmas trees may be dropped off. All decorations will need to be removed from the tree, a county representative told Coastal Review. 

Chowan, Gates and Perquimans counties are accepting natural trees in the yard waste containers at any of the convenience sites or at the PCG Transfer Station in Belvidere.

Live Christmas trees will be used in the counties’ composting programs, which turn trees and yard debris into compost and mulch. Compost and mulch produced through these programs are free to community members, said Amy C. Underhill, public information officer for Albemarle Regional Health Services.

Hertford County has a yard waste program. The limbs need to be cut off and the base of the tree has to be less than 6 inches in diameter. The pieces can be dropped off at the Transfer Station at 227 Mt. Moriah Road in Ahoskie. 

Washington County will accept trees at the landfill. The trees will be disposed with other limb and leaf debris, which is used as infill material, a county representative said.

Beaufort County will accept natural trees, garland and wreaths at all convenience sites and the county landfill at 1342 Hawkins Beach Road, Washington.

Dare County Public Works Department will not pick up any Christmas trees that are left on the curbside within the unincorporated areas of the county. Christmas trees should be dropped off at the Dare County Public Works Recycling Center at 1018 Driftwood Drive in Manteo or at the Buxton Transfer Station, 47027 Buxton Back Road. Trees that are dropped off at these locations will be recycled into mulch.

Manteo requests that residents place their trees curbside during the town’s regular Monday and Thursday sanitation runs for the Public Works Department to remove the trees. Trees must not contain any ornaments, lights or tinsel in order to be picked up.

Duck will collect trees from the curbside on Monday and again Jan. 9. Trees need to be placed on the curbside the night before residents’ scheduled collection date.

Southern Shores residents may place their Christmas trees in limb and branch piles for collection during the regularly scheduled pickup for their sector. Wreaths will not be collected.

Kitty Hawk officials ask that residents place their Christmas trees along the curbside right-of-way before Wednesday, Feb. 1, to be picked up.

Kill Devil Hills will be collecting trees placed beginning Wednesday, Jan. 11. Trees must be on the curbside by Jan. 10.

Nags Head residents are asked to place trees along the side of the road in front of their property, where the trees will be collected as part of the town’s monthly curbside bulk item/brush collection service. The town also reminds residents to set their trees in a separate pile from the rest of any bulk items that need to be collected. 

Onslow County will be accepting natural Christmas trees from Dec. 27 to Jan. 7 at the Midway Park and Folkstone convenience sites only. Cost is $3.

Pender County’s convenience centers in Rocky Point and Hampstead will accept Christmas trees Jan. 2 through Jan. 16.

New Hanover County Recycling and Solid Waste Department has partnered with The Home Depot for free Christmas tree recycling through Jan. 31. Residents can drop their trees off at The Home Depot at 5511 Carolina Beach Road, The Home Depot at 210 Eastwood Road, and at New Hanover County Landfill, 5210 U.S. 421 North.

“Every year, people have natural décor in their homes to celebrate the holiday season, but once the festivities are finished many don’t have anywhere to easily dispose of it,” said New Hanover County Recycling and Solid Waste Director Joe Suleyman in a statement. “This program helps make sure that real Christmas trees, wreaths, and garlands can be recycled into mulch and composted to be used in New Hanover County parks, gardens and grounds. It’s a great way for our community to help reduce waste in our landfill and keep our environment clean.”

Artificial trees or decorations will not be accepted. 

Residents are asked to stack the materials neatly because space is limited and organizers expect demand to be high again this year. Fenced-in areas in The Home Depot parking lots will be marked with signage designating the drop-off locations. The program is funded and coordinated by New Hanover County Recycling and Solid Waste, with support from Wilmington Sanitation Department and Home Depot.

In addition to trees and wreaths, items like gift wrap, paper or cardboard boxes, holiday cards, old gadgets and electronics can be recycled at the county’s main recycling processing facility, drop-off sites or through the Mobile Hazwagon.

String lights, tinsel, foam packaging, bubble wrap, and ribbons or bows cannot be processed at the recycling facility and should be saved for reuse or thrown in the trash.

In Brunswick County, live Christmas trees will be accepted at the landfill at no charge from Jan. 2-31. After Jan. 31, normal tipping fees apply. The county convenience sites will accept trees for $5 each from Jan. 2-31. Artificial trees are not recyclable and will need to be disposed of as household trash. Normal tipping fees will apply.

Once the deadline passes, staff will collect all live Christmas trees from convenient sites and add them to the live Christmas tree collection site at the Brunswick County landfill, where the trees will be turned into mulch available at no cost to the public.

Dare County residents and property owners will have an opportunity to meet with officials to discuss the erosion affecting Hatteras Island.

The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18 in the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo Community Building at 23646 N.C. 12 in Rodanthe, just south of Myrna Peters Road. To attend virtually, register online before the meeting.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten will give an overview of the logistics and funding models that have made previous beach nourishment projects possible in the county, and discuss the challenges regarding funding and prioritizing newly established beach nourishment projects.

Following the presentation, there will be an opportunity for both in-person and virtual attendees to ask questions.

There will be a livestream option during the meeting on Dare County’s YouTube channel. The video will be available after the meeting.

The public can submit comments or questions to be addressed during the meeting by email to DareCountyPR@DareNC.com no later than Jan. 16.

More information about Rodanthe beach erosion is available on the county website.

Visitors who stop at the Salvo day use area, a part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, almost certainly notice the small cemetery with a few dozen graves perched right on the edge of the Pamlico Sound.

The Salvo Community Cemetery on Hatteras Island dates back generations and has long been at risk of eroding away, even losing graves to the sound as a result of erosion.

There have been efforts In recent years to save the cemetery, including putting in a bulkhead in 2018, and earlier this year, the National Park Service announced plans for improvements, but the descendants are acutely aware it’s only a matter of time and tide before it’s all under water.

“They say in years to come this is really not going to be an island. It’ll be all water,” Earl Whidbee told Durham photojournalist Justin Cook for his photography and reporting project, “Tide and Time: Sea Level Rise and Solastalgia on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.”

“Tide and Time” was first published in May in Coastal Review in partnership with Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines and is now an outdoor exhibit at the cemetery, on display since mid-September.

Cook recapped in an interview that he spent four years working on “Tide and Time,” a documentary, photography and reporting project that investigates the effects of sea level rise and erosion, as told through a small cemetery on the edge of the Pamlico Sound that is eroding into the sound.

“It investigates the people with deep familial connections to that piece of land, the ecosystems around it, and the psychological impacts of that change in their daily lives as opposed to the big, dramatic, short-term effects of hurricanes. The project, instead, investigates the slower creep of climate change and everyday lives of people,” he said.

Cook introduces several descendants of those buried in the Salvo Community Cemetery, he talks to them about sea level rise, storms, what they’ve lost and what they remember. He also speaks with scientists about climate change and delves into the term, solastalgia, which Cook said philosopher Glenn Albrecht “defined it as a sense of loss, homesickness and distress specifically caused by environmental change around someone’s home and a sense of powerlessness over that change.”

With help from descendants and locals, Cook extended his project into the free, outdoor exhibit at the cemetery. Installed in mid-September and on display from 9 a.m. to dark, the long banner fastened on one side of cemetery’s fence documents the accelerating effects of climate change and erosion on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. There is scientific information, photographs and portraits of those buried at the cemetery on the banner.

Cook is a descendant himself through his grandfather, the late William Albert Best Jr. from Stumpy Point in Dare County.

The banner exhibit was a natural extension of “Tide and Time” and was inspired by Photoville, a New York-based nonprofit organization founded in 2011. The organization holds an annual photography festival in public spaces and Photoville FENCE, a year-round public photography project displayed in major parks and downtowns across the continent, which has made stops in Durham.

Cook said anyone can engage with the Photoville exhibit because they’re free and in a public space. This also give people an opportunity to confront the work and the work confront them.

He was out for a walk in Durham and thought that a Photoville FENCE exhibit of “Tide and Time” on the cemetery fence would “be wild.” He said he pitched the idea to locals on  Salvo Community Cemetery Friends and Descendants  Facebook page and “the buy-in was immediate.”

Cook designed the banner with help from the community, and collaborated with descendant Robin Holt on the text – her research and his reporting – and Photoville walked him through the process of getting the banner printed.

That buy-in from the community and having a hyper-local focus is an important element of his work, a large part of why he found value in working with Coastal Review to publish his project earlier this year, he said.

The Pulitzer Center’s mission, especially with Connected Coastlines, is to infuse local news outlets, particularly smaller ones, with reporting projects that require resources often beyond the ability of the small publications. They either don’t have the staff or time to invest in a project like this, Cook said, adding, “It actually just came together perfectly and just made a lot of sense, the impact was hyper local, which is something that’s really important to me as well.”

He explained that the longer he does documentary work, the stronger he feels that the community he’s doing the work in should garner the most impact from it.

“For this (project) to appear in a coastal North Carolina publication, that to me was in line with those values and I think it made it way more possible for me to actually pull off the banner exhibit as well,” he said.

Cook explained that he wanted to have an exhibit on the Outer Banks, but then the pandemic happened. While there was the option to spend thousands on nicely printed, framed prints to hang in a gallery, he opted for something completely different that would open to the public and safe during the pandemic. 

He said when he pitched the idea for the banner to those he had been working with, they were already familiar with Coastal Review and being backed by the Pulitzer Center gave the project legitimacy.

“Having a national institution backing this (project) and publishing in a local publication that had familiarity, was just a real sweet spot for the work,” he said.

The reporting project and fence exhibit have been made possible by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Connected Coastlines Initiative, The North Carolina Arts Council, the Photoville FENCE exhibit, The Coastal Review Online, and The National Park Service.

The state Coastal Resources Commission is expected to hear an update this week on erosion issues at the South Dock ferry terminal on Ocracoke Island.

The commission, when it meets at 9 a.m. Wednesday by video conference, is also expected to consider a variance request by a North Topsail Beach homeowner’s association on a permit extension for an existing, oversized sandbag structure.

The public may join the meeting by video conference or by  phone at 1-415-655-0003. Use access code 185 441 7339 and event password 1234.

In addition the variance request from Topsail Reef Homeowners Association on a permit extension for an existing, oversized sandbag structure, the CRC is expected to consider rules for oceanfront development/beach management plans and a fiscal analysis related to Inlet Hazard Areas proposed use standards.

Rulemaking recommendations regarding amendments to shorefront access and to permit modification rules and consider fiscal analysis for rules and permit procedures governing the elevation of oceanfront structures on pilings are also on the agenda.

A full meeting agenda and briefing materials is on the CRC website. Times indicated on the agenda for individual items are subject to change.

Submit written comments before the meeting to Angela Willis at angela.willis@ncdenr.gov. Write “PUBLIC COMMENT” in the subject line.

TOPSAIL BEACH – Pockets of water left by swift, hard downpours or a series of rainy days typically flood the same streets in this town at the southern end of Topsail Island.

The waters of Banks Channel spill over street ends through some areas of town, only exacerbating flooding issues during lunar or king tides, evidence of the rising sea level.

Topsail Island is now in the early stages of addressing some of these water issues in a multifaceted approach to reduce stormwater-related flooding, enhance water quality and curb soundside erosion.

“We’re doing this as a coordinated effort as a stormwater/living shorelines project,” Town Manager Mike Rose said.

The town is working with engineers and coastal scientists who are currently hashing out project details for seven stormwater projects and four living shorelines.

Topsail Beach has contracted with engineering firm LDSI Inc. to focus on the stormwater infiltration projects, details of which are still in the works, Rose said.

Important projects, he said, but not quite as exciting as rolling out what will be the town’s first living shorelines.

“We think it’s a great chance for this to be almost a springboard,” for more living shoreline projects, Rose said.

The town has contracted with the North Carolina Coastal Federation to design and oversee the installation of living shorelines on town-owned property at the end of four streets: Rocky Mount, Haywood, Sidbury and Nixon avenues, all of which dead end at Banks Channel.

Living shoreline projects are built with various structural and organic materials, such as plants, submerged aquatic vegetation, oyster shells and stone. These projects generally work best along sheltered coasts such as estuaries, bays, lagoons and coastal deltas, where wave energy is low to moderate.

Tracy Skrabal, a coastal scientist with the federation, said the plan is to design at least three different types of living shoreline, such as a vertical wall sill, oyster bag sill or other new, innovative measures.

“All of them will include marsh plantings,” she said. “Our goal for this is not to just put four living shorelines on the channel, but to use this as a training tool, a demonstration for other property owners. They have a lot of bulkheads in Topsail Island.”

Each site has about 100 feet of shoreline.

“They vary,” Skrabal said. “Some have a little bit of marsh. Some of them have a little bit of erosion.”

Mounting research shows that living shorelines hold up better through storms than hardened structures, enhance intertidal habitat for fish and other marine resources, and better defend against sea-level rise.

Topsail Beach recently wrapped up a $26 million storm damage reduction project, one that pumped more than 2.2 million cubic yards of sand onto the ocean shoreline and deepened about three miles of inlet and channel waterway.

“The town has invested a lot into the ocean side of this island,” Rose said. “This gives us an opportunity to focus on the other side of the island. We’re excited about this.”

Topsail Beach hopes to pay for the projects from a portion of a $5 million state grant the town received last summer.

Senate Bill 95 split the state Division of Water Resources grant equally at a little more than $1.66 million each among Topsail Island’s three towns, Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail Beach.

The law required the towns to submit a report on prospective projects no later than last fall to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Agriculture and Natural and Economic Resources and the Fiscal Research Division.

“We’ve put these projects into that application request, which has been recommended for approval,” Rose said.

If, for whatever reason, the projects are not approved for that grant, Rose said the town will commit funds to the projects.

The hope is for construction to begin on a portion of the living shoreline projects this year, but with ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, original projected start times will likely be pushed back.

“We are moving forward with design,” Skrabal said. “We will try to communicate with people virtually, but most of our education and training will happen after the projects are on the ground. My goal is to have at least two sites constructed in 2020 and two sites constructed in 2021. We’re just really impressed by the commitment of the town to move in this direction. These two projects combined will really increase our ability to educate professionals and residents on all these techniques. To their credit, the town is trying to get ahead of all of this.”

The public hearing on oceanfront erosion rates used to determine inlet hazard areas originally set for Oct. 8 in Ocracoke has been rescheduled to Wednesday morning.

Set to begin at 10 a.m. at Hyde County Government Center, 30 Oyster Creek Road, Swan Quarter, the meeting will be simultaneously broadcast to the Ocracoke Community Center, 999 Irvin Garrish Highway, Ocracoke. The public may speak at either location.

The Coastal Resources Commission is accepting comments on proposed amendments to the general use standards for ocean hazard areas, 15A NCAC 07H .0304, and the associated fiscal analysis to reflect the five-year update of the state’s oceanfront erosion rates. Erosion rates are used to establish construction setbacks for development within the Ocean Erodible Area – Areas of Environmental Concern. The proposed rule amendments can be found online.

Those unable to attend the public hearing may submit written comments by mail to NCDCM, 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City, N.C. 28557.

The story has been updated.

BEAUFORT – The North Carolina Department of Transportation has in the works a short-term fix for erosion at the Hatteras ferry terminal on Ocracoke Island but is also working with the National Park Service on a long-term solution.

During its meeting at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Beaufort Lab on Pivers Island Wednesday, the Coastal Resources Commission granted NCDOT a variance to build a temporary erosion control structure that exceeds the permitted height and will stack the larger than permitted sandbags perpendicular as well as the permitted parallel at the ferry terminal within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

The temporary sandbag structure will be built adjacent to a bulkhead, which construction is expected to begin on this week, as authorized June 21 by Division of Coastal Management.

Ocracoke can only be reached by ferries that leave from Cedar Island in Carteret County, Swan Quarter in Hyde County and the Hatteras Inlet ferry, which is the most used by travelers and serves as an evacuation route.

Christine Goebel, assistant general counsel with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Office of General Counsel, told the commission that shoreline erosion, dune loss, frequent overwash, flooding damage from frequent storms and the shifting of Hatteras Inlet have been particularly severe at the Hatteras ferry terminal.

During summer 2017, spring 2018 and after Hurricane Florence in fall 2018, NCDOT put in place measures to slow erosion at the hairpin turn. But with the erosion rate of 7 to 15 feet per month this past winter, the terminal site lost more than 70 feet of shoreline in the last year to erosion, according to the variance request.

As a result of the erosion, the ferry boarding lanes at the hairpin turn disintegrated and have been closed since March because of safety concerns, Goebel said. An emergency declaration was issued that month because of the rapid erosion.

“If continued erosion were to cause the existing bulkhead to fail at the ferry basin, the entire ferry basin would be impacted, causing unsafe conditions for the loading and unloading of the traveling public,” Goebel said.

Tim Hass, NCDOT Ferry Division communications officer, told Coastal Review Online that NCDOT had completed beach renourishment when dredging the adjacent ferry channel and basin twice during the last eight years. In 2018, sandbags were put in place to save the hairpin turn from becoming compromised. Sand was also placed on top of the sandbags and a dune was created.

However, the sandbags failed to protect the stacking lanes and the ferry basin. By spring, asphalt had started crumble.

NCDOT submitted June 13 a request to Division of Coastal Management for an emergency stabilization project that included about 1,000 feet of sheet pile bulkhead in front of an existing steel sheet pile bulkhead, and sandbags as a temporary structure intended to protect the ferry terminal from further erosion, according to the variance request.

The division issued June 21 an emergency major modification to Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, permit No. 224-87, giving the go-ahead for NCDOT to install the sheet pile bulkhead as part of the proposed project but denied the request to build the proposed sandbag structure partially in the inlet hazard area.

Hass said that with the Army Corps of Engineers issuing July 16 the last permit needed for the project, NCDOT can proceed with the bulkhead work, which was expected to get underway this week.

The temporary sandbags are to be placed at the end of the sheet pile wall to protect it and prevent erosion caused by easterly winds until the groin project is complete.

Hass said that if the sandbags area not installed, “there would be no way to stabilize the area between the sheet pile wall and the existing roadway; therefore, allowing for additional erosion to occur.”

NCDOT filed a variance request June 27 for the proposed sandbag structure, and asked to have the variance expedited and reviewed during the commission’s meeting last week.

The size of the sandbags and height of the stacks, which would be perpendicular and parallel to the shoreline to act as a temporary groin, aren’t allowed under the rules for temporary erosion control structures. The permit allows only for sandbags to be placed parallel to the shoreline without exceeding 6 feet in height or 20 feet in width, according to the variance request.

The project is expected to use about 40 sandbags in three different sizes: 2 feet by 5 feet by 15 inches; 3 feet by 3 feet; and 4 feet by 4 feet. The sandbag wall would likely be 50 feet long and 15 feet wide, tapering as it rises to a maximum height of 15 feet.

Hass said that the specified sandbags were chosen because they are sizes the department already has in its inventory. The proposed sandbags’ orientation was designed to provide the most stability.

The structure is to be placed in the water and be higher than the water depth. The water is predicted to be 14 to 15 feet deep by the time construction begins, which should be in the early fall and will take about a month to complete.

Mollie Cozart, assistant attorney general with the state Department of Justice Transportation Division, told the commission that the temporary sandbags would be installed on the northeast end of the sheet pile bulkhead until the future project now being studied is completed and something more permanent is put in place.

Cozart explained that the bags would be installed in both perpendicular and parallel stacks in a pyramid shape to create more structural stability. The footprint of the perpendicular sandbags would act as a temporary groin system behind the sheet pile wall to allow NCDOT to stabilize the area and protect it until more permanent material is put in place.

Mike Barber, public affairs specialist for Cape Hatteras National Seashore, reiterated that the sandbags are temporary until a long-term structure can be built at the north end of Ocracoke Island.

The National Park Service, which accepted public comments on the project through Monday, anticipates that the environmental assessment for more permanent protection measures it’s preparing with NCDOT and other agencies will be available for review and comment in the fall.

The assessment is to document the effects the proposed structures will have on coastal shoreline processes, human health and safety, wildlife habitat, submerged aquatic vegetation, water resources and the visitor experience. The park service said it will use the document to determine what it will allow NCDOT to do to protect the shoreline, Coastal Review Online previously reported.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review Online, submitted comments  to Cape Hatteras National Seashore, explaining that because of the scope of the proposed project, a more thorough environmental study is warranted.

“The proposed solution is short-sighted and does not take into account a long-term, holistic approach to the regional coastal processes. Long-term armoring of the shoreline warrants an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS),” the letter states.

The federation in the letter recommends NCDOT provide a complete analysis of all viable alternatives for the proposed project, including the possibility of relocating the ferry terminal to a more stable location on the barrier island.

Hass added that NCDOT is looking at several different options that include moving the terminal farther south, “but we have just started the study. Other options will be explored as well.”

Hass said that if a terminal groin is used, “models have shown that we will accrue sand between groins, hopefully provide a safer basin for the ferries,” and “allow us to hopefully use the stacking lanes again.”

But, a terminal groin is likely a short-term fix, about 10 or 15 years. “The long-term fix will probably take 10 years or more to study, design, fund and construct,” he said.

“Presently, the department is looking at placing groins perpendicular to the sheet pile wall. This also is considered more of a short-term than a long-term option, especially if the inlet continues to grow in width.”

Commission member Robin Smith expressed her frustration after the variance was granted. Noting that NCDOT didn’t create the conditions, “a lot of decisions and a lot of work done over the course of a very long period of time in an environment that is inherently risky has brought us where we are today,” Smith said during the meeting.

“I would hope that DOT and the park service are thinking very broadly and creatively because continuing on this path of continuing to construct temporary or permanent erosion control structures in this kind of environment is not a sustainable path, in my opinion.”

Reprinted from The Outer Banks Voice.

NAGS HEAD – A decision on whether to close an oceanfront road or give property owners an alternative to pay for its upkeep will be the focus of a public hearing June 1.

The hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. as part of the town commissioners’ meeting.

The road, Seagull Drive, became a symbol of the severe erosion in South Nags Head that validated the need for beach renourishment and was the center of a years-long legal battle over houses heavily damaged in a November 2009 storm. The storm scattered concrete septic tanks, pipes, wires and lumber across the beach and left the homes at the edge of the surf.

Now that all but one of the structures have been torn down, the town sees the road as a poor investment to serve the remaining houses that have become, by default, oceanfront properties.

Of the dozen or so owners of the remaining houses, three so far are unwilling to grant easements that would allow access on either end of the block. On the south end, three owners have worked out sharing access.

The best the town has been able to do is grade the right-of-way to make it reasonably passable. But the crew on a beach renourishment project in 2011 was forced to work around the old houses before they were torn down, so now the ocean regularly washes over the right-of-way during storms.

John Leidy, the town attorney, told the town’s board of commissioners last week that the town could consider a special assessment on the property owners to reimburse the town for maintaining the road. But the process, he said, would be cumbersome.

“It’s something the town needs to go through every time it makes an expenditure,” Leidy said. “It’s not a very mechanically practical way of doing this.”

A second and easier option would be to create a municipal service district with an annual tax on owners there to pay for maintenance, Leidy said.  Such a district could be set up to also pay for hurricane protection and erosion control.

“We believe that repairs and improvements made to Seagull Drive if they constitute an erosion control mechanism or a flood or perhaps hurricane protection work — that that’s something that could be the basis for establishing an MSD,” he said. “Municipal service districts are a lot easier to establish and a lot more useful, or easier to use I should say, in raising funds. But there are some issues with respect to the level of maintenance that would be required in order to use that process.”

A legal mechanism known as easement by necessity would place the burden entirely on the property owners, Leidy said. It would allow an owner to acquire an easement over the property of someone else.

“The town would have no role in that particular kind of process,” Leidy said.

Six of the dilapidated houses were torn down after the town reached a legal settlement with the owners’ representative in March 2015. The town agreed to buy the homes for $1.5 million.

Roc Sansotta, owner of Cove Realty, sued the town in 2010 after Nags Head declared the row of houses on Seagull Drive an obstruction to public access and emergency vehicles.

The town, in a prior settlement, agreed to give another owner, Matthew Toloczko, $200,000 and a nearby lot worth $3,500 at the north end of the remaining row of properties to be used as a drain field for his house’s septic system.

HOLDEN BEACH – A terminal groin would benefit a handful of homes, protect less than $1.2 million in tax revenue over 30 years and push chronic erosion at the east end of Holden Beach to spots further down the barrier island, according to coastal and economic experts.

Fiscal and environmental perspectives of the town’s proposed $34.4 million terminal groin project were presented during a public forum attended by nearly 100 property owners at the Holden Beach Chapel last Friday night.

The draft Environmental Impact Statement – a study put together by a consultant firm hired by the town – makes optimistic assumptions, minimizes project costs and does not address uncertainties of the proposed project, said Doug Wakeman, a retired professor of economics at Meredith College in Raleigh.

“Anticipate that the benefits will be lower, the costs will be higher and the uncertainty will largely be ignored,” he said.

The study, which was released for public review last fall, states that 150 properties are at risk along the ocean shoreline in Holden Beach.

Andy Coburn, the associate director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, calculates that number to be much lower.

“A terminal groin, if it’s built and if it does exactly what it’s supposed to do, which it won’t, is supposed to protect all 150 properties,” he said.

Those properties are seaward of a state-delineated 30-year imminent risk line, and a terminal groin, he said, will not protect all 150 properties, if any at all. By his calculations, the benefits of a terminal groin may accrue to only 32 properties classified as imminent risk.

Over a 30-year period, the projected life of the proposed project, those 32 properties would result in a net present value tax revenue loss of less than $1.2 million, Coburn said.

The net present value tax revenue loss over a 30-year period for all 150 properties is about $5.3 million, he said.

The preferred project alternative in the study would expand 1,000 feet at the Lockwood Folly Inlet with 300 feet anchored on a portion of the large sand spit at the east end and the remaining 700 feet offshore.

The project’s proponents say a terminal groin would offer a long-term solution to chronic, severe erosion on the east end. Over time, the encroaching Atlantic has claimed numerous homes. Houses that were once second-row homes along McCrary Street are now beachfront properties.

Town Mayor Alan Holden, who did not attend the forum, said in a previous interview that dozens of homes on the east end have been lost to erosion.

The town’s consultants on the proposed project, the town manager and the company that conducts the town’s annual beach monitoring reports were invited to be part of the forum. They either declined or did not respond, according to Tom Myers, the president of the Holden Beach Property Owners Association.

Myers said the forum, hosted by his group, the N.C. Coastal Federation and the Southern Environmental Law Center, was held in response to a survey conducted last fall that revealed nearly half of property owners said they needed more information about the proposed project.

A similar Duke University survey, released late last week, reached the same conclusion. That survey states that there is a “mixed level of understanding of beach erosion and the impacts of terminal groins” and that property owners wanted to know more.

Decisions about terminal groins are being made in towns throughout the southern N.C. coast after the N.C. General Assembly in 2011 repealed a nearly 30-year-old ban on hardened beach erosion control structures. Legislators changed the law in 2015 to allow for up to six terminal groins.

Holden Beach, the neighboring barrier island of Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County and Figure Eight Island, a private barrier island in New Hanover County, are in various stages of the process of obtaining permits to build terminal groins at their inlets.

Construction of a terminal groin at Bald Head Island, another Brunswick County barrier island, is well underway.

Stan Riggs, a coastal geologist and distinguished research professor at East Carolina University, said that the trouble with building terminal groins is that their potential effects are not isolated to one area, but rather the state’s entire coast.

“This is not only an incredible coastal system, it’s an incredibly complex coastal system,” Riggs said. “The problem is everybody zeros in on one inlet. That’s like looking at one tree in the forest.”

Holden Beach is part of a barrier island system in which 75 percent of the islands are considered “simple” barrier islands. These are low, narrow, sediment-poor islands Riggs calls “mobile piles of sand” and “energy absorbing sponges for the ocean.”

The challenge with building structures on these islands is that people are putting “absolutes” on land that shifts and changes, he said.

“Those islands have been changing forever and they’re going to continue to change,” Riggs said. “They’re storm dependent.”

Storm surge creates the inlets at these islands. Inlets are like safety valves in that they act as outlets, allowing water pushed by powerful storms over and around barrier islands toward the mainland by storms to flow back out to sea.

Lockwood Folly Inlet is one of the more stable inlets along the N.C. coast, Riggs said. “If you close it and lock it down the storm surge can’t use that as a safety valve,” he said.

There are nine hardened erosion control structures along the state’s coast. Riggs showed how two of those structures, both terminal groins, have worked over the decades.

The terminal groin built in the early 1960s in Beaufort Inlet at Fort Macon has shifted the erosion downstream, requiring regular dredging and pumping of sand onto Bogue Banks, Riggs said.

A terminal groin built in the late 1980s at Oregon Inlet to protect the southern approach to the bridge over the inlet has created a sort-of erosion domino effect, Riggs said.

“The rest of the island is collapsing all the way down to Rodanthe,” Riggs said. “Every example we have has never solved an erosion problem. It just pushes it down the island.”

His prediction for Holden Beach is that the same will happen if a terminal groin is built at Lockwood Folly Inlet.

“We need to let the natural system work a little bit,” Riggs said.

He asked property owners to think about how they can live and move with the island.

“We moved a lighthouse,” he said, referring to the 1999 relocation of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. The lighthouse, facing an encroaching ocean, was moved 2,900 feet inland from where it had stood since 1870.

“We can move anything,” Riggs said. “I want you to think about that because it’s more than just about that one little structure and a few houses.”

Some property owners and town commissioners already have raised concerns about how a terminal groin may affect the town’s proposed “central reach” project. This $15 million beach re-nourishment project would be the largest in the town’s history, placing up to 1.31 million cubic yards of sand along four miles of shoreline.

The town board is currently discussing how to pay for the proposed project, which would be funded through a property tax rate increase.

Commissioners have not discussed how the town would pay for a terminal groin.

Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said, if you assume the four-year modeling in the draft study is correct, a terminal groin would protect only about five or six houses at the east end.

“If you read (the study) you might think of this as an existential threat of the whole island,” he said. “The model does not consider storm impacts. They’re only looking at chronic erosion. Although it describes ongoing and chronic erosion, the historical rates at the east end of the island are five to seven feet at the end of the year.”

The model in the study creates a much higher rate of erosion – 20 feet a year.

“None of the alternatives protect all of the houses,” Gisler said.

Town Commissioner John Fletcher said he is not yet prepared to state whether or not he supports the proposed project. “I think we still have a lot more to learn about,” he said.

It is unclear when the Army Corps of Engineers will release the final EIS.

Learn More

• Draft EIS
• Holden Beach Property Owners Association

OCRACOKE — It could be said that two birds were killed with one stone, except the expression is awkward when describing a successful shoreline restoration project that has benefited an iconic coastal bird.

Beacon Island, a 7.5-acre island in the Pamlico Sound that is home to hundreds of nesting brown pelicans, is now more protected from erosion thanks to reefs of oyster shells built along its western shoreline.  And while the reefs act as natural buffers, they are helping also to restore the oyster beds that had historically thrived in the sound waters off Ocracoke Island.

“They’re doing very well,” said Gene Ballance, one of the local fishermen who had worked on the project. “The pelicans love them as a perch – they’re all lined up on the shore.”

Lexia Weaver and James Barrie Gaskill inspect some of the 5,000 bags of oyster shell that were used at Beacon Island. Photo: Sam Bland

Some of the bags were used to stabilize a portion of the island. Photo: Sam Bland

The project is a partnership between the N.C. Coastal Federation and Audubon North Carolina, the owner of the island. It involved filling 4,785 bags with 3,325 bushels of recycled oyster shells. A stabilization technique known as “marsh toe revetments,” the shells were then placed in eight sections along 750 feet of island shoreline.  Another 8,279 bushels of recycled oyster shells were also used to build nine patch oyster reefs – foot-high rows – further off the island to provide additional protection.

Ballance had worked alongside another Ocracoke waterman, James Barrie Gaskill, shoveling the oyster shells into bags or totes, loading them onto a barge and transporting them to Beacon Island.  Other members of the Ocracoke Working Watermen’s Association assisted in the project, which began in early 2012 and has recently concluded.

Funding for the project was provided in grants for $45,000 from TogetherGreen, an Audubon alliance with Toyota, and about $130,000 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The reefs have proven to be hardy enough to remain intact through a hurricane, as well as the constant pounding from the sound that has been eating away at Beacon Island.

“They break the waves to keep the pressure off the shoreline,” Ballance said. “And also you can harvest them when they’re big enough in about three years.”

Oysters filter and clean water, and their reefs are excellent habitat for fish. Over time, living oysters attach to the old shells, making healthy reefs gradually grow larger and stronger.

In an earlier project, Ballance had re-mapped the locations on the sound floor of old oyster beds that had been killed years ago by disease and pollution. He is continuing to examine old documents to compare to and improve upon the new oyster maps.

Walker Golder, the deputy state director of Audubon North Carolina, said that Beacon Island is one of the earliest sites that brown pelicans used as a rookery when they first showed up in the state in the 1920s.

“It’s been a long-standing and really important nesting site for brown pelicans in North Carolina,” he said.

Pelicans typically lay two or three eggs, of which one or two young will survive. Nesting season runs from March to September, a prolonged time for birds. Largely for that reason, the pelicans require habitat that is vegetated, high ground with no access for predators.

There are nine known pelican nesting islands in the state. Others are in Oregon Inlet, the lower Cape Fear River and the lower Core Sound. According to Audubon surveys, there were 558 pelican nests on Beacon Island this year, which is a bit more than the typical 500 nests.

Pelicans build more than 500 nest on Beacon Island each year. This baby hatched in one of them. Photo: Sam Bland

Golder said that Beacon Island, which was once as large as 15 acres, is one of 19 Audubon coastal sanctuaries in North Carolina between Ocracoke Island and the lower Cape Fear River, protecting about one-third of the water bird population in the state.

Statewide, there are about 4,400 breeding pairs of brown pelicans – a remarkable recovery from a low of about 100 pairs of pelicans that existed in a single colony in the 1970s.

“They’re really doing well,” Golder said. “And the great thing about the brown pelican is they’re a tremendous success story. They’re a species that has really bounced back.”

Nearly decimated by the pesticide DDT, the brown pelican, Golder said, was not abundant in the state until recent years. In fact, their range was limited to the more southern states until 1928, when they were first spotted in North Carolina.

“About 40 years or so ago, seeing a brown pelican was a great and exciting sight,” he said. “Seeing them in the winter was even more rare.”

But now they are the beloved icon of the coast:  Nearly every tourism promotion shows pelicans perched on pier pilings, gliding in formation right above the water and diving for fish like flying bombers. To the delight of beach residents, quite a few stick around year-round.

Golder said that innovative habitat protection projects like Beacon Island, where birds, fish and the coastal environment share the benefits, could be effective elsewhere.

“I think the project overall has gone great,” he said. “I think what it shows is that this type of work can be successful and replicated in other areas.”

If all goes as hoped, the other side of Beacon Island will be getting similar protection, said Lexia Weaver, a coastal scientist for the federation.

Weaver said that, because of the increased wave energy and depth on the eastern side, a shoreline project there would require complex engineering. Fundraising for the $20,000 restoration plan is underway.

The federation would again partner with Audubon, she said. Ideally, the Ocracoke watermen, invaluable for their local knowledge, will again participate, she added.

A master restoration plan would likely again incorporate oyster shells, but it also would require support with sturdier pilings.

“I think it’s going to be a bigger structure,” Weaver said.