Officials at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point announced this week that training is to be conducted along with special boat operations in the air station’s bordering waterways beginning Saturday.

Training will continue through June 18, and special boat teams will conduct operations in and around the waterways that may go as late at midnight on various days during the period.

The air station’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal units will conduct explosive ordnance training at the MCAS Cherry Point range at varying times throughout the month. Residents who live on and around the installation can expect to hear the
occasional loud explosion.

For more information contact MCAS Cherry Point Communication Strategy and Operations at 252-466-4241 or cherrypoint@usmc.mil.

Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune officials remind the public that Browns Island and its nearby waters are strictly off-limits because of the unexploded ordnances and ongoing live-fire training exercises that take place on the federally owned barrier island in Onslow County.

The restricted areas include all navigable waters in the area between the south bank of Bear Creek and the north bank of Browns Inlet, including the creeks and tributaries leading to and around Browns Island.

Officials, in their announcement May 22, added that military police, in coordination with the U.S. Coast Guard, regularly patrol the area.

“The primary safety hazards around and on Browns Island are everything from 500-pound air-delivered bombs all the way down to 25- and 40-millimeter high-explosive dual-purpose munitions,” explained Lt. Col. Jeffrey Cummings, director of Range Control, for Camp Lejeune, in the announcement.

“Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune wants to ensure the safety of our boating public,” Cummings added.

“Civilian watercraft must never beach or drop anchor on or near restricted areas that are posted with warning signs,” he continued. “Bottom-disturbing activities such as clamming, oystering or crabbing are prohibited. Foot traffic is also prohibited on any of the land areas on or about Browns Island at all times.”

Trespassers can face severe penalties, including citations that may require an appearance before a federal magistrate, and are subject to fines up to $5,000, imprisonment for up to six months, or both.

For additional information on the off-limits areas and safety restrictions surrounding Browns Island, visit the base’s website.

Paddlers looking to get in on the action in Pine Knoll Shores’ annual Kayak for the Warriors have just two more days to register online for the May 30 event.

The registration fee for participants who plan to race in a single kayak or on a paddle board is $50. Registration is $100 for tandem kayakers. Fees include a T-shirt and lunch.

Online registration is open until midnight Wednesday. Participants may also register on race day.

The 3.2-mile kayak and paddle board race will be held 9 a.m.-1 p.m. beginning at Garner Park, 162 Oakleaf Drive, Pine Knoll Shores. A Warrior Trophy is awarded to the paddler or team that brings in the most donations.

Lunch is available for $10 per adult and $15 per family to those who prefer to support local veterans, military members and families, on land.

Saturday will mark the 19th annual race to raise funds that benefit Hope For The Warriors, a national nonprofit founded in 2006 aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune by military spouses who “witnessed the urgent needs of service members returning from war with visible and invisible wounds.”

Kayak for the Warriors has raised more than $1.1 million for the program since 2008.

For questions, email coordinator@k4tw.org.

There’s something almost poetic in how Thomas Marcinowski describes his plans for his final farewell.

Whenever that time comes, the U.S. military veteran wants to be cremated and put to sea.

“That way my ashes touch every continent my boots walked on,” Marcinowski said.

That long-carried thought surfaced when Marcinowski, on a commercial flight returning to Wilmington from an organizational event in 2019, read an article about people taking the ashes of their loved ones to be interred in an artificial reef off the Miami coast.

By that time, several years had passed since he’d retired from service, rounding out a military career spanning more than 20 years that began when he enlisted in the Air Force as a teenager and ended after becoming an officer in the Army National Guard.

Marcinowski, a physician assistant at Wilmington Veterans Administration Health Care Center, wasted no time after reading the article. He began bouncing an idea to friends and colleagues about a nonprofit organization that would build a living legacy beneath the waves where those who’ve honorably served would be memorialized, their stories preserved and their mission of service continued.

“The motto that I like to use is, ‘Those who served continue to serve,’” Marcinowski said. “They’ve passed away, but yet they’re still giving back to the nation and to the world by being out there to create something even greater and protect for future generations.”

Just two years after he first pitched his idea around, Veterans Memorial Reef held its first ceremony honoring veterans whose cremains were interred in eco-positive reef modules that were placed on the seafloor about 5 miles off the coast of Carolina Beach.

The nonprofit hosted its sixth annual three-day event this past weekend at the Fort Johnston Museum and Visitor Center in Southport, interring the ashes of nine people – six veterans and three spouses of veterans – in memorial markers to be lowered into the sea on Monday.

Those memorialized Saturday joined 30 others whose cremated remains are preserved in aquatic urns that are sealed into the square-shaped markers, each of which has a plaque engraved with the name, branch of service, and birth and death dates.

Veterans whose cremations are interred in the reef represent every branch of service – Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. Some served decades. Others, like Marine Corps Pfc. Ethan Eldrige, who died at age 21, served only a matter of months.

Several served in combat, veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm.

Then there’s Felix Bigalke, a Coast Guard service K-9, also memorialized at the reef.

This is Marcinowski’s passion project, one that goes beyond recognizing veterans to educate the general public about the military, rehabilitate and protect natural ocean reef ecosystems, and provide researchers opportunities to study how the environment and the organisms that live within it respond to an artificial reef.

“Working at the VA, just hearing the stories and having served in battle, having lost me of my own in battle, brings it home for me because I see the internal scars that they bear. It’s moving to me because I understand those scars,” Marcinowski said. “So, to be able to give them honor and share their stories that they may never have told their families, it is very rewarding.”

And, for the veterans memorialized at the reef who either have no family or are estranged from family, “It becomes really important that they not be forgotten,” he said.

The Veterans Memorial Reef website includes a Fallen Heroes tab where viewers can read veterans’ biographies, along with any medals awarded to them. Users can simply scroll over a ribbon bar or medal and click to learn more about that award.

“Those are things people don’t understand the meaning behind what they do, the risks they take to earn something like that or to be recognized for that,” Marcinowski explained.

Today, fewer than 1% of the country’s population serve as active-duty military.

“It’s dwindling,” said University of North Carolina Wilmington Director of Military Affairs Bill Kawczynski. “As our population grows and less and less folk either consider going in the military or even qualify for the military, it’s getting worse each year. And so, as director of the office of military affairs it gives me great satisfaction when I can connect students and others to things such as VMR or other military and veteran resources.”

On Saturday, Armed Forces Day, the nonprofit hosted in Southport a “Fallen Heroes Ceremony” for those whose remains will be placed in the sea. The honors-packed military tribute typically includes honor guards, the presentation of a 13-fold American flag to one member of each veteran’s family, taps, and a bagpipe rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

In a final sendoff, usually two days after the ceremony, families are invited to board the Vonda Kay, a 72-foot head boat based in Carolina Beach, to watch their loved one’s memorial marker get submerged and placed onto the Veterans Memorial Reef.

To honor and to serve (research)

The North Carolina Division Marine Fisheries determines where the memorial markers will be placed on a large, open sandy bottom anywhere below 30 to 50 feet of water.

Veterans Memorial Reef has partnered with Raleigh-based Natrx that creates artificial reef structures called ExoForms, which are designed to promote habitat growth and ecological benefits and produced using 3-D printers.

The memorial reef is in what Troy Alphin, a senior research associate with the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Marine Science, describes as a dynamic environment with strong currents. Alphin was one of the people Marcinowski initially contacted for validation of his memorial reef idea. The two have known each other for several years and Marcinowski knew Alphin had studied the effects of underwater structures on the environment off other coasts.

Alphin thought an offshore monument for veterans a novel, innovative idea, one that not only honors veterans, but also offers a host of research opportunities.

“This is a passion project to meet the needs of veterans that’s providing us with an opportunity to address some questions that are really relevant for local marine science and in our coastal area,” he said. “This provides an interesting palette for researchers to come in and propose different questions. Are fish going to be attracted to it? Are other organisms going to be attracted to it? What’s that development through time? The Center for Marine Science and UNCW are well positioned to address a lot of those questions.”

This year, students in the university’s coastal engineering program launched a capstone research project to try and answer the question of what the wave energy is like around the Veterans Memorial Reef.

Students used the university’s wave flume, 9,500-gallon-capacity glass and steel tank that can be programmed to imitate varying degrees of wave energy, to collect data that will help in future studies of the artificial reef site.

“We’re going to put some sensors on some of these monuments that are being deployed and start gathering data on what that looks like in the real word,” said Alphin, who sits on the Veterans Memorial Reef board of directors. “We want to know what that flow environment around these structures is really going to be.

“We’re really at the very beginning,” he continued. “There’s a lot of potential right now. I’m hoping that we’ll get a lot of students in the future and a lot of researchers that will be able to go out there and do some work around these structures.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The North Carolina Coastal Federation has acquired 787 acres along the North River in Carteret County, expanding the North River Wetlands Preserve to close to 7,000 acres.

The property, purchased for just shy of $1.9 million, is expected to further the nonprofit organization’s mission to protect water quality, while supporting military operations. The new land is also going to provide a new official portion of North Carolina’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the environmental group said Monday.

The North River Wetlands Preserve was once mostly ditched and drained farm land but has been restored over the past two decades into one of the largest rehabilitated wetland systems in state.

The new property was purchased through a partnership of state, federal and nonprofit funding, including $590,000 from the U.S. Department of Defense, $449,000 from the Complete the Trails Program for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and $964,691 from the N.C. Land and Water Fund for acquisition and transaction costs. 

With the property acquisition April 2, the preserve includes the headwaters of the North River, Wards Creek, and Jarrett Bay, “forming a connected natural system that filters runoff, improves water quality, and sustains productive fisheries downstream,” according to the organization.

“The newly protected tract includes forested wetlands, upland areas, and approximately 6,900 linear feet of tributaries flowing into the North River—a designated Primary Nursery Area and contributor to the Outstanding Resource Waters of Core and Back Sounds,” the organization added.

The Coastal Federation said it plans to begin restoring the site’s natural hydrology by reconnecting wetlands, improving drainage patterns, and enhancing long-term resilience to sea level rise. 

Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis explained in a release that the acquisition reflects the kind of forward-looking investment North Carolina needs.

“One that protects water quality, strengthens coastal ecosystems, supports military readiness, and creates meaningful public access. Expanding the North River Wetlands Preserve to nearly 7,000 acres ensures this landscape will provide lasting benefits for communities, fisheries, and future generations,” he said.

The land will be a new official section of North Carolina’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which is a 1,400-mile route connecting the Great Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks, and is managed by North Carolina State Parks. 

“The acquisition of this property represents a transformational moment for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail in this area,” Brent Laurenz, executive director of Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, said in a release. “We’re so appreciative of the partnership with the Federation to acquire this property for both the significant addition it will make to the MST and for its long-term conservation value.” 

The Department of Navy used funding from the Defense Department’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration, or REPI, Program, to secure a permanent restrictive use easement over the property where low-altitude helicopter training routes associated with Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point operations are held.

“This project represents years of work bringing together the right partners and funding to protect a truly special place,” Todd Miller, senior adviser to the Coastal Federation and project manager for the acquisition, said in a statement.

“By securing this property, we are safeguarding the headwaters of the North River, expanding one of the most important coastal preserves in the state, and creating a permanent route for the Mountains-to-Sea Trail. It’s a powerful example of how conservation can deliver clean water, public access, and support for our military at the same time,” he added.

This project is part of the organization’s “Lands for a Healthy Coast” initiative, which focuses on conserving strategic coastal landscapes that protect water quality, sustain fisheries, and build resilience to climate change. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Additional partners on the project include the North Carolina General Assembly, and Morehead City attorney John Harris.

The Museum of the Albemarle is to welcome the author of a recently published book on the United States Coast Guard’s 235-year history on the North Carolina coast for its monthly “History for Lunch” program.

Starting at noon Wednesday, April 22, inside the Elizabeth City museum’s Gaither Auditorium, retired U.S. Coast Guard Capt. George E. Krietemeyer is scheduled to discuss his book, “Guardians of the Graveyard of the Atlantic.”

His talk is to begin with the arrival of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Diligence in 1792, which was built in Washington to Alexander Hamilton’s design and specifications, the vessel’s primary mission was to collect tariffs but soon became involved in chasing pirates and aiding vessels in distress. The Coast Guard now has more than 5,000 members working in North Carolina, saving lives and overseeing oil spills all over the world.

Registration is not needed to attend the lecture in person but those wishing to attend virtually must sign up in advance to receive the meeting link. Friends of the Museum of the Albemarle support the virtual program.

The Museum of the Albemarle is a part of the Division of State History Museums, Office of Archives and History, under the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

The Museum of the Albemarle is at 501 S. Water St., Elizabeth City, and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

On a clear day, the Cape Lookout Lighthouse is visible from the entrance of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

The black-and-white diamond lighthouse built in 1859 is the centerpiece of the Cape Lookout National Seashore, but it isn’t the only structure of historical significance on the protected, 56-mile-long barrier island system.

Construction began in 1916 on the Cape Lookout Coast Guard Station, one of three stations built on Core Banks in Carteret County, and the waterfowl museum is hosting a celebration to honor the building and what it represents: the county’s Coast Guard history and its guardsmen.

The event, “U.S. Coast Guard Station at Cape Lookout 110th Anniversary Celebration Day:  Honoring Carteret County’s Rich Coast Guard History and It’s Continuing Role in Our Community” is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at the museum, 1785 Island Road.

“All U.S. Coast Guard veterans, especially those stationed at Cape Lookout, are invited to spend the day remembering and sharing the stories of Cape Lookout Station during a celebration of the 110th anniversary of the U.S. Coast Guard,” organizers said.

Coast Guard veterans, families and descendants are encouraged to bring photos for a memorial table to remember those who served, as well as photos that can be scanned and added to the museum’s collection.

Throughout the daylong event, there will be a slideshow of photos of Cape Lookout courtesy of Core Sound, National Park Service and N.C. Maritime Museums, and staff and volunteers will be conducting short interviews with those who served at Cape Lookout.

The official welcome is at 11:30 a.m., followed by lunch at noon. Reserve your spot for lunch at coresound.com/uscg.

The informal program begins at 2 p.m. with a roll call and include an update on the ongoing restoration work of the lighthouse with Cape Lookout Foundation, an event sponsor.

Cape Lookout’s Coast Guard history

The first Cape Lookout station was completed in August 1887 and a cookhouse was added five years later. In 1916, a new station was proposed for the original site, and the 1887 station was moved 60 feet away, making way for work to begin. The station was completed in 1917 and inhabited a year later. A boathouse was added in 1924, according to the U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association.

The 1887 station was remodeled in the 1920s and used as living quarters for the Navy’s Radio Compass Station until the end of World War II. When the Cape Lookout Lighthouse was automated in the 1950s, the Coast Guard demolished several buildings in 1957 and sold the 1887 life-saving station building and the 1923 boathouse.

Cape Lookout Station mission and personnel were merged into the larger Fort Macon Coast Guard Station in 1982 and Cape Lookout Station was decommissioned.

The publicly owned buildings and property were transferred two years later to the Cape Lookout National Seashore. The 1887 station and boathouse were privately owned until 2003 when both buildings were turned over to the National Park Service. In June 2000, the Cape Lookout Village historic district was listed on the National Register.

The 1917 Coast Guard station was used in the early 2000s by the Maritime Museum for environmental education, research and conservation. Between 2018 and 2020, preservation and restoration efforts took place, according to the association.

Communities near Marine Corps bases in Jacksonville and Havelock, as well as the auxiliary landing field in Bogue on N.C. Highway 24, should expect through February increased military vehicle traffic and noise associated with a monthlong training exercise starting Friday.

The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit will begin Friday training, which will include various land-based, ground troop activities, and aircraft and night operations, as part of a larger certification exercise at Bogue Field, the U.S. Marine Corps announced Thursday.

Bogue Field is an outlying property of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point based in Havelock. Training will also be carried out at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River, both in Jacksonville.

For a list of scheduled noise-generating events at Marine Corps base Camp Lejeune, please visit https://www.lejeune.marines.mil/News/Noise-Advisories.

For activity at Bogue Field, direct inquiries to Cherry Point’s Communication Strategy and Operations at 252-466-4241 or cherrypoint@usmc.mil.

Editor’s note: The following is from historian David Cecelski’s “Working Lives: Photographs from Eastern North Carolina, 1937 to 1947.” The Carteret County native introduced the nearly 20-part photo-essay series earlier this year on his website, explaining at the time that the images he selected from the N.C. Department of Conservation and Development Collection were taken in the late 1930s into the early 1950s of the state’s farms, industries, and working people.

In this photograph, we see a long line of fishing nets drying in the sun on Harkers Island, N.C., in the fall of 1944.

It is hard to see them, but there are two men talking in the midst of the net reels.

The photographer’s notes only identify one of the men: Stacy W. Davis, a local fisherman, charter boat captain, and fish dealer. That’s his fish house and dock on the far side of the net reels and fishing nets.

Capt. Stacy had built the fish house just before the war. He and his brother Leslie also owned the S.W. Davis & Brother Seafood Co. in Beaufort, on the other side of the North River.

The shoreline is beautiful, but in a way the tranquility of the scene belies the great upheaval that was happening on the island just before and during the Second World War.

When I was younger, old timers from Harkers Island often told me that it all seemed to start with the great hurricane of ’33, which is a story in itself and one that I think I’ll save for another time.

But not all storms come out of the Atlantic, and what happened over the next few years turned island life upside down more than any hurricane or nor’easter ever had.

Just a few years after the ’33 storm, in 1936, Harkers Island’s first road was paved. The age of automobiles and trucks was coming.

Three years later, in 1939, electricity arrived on the island, delivered via a submarine cable that ran beneath North River.

The stars would never be as bright again.

A year later, in the latter part of 1940, the biggest thing of all happened: workers finished building the first bridge from the mainland to Harkers Island. The bridge opened to the public a few weeks later.

That was on New Years Day 1941. Many a time, I have heard old timers say that it was the best and worst day in the island’s history. More than anything, it marked the end of one way of life, the dawn of another.

Then, of course, the war came. Young men and women went away to fight in distant lands and on distant seas. On the island, families crowded around radios to follow the news from places that few of us had known existed until that moment. Soldiers and sailors were everywhere.

An Army camp was built on the island. Soldiers and sailors seemed to be constantly coming and going.

During the war, untold numbers of islanders also crossed the new bridge and went out into the larger world to take jobs at shipyards, military bases, and defense factories. Some commuted every morning to defense jobs as close as the Naval Section Base in Morehead City; others moved as far away as the big shipyards in Wilmington and Newport News.

The Great Depression had worn people down, but suddenly there seemed to be work for any and all.

A hundred things about the war changed the island, but few things more than the War Department building the Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station only 25 miles away in 1942.

Nearly 10,000 men came together at at a remote crossroads on the south side of the Neuse River to build Cherry Point – carpenters, brick masons, ditch diggers, logging crews, railroad builders, and many, many others. Among other things, they laid enough concrete to build what is believed to have been the largest aircraft runway in the world at that time.

Most of those workers were fresh off the farm or right off a fishing boat.

When Cherry Point was finished, people came from all over the country to work there, and most particularly to find jobs at the base’s assembly and repair department, a massive aircraft repair and refitting operation that relied on civilian workers and was usually just called “A&R.”

Those workers included many a Harkers Island fisherman. And when they left their boats and crossed the new bridge, they began a new life in more ways than they possibly could have imagined at the time.

Some of those islanders, my older friends on Harkers Island used to tell me, were saved by that trip to Cherry Point. Others lost.

For the island’s women, the coming of Cherry Point meant, if anything, even more. Because so many men had gone to war, the base employed thousands of women in jobs that would have traditionally fallen to men.

Those jobs ranged from aircraft painters to mechanics, PX and commissary managers to electronics specialists.

My grandmother was one of those women. She lived on a farm in Harlowe, about halfway between Harkers Island and Cherry Point, and she found a job in A&R’s machine shop during the war.

With the opening of Cherry Point, a daughter fresh out of school, perhaps still living with her parents, might suddenly be earning more than her fisherman father and all her brothers put together.

Of course, that changed things. Maybe not right away, but over time.

Likewise, with the coming of the bridge and the war, a lad that had never taken to the water — and there were plenty of young men like that even on Harkers Island — suddenly had a chance for a different kind of life.

I guess what I am saying is that photographs tell some stories, but not others.

Our tranquil scene of fishing nets drying in the sunshine also does not really speak to what had been happening out at sea during the war.

By 1944, things had calmed down out in the Atlantic, but only a couple years earlier, in the first months after Pearl Harbor, the war had seemed much closer to Harkers Island that it did to most of the United States.

Many of the island’s young fishermen had gone into the Navy and Coast Guard, and they were serving all over the world. But the U.S. Navy had also recruited the island’s fishermen for war duty closer to home.

As German submarines torpedoed merchant ships out in the Atlantic, one of the islanders patrolled the beaches out at Shackleford Banks, watching in the surf for the corpses.

Others, when they heard the explosions offshore, had the duty of taking their boats far out into the Atlantic to search for survivors and the dead.

Out in those seas, 15 and 20 miles off Cape Lookout, they often found themselves in a hellish seascape of charred hulls, burning oil slicks and scenes of which few of them would ever speak.

Special thanks as always to my friends at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

Jacksonville’s Red, White, & Salute, an evening dedicated to celebrating and honoring the city’s military community, is set for 5-9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, at the Jacksonville Commons at 100 Recreation Lane.

Enjoy live music from multiplatinum country band Lanco, with special guest Will Morton Music.

Other activities are planned, including axe throwing with Beary The Hatchet Axe Throwing Co., mechanical bull riding, and a fireworks finale.

The event will also feature food trucks, craft vendors and a beer garden hosted by Salty Turtle Beer Co. of Surf City.

It’s all part of two weeks of celebrating and honoring veterans and will also feature tours of the Lejeune Memorial Gardens and the Veterans Walk of Honor, name submissions for which are being accepted until Oct. 24.

The Onslow Veterans Pow-Wow, which organizers say is the only pow-wow in the country that invites the public, honors veterans and includes multiple tribes, is Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 1-2. Tribal dancers and participants from as far away as Arizona are expected.

At 9:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 7, the Onslow Civic Affairs Committee will host the Freedom Fountain Observance at 895 New Bridge St. The annual observance is held to dedicate the fountain to those who have served and the committee invites representatives from each Onslow municipality to add a few drops of water to the fountain pool.

At 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, the Veterans Day Parade hosted by Rolling Thunder Inc. Chapter NC-5 will begin in front of Coastal Carolina Community College and continue down Western Boulevard to Liberty Drive.

At 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 11, join the Disabled American Veterans for its Veterans Day observance at 300 Sherwood Road.

The Military Basketball Association Tournament, Nov. 9-11, is sponsored by the National Montford Point Marine Association and hosted by the Eastern North Carolina Marine Basketball Men’s Varsity Basketball program at the Jacksonville Commons Recreation Complex, 100 Recreation Lane.

The tournament promotes the military athlete through the classic game of basketball. All benefits will go to an Onslow/Jacksonville Charity.

Also, the city is providing free green lightbulbs at events leading up to the week of Nov. 11 and offering them for pickup at city hall for Operation Green Light. The observance allows the community to show support for veterans by shining a green light from their home or business.

For more information on these events, visit the city’s Veterans Tribute website.

Anne Edwards’ grandmother rarely spoke about the young man wearing a Navy “Crackerjack” uniform in the photograph displayed on a table in the living room of her New Bern home.

As a child, Edwards would hear her mother occasionally refer to him as “uncle.” From what other relatives said, he was a sociable, kind man.

“There’s not a whole lot,” Edwards said. “My mother and grandmother really didn’t talk about it a lot. All I knew was that he died in Pearl Harbor.”

His photo from the table has since gone missing. The Navy does not have an official photo.

His death was untimely, violent — his remains could not be identified and returned to his family for burial. The pain of it all was likely too much for them to convey in conversation, Edwards assumes.

Last week, Edwards attended her great-uncle’s burial with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The Oct. 8 ceremony was held more than 80 years after he was killed in the attack that thrust the United States into World War II.

Navy Fireman 1^st Class Edward Bowden was aboard the USS California on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii.

Early in the raid, two Japanese aerial torpedoes slammed the ship’s forward and aft, ripping a 40-foot hole in her hull. She would later be hit by a bomb that further opened her insides to flooding.

The attacks claimed the lives of 103 of her crew, including Bowden, a 29-year-old New Bern native. Bowden bore a striking resemblance to his sister who had raised him from the time he was roughly 10 or 11 after their parents died.

That would be about as much as Edwards would know about her late great-uncle, who died about three years before she came into the world, until a letter from the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency arrived at her Onslow County home more than six years ago.

Edwards called the agency, which works to identify the remains of unknown prisoners of war and those missing in action. She wanted to make sure the letter, one that requested a sample of her DNA, wasn’t some kind of a hoax.

It wasn’t.

This past April, Edwards got the call that Bowden’s remains, long since buried as an unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, were officially identified as those of her great-uncle.

She now has a document some two inches thick that contains details about the young man in the black-and-white photograph that was a staple in her grandmother’s house.

Bowden was 28 when he enlisted in the Navy on Aug. 28, 1940, in Raleigh. He reported to the USS California by November of that year.

His sister, who was 18 and married when he moved in with the young couple, signed an affidavit as his guardian, according to the paperwork provided by the casualty office.

Records do not reveal where in the ship Bowden was when it was hit and eventually sank to the bottom of the harbor three days after the attack.

Navy personnel recovered the remains of the ship’s crew between December 1941 to April 1942.

“The problem with identification came because their remains were comingled and so they didn’t really know who they were,” Edwards said.

In all, there would be 20 unresolved casualties from the USS California and 25 associated unknowns buried at the National Cemetery of the Pacific.

Remains of servicemembers yet to be identified in the cemetery were all exhumed by March 2018. As of August, 10 had been identified as being from the USS California.

Edwards was given the discretion to decide where her great-uncle’s remains should be buried.

“Now he can always be found,” she said. “That’s the reason I chose Arlington. I want any family that might be out there related to him to be able to trace him and find out about him.”

Bowden’s military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, and World War II Victor Medal.

Edwards was joined by more than a dozen relatives for the Oct. 8 burial. Nieces, nephews, their children, cousins and their spouses traveled from New Bern, Greenville and Maryland to the exceptionally manicured grounds of the cemetery marked by rows and rows of glistening white crosses.

“It was unbelievable,” she said. “Everything was perfect. I was very, very pleased that the young people from the family came. I was very pleased that they felt like they should honor him. I felt a sense of closure for him. He’s not just a name anymore.”

Fort Fisher State Historic Site has scheduled a daylong living history event for Saturday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of World War II ending.

The program begins at 9 a.m. Saturday with a military vehicle convoy that will travel from Fort Fisher to Kure Beach and back. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., there will be living history displays with military and civilian reenactors on the green between the visitor center and earthworks, a period field kitchen, and numerous historic military vehicles.

A full event schedule is available on Fort Fisher State Historic Site’s website and social media. Parking is available at the visitor center.

Situated near the Cape Fear River, the site was a Confederate fort that defended the Wilmington port during the American Civil War. During World War II, antiaircraft artillery soldiers trained at the site on various weaponry starting in October 1941 to prepare for deployment. Between the post’s opening and its closing in 1944, more than 40 battalions trained at Fort Fisher, according to North Carolina Historic Sites, under the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Petty Officer 1st Class Kyle Jefferson, a native of Jacksonville, says his proudest accomplishment in the Navy is graduating from the P-8A Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course.

“The goal of the course is to train aircrew to become experts in using the P-8A’s weapons systems and sensors and to lead complex military operations involving the aircraft,” Jefferson said in a recent hometown news story published by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Heidi Cheek with the Navy Office of Community Outreach.

Jefferson graduated from White Oak High School in 2019, joined the Navy six years ago and serves as a naval aircrewman (operator) assigned to Patrol Squadron (VP) 26.

“Growing up in a military town taught me a respect for service, discipline and community,” Jefferson said. “That environment instilled in me a sense of responsibility and pride, values that are essential in the Navy. Understanding the lifestyle and mindset of military life helped make the transition smoother for me.”

The squadron flies and maintains the Navy’s P-8A Poseidon multimission maritime aircraft. The aircraft provides long-range maritime patrol capability, and according to the report, “the P-8A has transformed how the Navy’s maritime patrol and reconnaissance force will train, operate and deploy, according to Navy officials. P-8A aircraft deploy around the globe to monitor the world’s oceans wherever they are needed.”

Jefferson said that both his grandfather’s and his father’s military service inspired his decision to join the military. “My grandfather served in the Army in Vietnam, and my father served 12 years in the Marine Corps, and it seemed like a great idea to continue the legacy of military service.”

The Navy is celebrating its 250th birthday this year, and Navy officials are promoting its defense of freedom and protection of a maritime nation. Navy officials said that with 90% of global commerce traveling by sea and internet access relying on undersea fiberoptic cables, the nation’s prosperity is linked to recruiting and retaining talented people from across the country.

“The hard work and dedication of our sailors have been the driving force behind our squadron’s success, enabling us to remain mission-effective and ready at all times,” said VP-26 commanding officer, Cmdr. Taylor Barros in the report. “Their relentless commitment has shaped a forward-leaning team that consistently meets challenges head-on and excels in every operational environment.”

Jefferson said that he was grateful to others for supporting him in his Navy career.

“I would like to thank my wife, Salah, for supporting me through multiple deployments, missed birthdays and holidays,” Jefferson said. “Having a loving wife to come back to makes it a little bit easier.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Montford Point Marines are to be honored Friday with a replica of the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor awarded by the U.S. Congress.

The ceremony is open to the public and part of the National Montford Point Marine Association’s annual Montford Point Marines Day Ceremony set for 8 a.m. Friday in Lejeune Memorial Gardens, Montford Landing Road.

The ceremony honors and remembers the first African Americans who enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II and trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, the present site of Camp Johnson.

Many of the Montford Point Marines have yet to be identified and the national effort continues to recognize these individuals, the challenges they endured, and the sacrifices they made on the battlefield, during 1942-1949.

Jacksonville Mayor Sammy Phillips is to provide welcoming remarks.

National Montford Point Marine Association Inc. Past President and retired U.S. Marine Chief Warrant Officer 5 Dr. James Averhart Jr. will provide the keynote address.

Col. Gregory Pace, Deputy Commander, Marine Corps Installations East, retired Master Gunnery and National Montford Point Marine Association Inc. President Sgt. Ronald C. Johnson are also expected to speak.

Because of construction at Lejeune Memorial Gardens, parking is limited. Parking will be available at the Coastal Carolina Veterans Cemetery and overflow parking will be available at the New River Shopping Center on Hargett Street.

Shuttle service will be provided from New River Shopping Center by Jacksonville Transit.

The ceremony will be broadcast on G10TV, g10tv.org, Cablecast, and made available on the city’s YouTube Channel.

For additional information about the Montford Point Marines and all annual convention activities, visit MontfordPointMarines.org.

This story has been updated.

WILMINGTON – Beams of sunlight broke through dark gray storm clouds suspended in the sky above this historic city on a recent August morning.

The local forecast was calling for rain, the kind of weather that drives tourists from area beaches to explore other experiences the area has to offer. The kind of weather that makes for a busy day at the Battleship North Carolina, the iconic floating World War II memorial moored on the Cape Fear River across from downtown Wilmington.

“This parking lot will be full in another hour,” said Terry DeMeo, the battleship’s director of development.

A year ago, DeMeo might not have made that prediction with as much certainty.

Back then, floodwaters overspilling from the Cape Fear River might have swallowed dozens of parking spaces in the western portion of the parking lot and forced visitors to make a decision: wade through water to get to the museum’s visitor center or head for higher ground.

That’s not much of a worry these days.

A wetland has been built in place of the chronically flooded section of parking lot to help absorb high-tide driven water. A tidal creek now meanders through this area of the property to direct water from the wetland back to the Cape Fear River.

A 500-foot-long and 50-foot-wide bioretention area extends through a paved, raised parking lot that has, since its completion Memorial Day weekend, gone untouched by floodwaters.

A bioswale runs the length of the parking lot next to Battleship Road. Living shorelines blend in with the rest of the natural, wild landscape around the ship’s mooring.

These features are all part of the battleship’s “Living with Water” project, one that accommodates the water rather than try and fight it back.

Construction on the project, some seven years in the making, is mostly complete.

Land next to the battleship has become a well-known and well-documented case in point on the impacts of sea level rise.

Since the memorial opened to the public in 1961, flood events on the property have climbed on a near-steady incline. Over the past six decades, a more than 7,000% increase in tidal flooding frequency has been documented at the site.

Flood events spurred by the rising sea created a sense of urgency for the museum’s leaders. The memorial does not receive regular government funding.

Persistent flooding of the property threatened one of the primary sources of the battleship’s funding – admission fees and gift shop sales.

“We actually lost parking, but that’s how committed we are to this project,” DeMeo said as she looked across the parking lot.

The lot sits at an elevation 6 feet above the old gravel one it replaced earlier this year.

The parking lot slopes to a bioretention area that looks as much like a pleasing water feature as it does a functional holding area for stormwater that allows water to percolate down into the soil.

A total of 450 spaces were at the memorial before the project was built. Today, there are 150 fewer parking spaces on the property.

Of those parking spaces, 100 were unusable due to flooding of the western portion of the old parking lot, DeMeo said. Plans are in the works to finish an overflow lot that may add roughly another 55 spaces.

“So, discounting the unusable old spaces, we expect to come out about even,” DeMeo said later in an email.

The loss of spaces has been a small price to pay for the multimillion-dollar project, one funded through federal and state grants, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, as well as the USS North Carolina Battleship Commission, Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership, and numerous individual donors.

Within days of the wetland and tidal creek’s completion, birds moved in on the area, DeMeo said.

“That’s been pretty amazing to see the avian community step in right away, which means fish were in there,” she said. “That’s also when we saw the diminution of walking through knee-high flooding.”

The land, she explained, has been able to recreate itself.

The site now hosts researchers from NOAA as well as the University of North Carolina Wilmington, who are monitoring everything from the physical and vegetative parameters of the area to water quality.

The museum’s leaders are now in the early stages of exploring the creation of a living lab partnership with the university and NOAA.

A living lab is a natural fit, “and it’s a way to keep an eye on the project itself,” DeMeo said.

“This is a long-term project,” she said. “We don’t know where it’s ending. We consider ourselves a model for how this can be done and how it can’t be done. We really see ourselves as an opportunity to use as a case study. We had the opportunity and we had the need. That’s why we feel so strongly about serving as a model.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guest Commentary

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

Toxic exposure is a common occurrence in the military, affecting thousands of veterans, many years after service. Thus, providing compensation and free healthcare is a federal obligation to those who have served their country. Nevertheless, up to 2022, only a few diseases were presumed to be connected with military operations.

For most veterans, receiving compensation meant undergoing an extensive bureaucratic process to demonstrate exposure and prove causality in the development of their condition. With the implementation of the PACT Act, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) recognized more than 20 diseases as presumably caused by toxic exposure during service. However, while this list is constantly expanding, the list of toxic agents for which a presumption of causality exists under the PACT Act remained the same. This leads to paradoxical situations, where some veterans receive compensation while others still need to prove causality, albeit these people suffer from the same conditions.

VOCs’ toxicity and military exposure

Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs, are among the toxic agents that are only partially recognized by the PACT Act. These chemicals are common in industrial solvents, degreasers, and cleaners, as well as jet fuel, adhesives, and certain paints and coatings. Given their properties, VOCs such as trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) were extensively used by the U.S. military for decades in equipment maintenance, aircraft cleaning, and parts degreasing.

Although very efficient in these operations, VOCs quickly turn from liquids or solids into vapor, leading to a high probability of being inhaled by personnel operating with these substances. TCE and PCE are classified as chlorinated solvents, widely used in degreasing and cleaning metal parts. These substances present significant risks not only for military staff using them, but also for their families and local communities due to improper storage and leakage in and around military sites.

There is a strong body of literature built from epidemiological studies and research on human and animal models demonstrating that TCE has carcinogenic effects in various tissues, including kidneys, lungs, liver, testicles, and stomach. These effects are observed either as a result of ingestion or inhalation. Noncarcinogenic effects have also been reported for TCE, with serious effects in neural and cardiac tissue. Similar effects are observed in PCE exposure, indicating a strong potential for carcinogenic effects. Notably, PCE’s impact on neural tissue demonstrates stronger neurotoxicity, especially in children, where exposure is associated with reduced cognitive capacity.

To date, the Department of Defense (DoD) recognizes contamination with VOCs, for which compensation is provided, only in relation to contamination from Agent Orange, a pesticide used in Vietnam, burn pits, and Camp Lejeune. Although various other military bases are recognized to have VOCs pollution, affecting both veterans and their families, these areas are not considered part of presumptive toxic contact. Pressure from the public and extensive investigations carried out by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forced the DoD to recognize Camp Lejeune as a site of exposure to dangerous VOCs, including TCE and PCE. Similar pressure may thus be necessary to have all sites recognized by expanding the PACT Act list of toxic agents impacting veterans for years on end.

Exposure in North Carolina veterans

More than 620.000 veterans live in North Carolina and many of them have been directly impacted by VOCs exposure while working for the military. Camp Lejeune is now a well-known documented site where veterans and their families suffered long-term health effects due to prolonged exposure to toxic chemicals in the water supply. At the time when contamination was documented here, increased media attention and pressure from the civic society led to the creation of a compensation fund for those affected. Today, exposure at Camp Lejeune is valid for automatic compensation under the PACT Act.

While support is offered for those affected at this site, many other locations in North Carolina are known to be contaminated. For example, the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point is currently under monitoring by the EPA, while PFAS levels here measured in 2024 exceed EPA’s new recommended limits of 4 parts per trillion in drinking water more than three times. Despite clear evidence of environmental risk, sites such as these remain excluded from presumptive coverage and lack VOCs monitoring and impact assessments. 

VA pressures, funding, procedural inconsistencies

Since 2022, the VA has processed over 1.7 million claims and granted more than 6.8 billion in compensation to veterans and their families. The costs of this program are therefore substantial. Any new agent introduced on the toxic list will likely increase these costs. Yet for any agent dismissed, thousands of veterans’ claims are denied, even following long battles to demonstrate causality. This is far from a just representation of how the VA’s mission aligns with supporting and protecting former military personnel.

Recognizing the full scope of toxic exposures, including compounds such as TCE and PCE, is essential to ensuring equitable access to benefits for all veterans and removing inconsistencies from this system. With the EPA’s recent ban on TCE and PCE, the continued lack of recognition by the DoD may become increasingly difficult to justify. As scientific evidence continues to demonstrate the health risks associated with VOCs, expanding the list of recognized agents would represent a necessary and evidence-based step toward improving the integrity and fairness of the veterans’ compensation system.

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

Airman Leonardo Torrescuret, a 2024 West Carteret High graduate, joined the U.S. Navy less than a year ago and now serves as a student rescue swimmer at the Aviation Rescue Swimmer School on Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.

The Aviation Rescue Swimmer School, or ARSS, which teaches students lifesaving techniques, how to conduct a helicopter rescue, and CPR qualification, is “where the next generation of Aviation Rescue Swimmers (AIRRs) are taught to execute life-or-death rescues in the most extreme conditions imaginable,” according to the Navy.

“I’m one of the few that made it to the aircrew school to be a rescue swimmer,” Torrescuret said. “My main focus is getting through ‘A’ school and then going to the fleet.”

Torrescuret, Morehead City native, said he joined the Navy because he wanted to start a career and to travel. “I come from a military family and wanted to continue that tradition.”

He said he learned lessons in high school that he has been applying to his time in the Navy.

“My wrestling coach would always push us to be better,” Torrescuret said. “I find myself remembering that lesson every day in the Navy.”

Torrescuret said his military service gives him a career that he can be proud of, “I wanted to save others and fight for others so they would be able to come back home to their families.”

He said he will probably reenlist, and then possibly make a lateral move to the Coast Guard.

Torrescuret extended his gratitude to his parents, who he said call him every day and to his teacher, Navy Chief Brisco. “When he first heard that I wanted to join the Navy, he mentored me and gave me a lot of advice on military life.”

The Kayak for the Warriors annual paddle challenge is set this year for Saturday, June 7, on the Bogue Banks.

Kayak for the Warriors is a group based in Pine Knoll Shores that raises funds for Hope For The Warriors, a national nonprofit organization founded in 2006 aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Onslow County.

“All funds go to ensure that the sacrifices of wounded and fallen warriors and their families are never forgotten nor their needs unmet, particularly with regard to the short and long-term care of the severely injured,” event organizers said.

The 3.2-mile paddle through the Pine Knoll Shores canals begins at 10 a.m. Fee is $50 for a single kayak/paddle board and $100 for a tandem kayak. Fee comes with a shirt and lunch for each paddler.

The awards ceremony and barbecue will follow from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Garner Park. For those not racing in the event, the cost to participate in the lunch is $10 per person or $15 per family.  Kayak shirts will be available for sale.

“Join us for the annual Kayak Challenge, a thrilling event where participants race through scenic waters to raise funds for veterans. Enjoy a day filled with excitement, camaraderie, and the spirit of giving back. All proceeds go directly to Hope for the Warriors, supporting veterans and their families,” organizers said.

Kicking off the weekend is a reception with silent and live auctions set for 4 to 7 p.m. Thursday, June 5, at the Crystal Coast Country Club in Pine Knoll Shores. Tickets are $25 each. Registration to attend closes Monday.

There will be hors d’oeuvres, music, silent and live auctions. Online bidding for silent auction items opened Thursday.  Bidders do not need to be present to win.

The annual Warrior Golf Tournament scheduled for Friday has sold out.

Officials with Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point said Friday that residents near the air station and its outlying airfields can expect multiple military training operations throughout May.

Ground training will be conducted at Marine Outlying Field Atlantic, May 12-16 and will include improvised explosive device simulator that produce sounds mimicking explosives detonations, officials said.

While the operations will go as late as midnight, the repetitions of IED sounds are only planned to occur between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., daily.

Neighbors can also expect an increase in military vehicular and aviation activity in and around the outlying field during these periods.

Special boat operations will be conducted in the waterways in and around MCAS Cherry Point, proper, coupled with surface and direct live-fire training at bombing targets BT-9 and BT-11, Brandt Island and Piney Island, respectively, through May 15.

These operations will also go as late as midnight.

The Explosive Ordnance Disposal units may be conducting explosive ordnance training at the MCAS Cherry Point range at varying times throughout the month. Residents who live on and around the installation can expect to hear the occasional loud explosion.

BUXTON — The federal cleanup of Buxton Beach has been remarkable, if only for the stark improvement in its appearance compared with a few months earlier.

With the surface building debris mostly gone, and petroleum-soaked soil removed, now the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is turning its attention to the long-term well-being of both the site and the community.

“The dune is clean, the oil is gone from the groundwater, and the beach is clean,” said Brian Harris, co-vice president of the Buxton Civic Association in a recent interview with Coastal Review. Still, he said, a lot remains to be done at the Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach where a secret submarine survey base once operated.

The Coast Guard also operated a base at the site from 1982 until 2010.

“All those buildings that were once there, they’re still there — all the foundations,” he said. “So, it’s great that the beach is clean … but as this thing keeps eroding, I don’t want my son to have to deal with this in 10 years.”

Harris said that he is looking forward to participating in upcoming meetings of the Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB. Within months, the structured group of community and agency members is expected to start meeting regularly to discuss environmental restoration at the Buxton Naval Facility.

“You know, we’ve got everybody at the table now,” he said. “And that’s really what the RAB is going for — to keep this thing going forward, and the plan for the future.”

Contractor Baywest, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based environmental services company, completed removal of petroleum-contaminated soil and water before Christmas and did a final walk-through with the National Park Service on Jan. 17, according to Corps of Engineers Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) Program Manager Sara Keisler.

The $4.8 million contract will end in June 2025, after Baywest completes beach plantings.

Keisler said another contractor, Yuma, Arizona-based Nicklaus-Ensafe JV, will begin a comprehensive survey of the site in February or early March that will investigate whether more contaminants remain underground.

“Currently, the initial deliverables, which is our work plan and our safety plan, are in the process of being written and reviewed,” Keisler told Coastal Review. “Those will be reviewed by many entities, including the Corps and then we have an independent technical review that has to be done, which is done by our center of expertise.” After several other reviews, the work will be able to start.

The $177,000 contract is scheduled to end in May 2026, she said, but it can be extended if needed.

In 1991, the former Naval base in Buxton, which was a submarine monitoring station from February 1956 until June 1982, was designated as a Formerly Used Defense Site, leaving the responsibility for its cleanup to the Corps. Starting in 1989, the FUDS team removed tons of petroleum infrastructure at the 50-acre site, as well as polluted soil and water, and continued to monitor groundwater. In the last test in 2024, the contaminant levels were below state standards.

But increased beach erosion, exacerbated by rising sea levels and coastal storms in September 2023, exposed chunks of concrete and oily clumps of sand, creating dangerous debris and a strong diesel odor. As a result, the park service closed three-tenths of a mile of Buxton Beach, and a FUDS team returned to the site.

The teams spent month after month investigating the site, and after the September 2024 reoccurrence of petroleum evidence, they developed a response plan, and hired the contractors.

FUDS teams only have the authority to remove petroleum, they’re not allowed to remove underground structures unless they’re in the way. 

“While the primary purpose of the ongoing response action is to remove petroleum-impacted soil, some of the remnant infrastructures that impede excavation access to the petroleum-impacted soil have been removed, too,” the Corps’ FUDS team in Savannah District said in a press release. But workers ended up removing considerable amounts of material.

“The team began excavations Oct. 2, 2024, and … they have removed 1,442 cubic yards and 24,126 gallons of petroleum-impacted soil and water, as well as approximately 138,400 pounds of concrete, 1,153 feet of pipes and 1,088 feet of metal cables and wires.”

As of Dec. 11 2024, a total of 4,599 cubic yards of petroleum-impacted soil has been removed; 99,526 gallons of water; 278,000 pounds of concrete; 1,153 feet of pipe; and 1,088 feet of metal cables and wires, according to the Buxton Naval Facility page on the Corps’ website.

Although it took nearly a year after the first report in 2023 for the Corps to start aggressive removal of petroleum contamination, no single source has yet been identified, despite numerous early efforts by the agency.

“From our perspective, the source is previously unremoved contaminated soil and groundwater,” Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review. “In other words, at this point, there’s no evidence that there is what you would call a traditional source of bulk product, for example, a tank that’s sitting in the ground that’s just been leaking … Rather, what’s been observed just appears to be soil and groundwater that was contaminated, perhaps decades ago by the Navy.”

Hallac added that the Corps has done some geophysical work, including with ground-penetrating radar and an “excellent” study using a magnetometer looking for anomalies. Between reviews of that work, and similar ground studies done by the park service, combined with the comprehensive survey by the contractor, the superintendent said he is confident that any remaining petroleum source will be found.

Even after frustration with the slow start on remediation and disagreements about how to address the problem, Hallac said he is appreciative of the FUDS team’s partnership.

“Yes, we feel that the Corps has made a solid effort to remove the heavily contaminated soil from the beachfront area and mitigate the impact of those soils or ground waters washing into the Atlantic Ocean,” he said.

Hallac said he’s pleased that most of the huge chunks of concrete and other surface debris on the beach are now gone. His main focus, he said, was “to stop the bleeding” with the petroleum problem.  But he’s not giving up on getting the remaining buried infrastructure removed. 

“We’re moving forward in that level of priority order,” he said. “We are still in conversations with the Corps, the Navy and the Coast Guard about what to do about everything underground.”

Corps officials are also encouraged that, at least for now, the issue with the intermittent petroleum contamination at Buxton Beach seems to have been alleviated.

“We actually didn’t have any odors after this contractor was on the site,” said Keisler, with FUDS, “and there hasn’t been any since.”

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust announced Wednesday that an additional 593 acres along the Newport River have been purchased from Weyerhaeuser Co. and transferred to North Carolina Coastal Federation for long-term management and restoration.

The Coastal Land Trust purchased the acreage in November, a tract that features estuarine marsh, managed loblolly pine forest, and bottomland hardwoods along more than 4 miles of the river and its tributaries.

The property lies within the Newport River and Black Creek Natural Heritage Area, which the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program has deemed of “very high ecological significance.”

Earlier this year: Groups conserve old Weyerhaeuser tract on Newport River

The latest acquisition is adjacent to the Coastal Federation’s 215-acre McCotter Preserve, upstream from the Coastal Land Trust’s 530-acre Newport River Marsh Preserve and close to the Croatan National Forest. It’s the second phase of a conservation partnership among the Coastal Land Trust, the Coastal Federation and the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point to protect and restore land along the Newport River.

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

The first phase, completed in 2023, protected 1,436 acres just downstream from this newest conservation project, officials said.

“This conservation success and our partnership with the Coastal Federation have been critical steps forward in connecting existing conservation lands and continuing our efforts to restore significant natural habitats,” Coastal Land Trust Executive Director Harrison Marks said.

The revised 2021-25 N.C. Oyster Restoration and Protection Plan, a collaborative restoration blueprint, ranks the Newport River as one of the most economically valuable and environmentally endangered oyster-growing estuaries in the state. Stormwater runoff is recognized as the largest source of coastal water quality impairment. The Coastal Federation plans to restore the natural hydrology and vegetation on portions of each protected property.

“Our close partnership with the Coastal Land Trust has provided important new opportunities for coastal restoration and conservation in North Carolina,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said. “By protecting and restoring these ecologically rich lands along the Newport River, we’re not just preserving habitat, we’re also improving the downstream water quality and fisheries of the Newport River for generations to come.”

The Coastal Land Trust cited retired N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission wildlife biologist David Allen, who said the estuarine marshes along the Newport River near the property likely hosts important habitat for many species of greatest conservation need as identified in the 2015 North Carolina Wildlife Action Plan, including diamondback terrapin, little blue heron, glossy ibis, snowy egret, tricolored heron, and American oystercatcher.

In addition, the combined 2,029 acres are militarily strategic, including transit route between U.S. Marine Corps New River Air Station and the Piney Island Bombing Target, or BT-11, and helicopter turf routes in Carteret County and a flight-holding pattern for Cherry Point.

“Conservation partnerships and projects like this one are important for both coastal resiliency and military training,” said Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Government and External Relations Carmen Lombardo of Marine Corps Installations East-Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. “We were pleased to provide Department of Defense funds toward both projects.”

Funding for the acquisition came from North Carolina Land and Water Fund, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service North American Wetlands Conservation Act Grant Program, Department of Defense Readiness and Environmental Integration Program, and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities Enviva Forest Conservation Fund.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related: Work gets underway to pinpoint Buxton pollution source

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The presentation will be followed by an open house session.

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

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

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

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

The Department of the Navy and the Coast Guard have submitted a draft environmental impact study to carry on longstanding offshore training activities along the East Coast, the Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Caribbean Sea.

A 60-day public comment period on the draft supplemental environmental impact statement/overseas environmental impact statement, filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, began Friday.

Military officials prepared the draft statement to update and replace federal regulatory permits and authorizations set to expire November 2025 for offshore training.

The draft supplemental environmental impact statement “evaluates the reasonably foreseeable effects on the human environment of Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard training and testing activities conducted within the Atlantic Fleet Training and Testing (AFTT) Study Area.”

The study area includes the western Atlantic Ocean along the East Coast of North America, the Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Caribbean Sea. The National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requires federal agencies to consider potential environmental effects of their proposed activities.

The Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard plan to conduct training, research, development, testing, and evaluation activities that include the use of active sonar and explosives within existing range complexes, testing ranges and other areas offshore. Those activities will also be conducted at Navy pierside locations and port transit channels, near civilian ports, and in bays, harbors and inland waterways, such as the lower Chesapeake Bay.

Officials said the training activities “are generally consistent with those analyzed in the AFTT EIS/OEIS completed in 2018 and are representative of training and testing that has been conducted in the AFTT Study Area for decades.”

Since the 2018 impact statement was completed, “the best available science has been updated, the regulatory environment has changed, the Study Area has changed, and what is known about our impacts has been refined,” officials said. The updated information has been incorporated into the new draft analysis.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service is a cooperating agency for the supplemental impact statement.

A NEPA website includes more about the project, and the public can view the draft supplemental statement and submit comments there. The documents are also available for review at the Onslow County Library, 58 E. Doris Ave., Jacksonville.

In-person open house public meetings are scheduled but none in North Carolina. However, virtual public meetings via Zoom are also scheduled for 6-7 p.m. Oct. 22 and 2-3 p.m. Oct. 24. There, people can learn about the project and ask questions.

Public comments may be submitted electronically via a form at this website.

Mail written comments to: Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command Atlantic, Attention: Code EV22SG (AFTT EIS Project Managers), 6506 Hampton Blvd., Norfolk, VA 23508-1278.

All comments must be postmarked or received electronically by 11:59 p.m. Nov. 21 for consideration in the final supplemental impact statement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hallac was unavailable to be interviewed for this report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The debris cleanup will be for another day.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Rear Adm. John “Jay” Vann assumed the duties and responsibilities of the 5th Coast Guard District from Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath Wednesday at Coast Guard Base Portsmouth.

Vice Adm. Nathan Moore, commander of Coast Guard Atlantic Area, presided over the ceremony, the Coast Guard announced.

Vann, as 5th District commander, will serve as the operational commander for all Coast Guard missions from the North Carolina-South Carolina border to New Jersey, encompassing nearly 5,600 Coast Guard active duty, Reserve, and civilian personnel and spanning 1.4 million square miles of oceans, bays, and rivers.

The 5th District also includes several mid-Atlantic ports, the largest U.S. Naval base in the world, and the Capital region.

Prior to assuming command of the 5th District, Vann most recently served as the commander of Coast Guard Cyber Command, in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for conducting cyberspace operations in support of Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense mission objectives.

“We will continue to put people first, develop care for, and respect our team and families to ensure they’re ready,” said Vann. “We’ll focus on preparation by leveraging your competence and optimizing our resources to ensure mission readiness, then manage risk and exercise leadership to underwrite mission success.”

Gilreath served as the 5th District commander since 2022 and oversaw Coast Guard response operations throughout the region, including response efforts to oil spills, search and rescue cases and numerous critical marine transportation issues. He will go on to assume the role of Coast Guard Assistant Commandant for Capabilities which he will be responsible for identifying and providing capabilities, competencies, and capacity along with service-wide policy for the staffing, training, equipping, and employing Coast Guard forces to meet mission requirements.

“I couldn’t be more proud of you all and the work you have all done here in the Fifth District,” said Gilreath. “The Fifth District is the engine that propels the Coast Guard. 

A Carteret County commissioner has been cited for a debris burn that scorched more than 500 acres in the Down East community of Atlantic.

The North Carolina Forest Service on Tuesday cited Commissioner Christopher James Chadwick, 53, of Stacy, for violating North Carolina General Statute 14-140.1. The infraction carries a fine of not more than $50.

According to the statute, any person, firm, corporation or other legal entity who burns any brush, grass or other material that puts at risk any property without “keeping and maintaining a careful watchman in charge of the burning,” shall be guilty of an infraction.

“Fire escaping from the brush, grass, or other material while burning shall be prima facie evidence of violation of this provision,” according to the statute.

Chadwick told Coastal Review Friday that he had obtained a permit about three weeks ago for burning trees and debris from a tornado that struck Atlantic earlier this year. The debris was contained within Chadwick’s roughly 50 acres adjacent to Marine Corps Outlying Field Atlantic and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service land.

“I was watching it myself, and I had a helper watch too, and, you know, we haven’t done any burning for three weeks,” Chadwick said. “We had a couple of hot spots that would pop up here and there, and we’d take the excavator and put them out with sand on top of them, and then there was no smoke, nowhere for probably a week and a half, two weeks, until Sunday when the fire started.”

He said once the flames reached the neighboring wooded areas, “it just went like gasoline.”

Chadwick said the area had not seen a prescribed burn in about 15 years. “This reinforces the importance of managing the forest,” he said.

The commissioner praised the firefighters, Forest Service and Marine Corps for their role in responding to the fire. Chadwick said he was thankful nobody was hurt and that the fire wasn’t worse.

“I’m sorry the incident happened. We thought we were doing all the right things with the permit and the watchmen, and certainly it’s been so dry and blowing hard past two or three weeks, we haven’t done any burning,” Chadwick said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Glenn Marks, chief of reimbursable programs and project management at the Corps’ Savannah District, said about 70 to 80 feet of pipe was removed as part of the $525,000 project.

When asked by an attendee about who “the onus falls on” to remove from the beach the chunks of foundation and other remains of the Navy base, Sturgeon said that the FUDS regulation does not provide the authority or funding.

“If there is not environmental hazards out there, how are we as a collective group going to take care of this?” he responded. “The U.S. Corps of Engineers has never received direct funding for that. The (Corps) would have a hand in that if funding was provided by the landowners.”

According to the National Park Service, its permit issued to the Navy in 1956 required that all structures, including foundations, be removed and that the 50-acre site would be cleaned up when the Navy ceased operations in 1982. In addition, its 1991 agreement with the Coast Guard, the agency said, obligated the Coast Guard to remove structures, restore the landscape, conduct a hazardous materials survey and take responsibility for any necessary mitigation and/or cleanup. Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras was operating in Buxton from 1984 through 2010, when the base relocated to Fort Macon.

But as far as current cleanup obligations and responsibilities, details about who, what and when have become a bureaucratic muddle. There are also the complications created by the remove of decades and quickly changing conditions from rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion.  

The Coast Guard and the Corps, however, have worked closely with Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials to resolve the issues and determine appropriate funding and authorization options, said Superintendent David Hallac.

“We are looking forward to a complete remediation of this site,” he told the community members. “I am proud we have good partners.”

Even though all three parties are part of the federal government, each bumps up against the other’s rigid regulatory strictures, tight budgets and staff shortages, and legal fuzziness. The old Navy base, for instance, is no longer part of the Navy, but its cleanup is still managed under the Department of Defense, and it is now the Corps’ FUDS baby.

The Coast Guard, however, while military-adjacent, is part of the Department of Homeland Security, not the Defense Department. And the National Park Service is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, a huge federal agency with management concerns centered on conservation of natural resources and recreational areas, such as Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

To complicate matters further, Hallac said some Coast Guard structures are actually on top of Navy building foundations.

“I think the most important thing is we’re not going to stop working till we get all this debris off the beach,” he said. “The take-home message is there’s a lot of debris under the sand and it all has to be removed.”

Related: Park Service urges public to avoid debris on Rodanthe beach

The Coast Guard had completed an environmental site assessment in 2008 and a soil assessment for the onsite wastewater facility in 2010, according to the National Park Service.

Although polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, metals, pesticides and other contaminants above acceptable Environmental Protection Agency standards were found in the soil, remediation through the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation, and Liabilities Act, or CERCLA, process was not done at the two affected drain fields, according to the Park Service said.

In 2021, Hallac reached out to the Coast Guard, which restarted the survey work, taking numerous water and soil samples across 32 acres at the site, said Joseph Lambert, an environmental engineer with the Coast Guard’s Cleveland Engineering Unit, during a brief interview after the meeting. A report on the findings is currently being reviewed and is expected to be finalized this summer.

Coast Guard Sector North Carolina Capt. Timothy List, who also participated in Tuesday’s information session, said that the scope of contamination is not yet clearly defined, but that the Coast Guard intends to do its part, while also working with its partners, to clean up the site.

“We’re here to continue for the long haul,” he told attendees.

It remains unclear why the cleanup and removal work required under the Navy and Coast Guard permits was not completed.

Marks said that his understanding is that the Navy permit is expired, although he didn’t explain what effect that would have on the conditions that had been stipulated.

“I cannot speak for what the Navy signed up for or did not sign up for,” he said.

Julie Youngman, senior attorney with Southern Environmental Law Center, noted during the public comment portion of the meeting that any similar pollution or debris sullying a more prominent national park such as Yellowstone “wouldn’t be there a week.”

Referring to a provision in the Department of Defense manual, “Defense Environmental Restoration Program (DERP) Management,” Youngman asked the Corps’ representatives whether they had asked their bosses about trying to qualify the unique Cape Hatteras situation for special consideration.

According to the “Petition for Eligibility” on page 18 of the manual, “… in exceptional cases, a DoD Component may petition the … Environmental Management Directorate … for clarification or approval to consider a specific activity as an eligible environmental restoration activity.”

Responded Marks: “I’ll commit to looking into it and having me and the lawyers look into it and see if that holds water.”

In an April 30 letter from Kyle Lewis, an environmental attorney for the Corps’ Savannah District, answering an inquiry from Youngman and North Carolina Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis said that the Corps’ authority to remove the “remnant” and unsafe structures is limited to what existed at the time the Navy left the site. 

“The infrastructure that is currently being exposed by erosion was sound when transferred out of DoD control in 1982; therefore such structures are not eligible to be addressed under the FUDS Program,” Lewis wrote.

The state Department of Environmental Quality and Dare County Department of Health and Human Services also have been working with the agency partners to urge action on the cleanup and to keep the public informed.

Meanwhile, as residents reminded the officials, whether because of regulatory or funding constraints, the public beach in their community — a favorite spot to surf and swim and stroll at Cape Hatteras National Seashore — is still littered with ugly and dangerous chunks of concrete and rebar and stinks of diesel, and it’s all because of the infrastructure and contaminants that the Navy and the Coast Guard left behind.

One man named Michael who owns a vacation house near the closed beach lamented that his rental income is now “nonexistent.”

“So we can’t rent the house, we can’t sell the house, we can’t live in the house,” he said.

Trip Forman, co-founder of REAL Watersports in Waves on Hatteras Island, said during the public comment period that the negative message about the situation has become a blight on tourism.

“Something needs to be done to resolve this,” Forman said “There’s a lot of cancellations. There’s a lot of negative press. It’s spinning out of control.”

The Corps will establish a restoration advisory board, a public forum for sharing information with the community, for the Buxton site within a year, Marks, with the Corps, said. 

Dare County officials also promised to stay involved and keep the public informed about the situation.

“We’re committed to see this through,” said Dare County Board of Commissioners Chair Bob Woodard.

BUXTON — The Army Corps of Engineers announced Monday that it is taking action related to intermittent evidence of petroleum odors and sheen at a Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach.

In a press release from the Savanah District Formerly Used Defense Site, or FUDS, program, the Corps said it will remove a pipe and sample surrounding soil to determine if it is the potential source of the petroleum.

After months of on-and-off reports from the public of strong diesel fuel odors and sheen present on the beach and in the ocean, the National Park Service told the FUDS office that a suspect pipe was observed on an eroded section of beach, the release said.

The Corps is working in partnership with the park service as part of an ongoing cleanup and investigation of pollutants related to former bases at the site that had been used by the U.S. Navy and the Coast Guard.

A contract to remove the pipe and test the soil is expected to be awarded by September, with work likely beginning by late 2024 or early 2025, the FUDS release said.

About a third of a mile of Buxton Beach has been closed for months because of the petroleum contamination concern and increasing amounts of debris exposed after a series of storms. Huge slabs of concrete, wires and other infrastructure remains now litter the national seashore where the old Navy base had once stood.

The FUDS program does not provide the authority or the funding under the Department of Defense law covering the debris removal, the Corps said. The program has previously removed petroleum pollutants from the former Navy site.

“All FUDS Program remediation efforts are authorized by Congress and are restricted to cleaning up properties formerly owned by, leased to, or otherwise possessed by the United States and transferred outside DoD control prior to Oct. 17, 1986,” according to the release.

“The FUDS Program may only address restoration activities which are determined to be the result of DoD activities,” the statement said. “However, the remnant infrastructures, exposed on the beach after storm erosion, are not eligible for removal under the FUDS Program, as those structures were not in an unsafe condition at the time the site was transferred out of DoD control.”

As part of the pipe removal contract, the Corps will establish a Restoration Advisory Board, which “serves as a forum for discussion and exchange of information between agencies and affected communities,” the statement said.

Also, a summary report that is currently under review will be posted to the Savannah District website when completed.

“The Army Corps of Engineers is committed to advancing remediation efforts authorized under the FUDS program to protect the health and well-being of communities and the environment,” the release said.

 Questions for the FUDS Program team members can be addressed to cesas-FUDS@usace.army.mil, with ‘Buxton FUDS’ in the subject line. To learn more about the project, visit Buxton FUDS.

Update 9:35 a.m. March 26:

A meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday in Buxton for the public to hear updates on the status of petroleum contamination and hazardous infrastructure remediation at Cape Hatteras National Seashore’s Buxton Beach Access, officials announced Monday evening.

Seashore Superintendent David Hallac will give a presentation during the meeting being held in in the Fessenden center in Buxton, and the National Park Service staff will be available to answer questions.

History about the access is at http://go.nps.gov/buxtonbeach and photos are available at Buxton Beach Access photo album.

Original post 5 p.m. March 25:

Cape Hatteras National Seashore, state and Dare County health officials issued a public health advisory Monday for the Buxton Beach Access because of petroleum-contaminated soils that recently have caused alarm.

Officials said the contaminated soils were likely exposed by beach erosion near the former site of Naval Facility Cape Hatteras and Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras in Buxton, from the near 46285 Old Lighthouse Road to and including the first jetty.

Officials cited cases of varying mild to moderate headache, nausea and skin irritation affecting people who had participated in recreational water activities in the area.

Since Sept. 1, 2023, when the agencies and the Army Corps of Engineers issued a precautionary public health advisory, multiple soil samples have shown the presence of weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and nonpetroleum contamination.

Related: Diesel odor returns to Buxton beach; source still unknown

The beach in this area has remained closed since the issuance of the precautionary public health advisory, and on-site mitigation work has not started, officials said Monday.

Until the petroleum contaminated soils are mitigated and the area is declared safe, environmental and public health officials recommend avoiding swimming, wading or fishing in this area in Buxton until further notice. If skin comes in contact with contaminated sediment or water, thoroughly wash the affected area with soap and water.

In addition to the potential health risks related to petroleum contamination, there are a number of remnants of what is believed to be Navy and Coast Guard infrastructure, officials warned. These structures include concrete bunkers and building foundations that may pose hazards to swimmers, surfers and beachgoers.

Area residents who rely on a private drinking well should have the well water sampled to ensure it does not contain contaminants. If the well is a drinking water well, contact Dare County Department of Health and Human Services at 252-475-5088 to schedule sampling.

Those who notice plumes, sheens or fish kills in this area should call the Environmental Protection Agency National Response Center at 800-424-8802.

BUXTON — Petroleum spilled and partially cleaned up at a long-abandoned U.S. Navy base at Cape Hatteras recently reemerged in clumps of peat soil after a storm. Last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stepped up to take responsibility for the cleanup, even though its source is technically uncertain.

But the diesel smell and oily mudballs, now temporarily reburied, are only one of the wretched souvenirs left behind on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore beach by the Navy and later, the Coast Guard, including chunks of building debris, metal shards from deteriorated jetties and possibly other soil contaminants. 

“Looking at the historical evidence and knowing that the Navy had a release, we’ve decided that we are going to address any petroleum contamination that may still be present,” Carl Dokter, manager of the Corps’ Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, program based in Savannah, told Coastal Review.

The Corps responds to environmental liabilities at sites that were owned, operated or controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense before Oct. 17, 1986, he said. The Navy had operated a submarine surveillance operation in Buxton under a special-use permit from the National Park Service from 1956 to 1982. The Coast Guard acquired the site, near the original location of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, in 1986, operating as Group Cape Hatteras until the base relocated in 2005 to Fort Macon in Carteret County.

According to a 1999 Corps site assessment, the state Department of Natural and Environmental Resources had issued a notice of violation to the Buxton facility in 1997, citing at the time groundwater samples containing chemicals 1,2,3,4 trimethylbenzene and naphthalene.

After discovering that the petroleum storage tanks on the base had apparently leaked, Dokter said, the Corps in the early 2000s removed the tanks and a significant portion of contaminated soil.

The stink after the storm

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac got a call Sept. 1, after Tropical Storm Idalia, from a Hatteras Island resident concerning a strong diesel smell coming from the old Navy base, as well as a sheen in the ocean waters.

When staff arrived at the site, they didn’t see any sheen on the water, but they did note a slight smell of diesel, Hallac told Coastal Review. After Hallac reported the problem, Coast Guard members from Sector North Carolina came to the site and took soil samples that showed contamination from petroleum. The park service then closed that section of beach, which remains closed.

Hallac said the odor had followed strong swells from the offshore storms that caused erosion and uncovered the polluted soil. But about two weeks later, the situation worsened, with surfers in the area reporting headaches and rashes. On Sept. 26, the Dare County Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies issued a public alert to avoid swimming, fishing or wading in the area. Big clumps of oily peat soil, also called mudballs, were scattered over the beach.

“It was obvious that the odors were coming from those soils,” Hallac said. “I mean, it was very strong.” 

The Coast Guard then made another visit and took more samples, finding “weathered light fuel oil, a small amount of lubricating oil, petroleum hydrocarbons, and non-petroleum contamination,” according to the county’s news release.

“Totally coincidentally,” Hallac added, the Army Corps happened to be at the site when the odor was strongest, doing the groundwater remediation it has been conducting here on and off for years. The Corps also took a soil sample, which confirmed petroleum contamination.

Dokter, with the Corps, said that the agency has been addressing residual contamination in groundwater since it removed the tanks years ago. The Savannah district has been working with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to reduce the amount of methylnapthalene to acceptable levels.

“We have a series of injection wells and monitoring wells and we have been injecting a proprietary product … (that) binds with the petroleum and petroleum byproducts for neutralizing, but it doesn’t happen quickly,” he said. The last injection was done about 18 months ago, he added, and the Corps has continued sampling and monitoring on a quarterly basis. After the results are below regulatory levels, the site will be closed.

When the mudballs started washing up, it was clear that the petroleum contamination in the area was broader than previously understood. But Dokter said certainty as to its providence was close to impossible, especially since the oily peat clumps had already been reburied, and the beach has likely eroded 150 feet or more in recent years.

“We briefly considered trying to do what we call fingerprinting to establish, is it older petroleum or is it ’90s or later-type petroleum?” he said. “And there’s a marker that can tell you the difference. The problem is saltwater complicates everything, and the results are likely to be inconclusive if we even managed to get a sample of the (peat) product.”

Coordinated effort to determine corrective actions

The Savannah district announced Oct. 23 its intention to coordinate efforts with NCDEQ to determine corrective actions.

“While tremendous progress in technologies and techniques addressing environmental contamination have been made throughout the years, currently, there isn’t a fail-proof method that will provide a 100 percent certainty all environmental concerns are discovered and can be completely addressed,” the statement said. “The Corps does everything it can to ensure when its work is complete, human health and the environment are protected.”

Meanwhile, according to Hallac, the Coast Guard is in the process of implementing a Phase II environmental assessment of potential contaminants at the site. 

The Coast Guard has not responded to multiple phone calls and emails from Coastal Review seeking information. 

According to an online report, the Coast Guard was scheduled to start a $500,000 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA, investigation at the old U.S. Coast Guard Group Cape Hatteras site around June 15. “The contractor shall provide professional architectural and engineering services to perform continued CERCLA investigation in order to determine the extent of groundwater and soil contamination,” the posting said. “The contractor shall provide recommendations for additional remediation where applicable at the USCG Group Cape Hatteras (decommissioned) in Buxton, NC.”

In a Coastal Review report published July 1, 2013, a Coast Guard environmental engineer said that preliminary testing at the Buxton site detected evidence of chemicals that include benzanthracene, benzopyrene, chlordane, dieldrin, and endrin, as well as traces of heavy metals arsenic, chromium and mercury.

At the time, the Coast Guard was seeking $200,000 for remediation costs. No further information about the proposed cleanup has been provided.

Visible remnants

Far more visible remnants of the military’s former presence at Cape Hatteras’ oceanfront have become an increasingly obnoxious eyesore and hazard to beachgoers and surfers, including sharp shards from three concrete and steel groins the Navy installed in 1970 to stem beach erosion.

Although there had been previous discussion about repairing or removing the structures, which locals call jetties, no agency claimed responsibility, and they were left to further deteriorate after the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was moved from the beach in 1999.

“There’s stuff that’s sticking out of the sand now,” said Carol Busbey, an owner of Natural Art Surf Shop in Buxton.

The “first jetty,” a favorite surf spot at Lighthouse Beach, has fallen apart to the extent that Busbey now has a piece of it standing in her shop’s parking lot.

“We’re actually going to sink it into the ground,” she said. “People have been cut by it. I wish they would do something about it. The surf break isn’t there anyway.”

Busbey blames the jetties’ demise and accompanying changes in the sandbar for ruining surfing at the spot. “It changed it completely,” she said. “It used to be such a great surf break. But the beach’s reputation keeps surfers coming anyway to catch what they can. Unfortunately, sometimes the jetties can be dangerous.

“The third jetty — the north jetty — it’s got horrible spikes sticking up,” she said. “At high tide you can’t see those pieces sticking up.”

In addition to litter on the beach from the oil-soaked peat clumps, which probably originated from the salt marsh, there are also chunks of debris from the old bases being exposed by erosion, much of it since September.

“There is a historic wastewater tank that is essentially on the beach — the foundation of it — that has been exposed,” Hallac said. “The building upon which the listening cables that we believe the Navy used, the foundation of that building, pipes leading into that building, chunks of concrete — and I mean very large chunks of concrete — all of that is now exposed, septic drain field pipes, PVC pipes.

“It’s to the point where it’s not safe,” he said. “There’s too much concrete, rebar, metal pipes along the beach section here that’s it’s really not safe to walk up and down the beach.”

Hallac has been discussing his concerns with both the Coast Guard and the Corps. He said he will likely reach out to the Navy soon. But, he said, the Corps is not optimistic that it could help with the problem.

As it is, the Corps has plenty of concerns with Buxton on its plate. After its risk assessment on the petroleum in the peat is completed, Dokter said the Corps will consult with NCDEQ about how to move forward, since it’s yet to be determined whether it’s even possible to remove a layer of contaminated peat soil.

“We haven’t really established a feasible way to do that,” he said. “Essentially, to remove a subsurface layer involves some level of dewatering. It’s not impossible to dewater a beach, but the costs would be astronomical.

“This is a challenge,” Dokter added. “We’ve included some of our chemists, geologists and environmental engineers, what we call our center of expertise within the Corps, because it’s a little more challenging of a problem than my typical project sites.”

DURHAM — The sparsely furnished entryway would keep secret what’s happening here if a series of aviation-related diagrams hanging on the walls didn’t reveal some small clue.

The back end of what looks like a large model airplane protruding out of a wall really doesn’t give much away.

Something aviation-related, sure.

But, wind energy? Better still, airborne wind energy that could help the U.S. military reduce its dependency on fuel while operating in remote, undeveloped regions of the world, provide power to disaster-stricken areas, or ease high energy costs on islands where households pay three to four times more for electricity than those on the mainland because of oil import costs?

Those are just some of the ways Windlift’s autonomous tethered drones could be used on the ground.

And Windlift isn’t stopping there.

The startup founded by Rob Creighton aims to eventually go offshore, edging into a market with a product he says is cheaper to build, more cost effective to operate in deep waters further from coast lines and less visually intrusive than wind turbines.

Tiny windmills

Windlift Chief Operating Officer Sean Meyer stands in a large room in the company’s headquarters at one end of a sprawling, strip-mall-esque brick building that sits off a quiet, two-lane road lined by more woods than buildings in Durham.

“As we build more of them we get better at it,” Meyer said, gazing at what looks like a large foam toy airplane glider.

The solid black craft is an airborne power generator, or APG, prototype the small staff here have dubbed “Frank” short for Frankenstein.

The APG stands nose up, secured by a series of cables to keep it from making any sudden, unplanned maneuvers during test hovers.

Frank has a custom-designed wing made to give the craft as much lift as possible.

The APG has four small rotors, two each on its wings, which lift the craft off the ground vertically and fly it to above 200 feet.

What makes Windlift’s autonomous tethered drone a first-of-its-kind is how the rotors function once the APG is airborne.

Unlike other airborne wind energy craft where the force of the drone pulling out the cable is converted to electricity on the ground, each rotor in Windlift’s APGs act like tiny windmills, harnessing wind power and sending that electricity down the tether, which is attached to an anchor on the ground or a floating perch in the ocean.

Flight control software ensures the APG continually follows a tidy figure-eight flight path.

Flying them back and forth across the wind generates considerably more power than flying in one spot, a method proven by California-based researcher Miles Loyd, whose Crosswind Kite Power article was published in 1980 in the Journal of Energy.

The evolution of a biologist

It’s safe to say that Creighton’s path to founding an aerospace engineering company had a few more twists and turns.

His love of the outdoors sparked his desire to learn more about ecology and genetics, a curiosity that landed him in the halls of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a major research institution.

After earning a degree in genetics, Creighton stayed at the university as a biologist working on the Human Genome Project, an international scientific endeavor that generated the first sequence of the human genome.

This was the start of his passion for working in the natural world, one climate scientists were already beginning to warn was being affected by a changing climate.

“I got really worried as I started to learn about climate change,” Creighton said. “I thought, ‘This is going to be the major problem of our time.’ Climate change is going to fundamentally change the places that I love.”

For the record, Creighton did not fully commit to Windlift until he read Loyd’s paper.

“I thought, let’s build a company around this,” he said.

Warmer temperatures and a job offer to his former spouse led the then-couple to move south in 2008.

Creighton would later reach out to Meyer – they’ve known each other since eighth grade – and convinced him to leave Napa, California, to take on the role as chief operating officer in 2021. Meyer’s path to airborne wind energy was about as unconventional as Creighton’s. He co-founded a brewery and winery, was a sommelier, wine experience consultant, and estate director.

By fall 2021, Creighton had scaled up from a handful of equity-compensated, full-time employees to 18 full-time, salaried employees. The company seeks to fill several more positions, predominately engineering jobs.

List of possibilities

The government has already taken an interest in what Windlift has to offer and how APGs might be used to enhance military operations.

Windlift has a five-year, $30 million, Phase III Small Business Innovation Research contract with the Naval Research Laboratory, a Washington-based lab where scientists and engineers research and develop cutting-edge technology to advance Navy and Marine Corps operations.

A little more than $11 million of that grant is footing the bill for the company to refine its prototype and showcase its technology to the Department of Defense.

What makes Windlift’s APGs particularly appealing is their versatility.

The APGs are made of carbon fiber, a material that is five times stronger than steel, yet exceptionally lighter, making them easy to transport from ship to shore and across land to remote areas where there is not a power grid connection. Think back to the lead-up to the Iraq war when U.S. ground troops lived for weeks in temporary tent cities in the Kuwaiti desert.

APGs can, in theory, fly for long periods of time, Creighton said. Maintenance would be minimal. The bearings would eventually need replacing.

Operating them will be a snap. The craft can lift off, fly and return to their anchors with the push of a button.

The craft can be customized by size and could be outfitted with certain technology like radio repeaters, an interest of the Coast Guard.

“At this stage we’re just full of possibilities,” Meyer said.

Out to sea

It’s only been about nine months since the company started exploring the possibility of operating offshore, engaging in early conversations with markets overseas where offshore wind energy is years ahead of the U.S.

Large-scale offshore wind energy production is still in its infancy here in America, where there is little to no infrastructure to support building in the wind energy areas that have in recent years been mapped out and leased to energy companies.

Creighton, who spoke as a panelist last month at the Ocean Innovation Conference hosted by the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, believes Windlift can solve some of the challenges of offshore wind operations.

Kilowatt for kilowatt, Windlift’s APGs use 95% less materials than traditional wind turbines, meaning its cheaper to make than wind turbines.

“Even outside of climate change we’re still going to make electricity a lot cheaper,” Creighton said.

Airborne wind generators can more affordably be located further offshore in deeper waters because they can be connected to a floating base as opposed to a wind turbine mounted to a monopole driven in the sea bed.

Plans are in the works to test an APG offshore at Frying Pan Tower off the southern North Carolina coast. When that may be is still up in the air.

The company hopes to reach utility-scale operability within the next several years.

Guest commentary

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

MANTEO — Recently, I was presented with an exciting opportunity to board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Richard Etheridge while it was temporarily docked at the USCG Shipyard in Baltimore and had ventured this far north for the very first time.

It had been over 10 years since I last boarded the cutter when it was commissioned into service in 2012 in Florida, during which time I became the director of outreach and education for the Pea Island Preservation Society Inc. (PIPSI), an organization devoted to sharing the history of the historic all-Black Pea Island United States Life-Saving Service Station (USLSS) led by Keeper Etheridge.

I knew it would be a perfect opportunity to share information about our Freedmen, Surfmen, Heroes education initiative, a program aimed at teaching this history to youth, including, in particular, the unique and fascinating story of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Richard Etheridge and its connection to the Pea Island station.

The Cutter Richard Etheridge, based in Miami, Florida, is the second of the Coast Guard’s Sentinel-Class Cutters. In 2012, the cutter was commissioned into service in Port Everglades, Florida, in honor of its namesake Richard Etheridge, who was once enslaved on Roanoke Island, fought for freedom during the Civil War, and became the first African American in the nation to command a USLSS station.

On Jan. 24,1880, Etheridge, who at the time was the lowest ranked surfman at a neighboring station, was selected to be the Keeper (the person in charge of a lifesaving station) at the Pea Island station. For 67 years, starting in January 1880 when Etheridge took command and ending in March 1947 when the station closed, the lifesaving station at Pea Island was staffed primarily with Black surfmen in the USLSS/USCG. It is the only station in USLSS history manned by an all-Black crew, and one of only two all-Black lifesaving stations in Coast Guard history, the other being a station in New York re-activated for about two years during World War II.

Etheridge and his crew are most known for their Oct. 11, 1896, rescue of all onboard the shipwrecked schooner E.S. Newman (the captain, his wife, three year old son, and six others) on the North Carolina coast late at night and during a hurricane. The rescue resulted in their being awarded the USCG Gold Lifesaving Medal, albeit posthumously and some 100 years after the E.S. Newman rescue occurred. This prestigious medal is the Coast Guard’s highest honor for a daring and heroic rescue. The U.S. Life-Saving Service is the forerunner to the Coast Guard.

For me, visiting the cutter was also deeply personal, as my father had served at the Pea Island station the duration of World War II. He was the last left in charge and helped to decommission the station in 1947. I knew firsthand how important his service at Pea Island and his Coast Guard career was to him.

A visit to the cutter would also allow me the opportunity to talk with the crew about his experiences after attending a segregated USCG boot camp in 1939 and afterwards serving on a cutter as a mess attendant, a servant to white officers on the ship, before being transferred to Pea Island after repeated requests. I had heard him talk often about shining shoes, making beds, and serving meals when forced to joined the USCG as a mess attendant, as enlisting as a mess attendant was the only option available for Black men joining the Coast Guard at the time.

The cutter visit also presented an unexpected opportunity to bring members of my family who live in Maryland with me to the shipyard.

Our recent visit exceeded expectations. It was wonderful to interact with the crew, and quite frankly for me an emotional moment, as I looked at their faces and saw their interest in learning the history associated with the cutter’s namesake and hearing about my father’s life. Likewise, my family loved meeting the crew. Everyone had a wonderful time and especially enjoyed boarding and touring the cutter from top to bottom and learning of its role in the USCG.

As the Oct. 11, 1896, anniversary of the rescue of the E.S. Newman is upon us, it is important to remember the challenges and inequities men like Etheridge and my father faced daily during their lifetime. The anniversary of the rescue of the shipwrecked E.S. Newman calls us to remember this history and to think of why Etheridge and his crew would never live to wear or know of the prestigious medal they received.

A quote from one of the new ensigns on the USCGC Etheridge, a recent 2023 Coast Guard Academy graduate, is perhaps the best reminder of what the story of Keeper Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers teaches us today. In an email sent to me a few days after our visit she wrote “… the crew that attended was very impressed and we left with a greater sense of pride … Thank you for inspiring us and pushing us to think about the importance of our history so we can prevent the negatives and impulse the positives.”

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.

A deal to protect a Marine Corps landing field near Pollocksville from encroachment will also save a large riverfront tract in Jones County from development.

The North Carolina Coastal Land Trust announced Tuesday that it had recently purchased a 113-acre property adjacent to the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point’s Outlying Landing Field Oak Grove.

The organization described the property as consisting of farmland and bottomland hardwood wetlands along the Trent River.

The purchase is part of an effort to address growing development pressure around military installations, which could affect military readiness and the ability to train the troops. The Department of Defense contributed half of the purchase price in order to place permanent restrictions on residential and commercial development while allowing the continued use of the land for farming, forestry and conservation work.

“When the For Sale signs started going up on this property, we decided to take action. Due to the extensive road frontage associated with this property, we knew it was only a matter of time before numerous lots would be sold and homes would be constructed adjacent to Oak Grove,” stated Janice Allen, director of land protection for the Coastal Land Trust.

The 976-acre Outlying Landing Field Oak Grove is used by both Cherry Point and New River Air Station for training pilots to land aircraft on unimproved surfaces in a reduced visibility area. Currently, helicopter, tilt-rotor, and harrier flight training takes place at Oak Grove. Development of the purchased property may have resulted in restrictions on timing, frequency and the type of training that occurs at Oak Grove, officials said.

“The threat of development raised the priority of this project for REPI funding,“ said MCAS Cherry Point Community Plans and Liaison Officer Rhonda Murray. “This outlying field is a critical military training asset.”

Congress gave the military authority in 2003 to work with local and state governments and nongovernmental organizations to help buffer key military training areas from future encroachment and to provide cost-sharing for land conservation through the Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative, or REPI, program.

In 2004, the Coastal Land Trust and officials at Cherry Point signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to conserve key tracts of land with military and conservation values around the main base in Havelock in Craven County as well as outlying fields in Carteret and Jones counties, including the Piney Island Bombing Target and outlying landing fields at Bogue and Oak Grove.

The organization said that to date, the partnership had preserved more than 12,000 acres.

The Coastal Land Trust said its ability to raise private and public grant funds for conservation helped leverage REPI funds for these projects to benefit both the military and the environment.

The purchase was the 17th project completed by Coastal Land Trust in partnership with Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point with the dual goal of conserving open space and/or natural habitats and minimizing encroachment adjacent to military installations.

The Coastal Land Trust said it will retain the Trent River property and manage it as a preserve.

For the near term, most of the open land will continue to be farmed. Future plans, as funding allows, may include planting longleaf pine, creating a pollinator meadow, and/or enhancing the small ponds on the property to improve habitat for native wildlife, officials said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Harold H. Bate Foundation also provided funding for the project. The Bate Foundation provided a grant that covered most of the Coastal Land Trust’s expenses related to the transaction, such as survey, title work, legal and closing costs.

“We are glad to have contributed funds to this excellent project that supports the Coastal Land Trust as well as the military’s objectives. We hope to provide more grants for projects in Jones County, said Don Brinkley of the Harold H. Bate Foundation.

The military has been a boon to North Carolina’s economy. It has brought in millions in government spending, thousands of jobs, and generations of families eager to live and retire where they used to serve.

Newspapers, historians, and the media often focus on large cities, base locations such as Fayetteville and Jacksonville, when discussing the impact of these military installations. But smaller towns also play an important role. This is the story of two coastal towns and how their histories have been shaped during the past 80 years by the Marine Corps bases nearby.

For more than 200 years, Snead’s Ferry, the vessel for which the Onslow County community was named, plied the waters of the New River between Ferry Point and Pollocks Point. It served as a vital connection on the King’s Highway, a colonial postal route near present-day U.S. 17 that was essential to communication in remote parts of eastern North Carolina. The ferry continued long after the end of colonial rule, the widespread building of bridges and new turnpikes, and the emergence of railroads in the 1840s. Snead’s Ferry finally ceased operations in 1939 following the construction of a nearby bridge.

Today, Snead’s Ferry likely could not legally run the same route. The Ferry Point side is still part of the historic community, surrounded by fishing companies and old homes. But the other side of New River features a small wildlife viewing area surrounded by Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base with more than 40,000 stationed Marines and restricted public access

Camp Lejeune, founded in 1941, has severely limited outside traffic on the base since the terrorist attacks of 2001. Just 1,500 feet on the other side of the Sneads Ferry bridge on N.C. 210 is a gate that would stop any prospective traveler. Except for the wildlife area, there would be nowhere for the ferry to land that was accessible to the public.

Sneads Ferry, the community that grew up along the New River ferry, is just one of several coastal towns that have been shaped by military expansion in the past 70 years. Nearby towns such as Sneads Ferry and Newport in Carteret County are now destinations for thousands of military families and employees. Before the bases were built, these towns were small, located on naturally advantageous river bends and points of land. They operated small-scale businesses and were mostly bypassed by the large-scale agricultural and industrial developments of the past century. 

But the needs of military bases changed the nature of their locations. Chosen for their cheap land and access to water, these installations ended up radically transforming not just their host towns but the overall region in which they were located. This new situation presents challenges and opportunities that create a new way of living for many in coastal North Carolina.

Sneads Ferry dates back nearly three centuries to the earliest years of the North Carolina Colony. In 1725, Edmund Ennett began running a ferry across the New River. It was known as the Lower Ferry because it was down river from Wantland’s Ferry, near present-day Jacksonville.

A later ferry at the same spot was operated by Robert W. Snead, who moved to the area in 1760. By the mid-18th century, the ferry was an established part of postal communication in the colonies. 

Like many places in eastern North Carolina, Sneads Ferry was overlooked by the historical forces that built up much of the state. It was not attractive to railroad lines or a productive location for industry. The railroad did not reach the vicinity of Sneads Ferry until the 1880s.

Robust growth in Wilmington and New Bern did little to change the fortunes of New River communities. In his history of Onslow County, Alan D. Watson makes only the occasional reference to Sneads Ferry, the main examples being its historic relevance to the post road and its status as the home of John Everett, an African American who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Sneads Ferry remains unincorporated to this day.

This quiet history was surpassed only slightly by development in Newport, about a 60-mile drive from Sneads Ferry and about 10 miles from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

Settled in the 18th century, Newport remained a mostly isolated spot on the Newport River. During the Union occupation, it was the site of a Civil War battle in which a Union barracks and a railroad bridge were destroyed. The town incorporated in 1866, but from 1870 to 1940, Newport’s population never exceeded 500. The town remained small until the middle of the 20th century.

In 1941, the futures of these two towns were dramatically changed. It was during that year that the Marine Corps began work on what would become Camp Lejeune on the New River. The Marine Corps acquired a sizable tract of land in what was once the community of Marines and began constructing barracks and warehouses. Men and women from Sneads Ferry, lured by the prospect of well-paying jobs during the Great Depression, flocked across the river to pitch in. By 1942, thousands of Marines were living in and being trained just a few hundred feet north of the community. 

That same year, in Havelock, construction began at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. The air station became home to thousands of Marines as well as various squadrons and aircraft repair facilities. Those repair facilities saw active use during the Vietnam War and drove the 488% population spike in Havelock during the 1970s.

Neither Newport nor Sneads Ferry is host of a military base. Neither has witnessed the expansion seen in Jacksonville or Havelock. But of the two, Newport is closer to embracing its status as a military town.

In Newport, town leaders early on saw advantages in putting out the welcome mat by way of a land swap for national forestland to create a large residential neighborhood primarily for military retirees from the air station.

Plans for Newport’s Cherry Point Veterans Mutual Housing Association development were drawn up in 1951, and the first houses were completed before the new streets were paved. The new part of town, also referred to as West Newport, included more than 70 homesites near the still-standing Forest Service fire tower.

Newport today is mainly composed of two areas, the older downtown along old U.S. 70, or Chatham Street, and the more recently developed areas on either side of the U.S. 70 bypass. This divide is clear when looking at historical growth patterns versus the growth that characterizes development connected to Cherry Point. The town has grown from fewer than 500 residents in 1940 to nearly 5,000 residents today. This growth does not take into account the expansion along the U.S. 70 bypass, where the ZIP code that includes the town has ballooned to approximately 10,000 housing units. As Mayor Dennis Barber told Coastal Review, the downtown was small prior to the base’s construction.

“Newport had everything they needed,” Barber said, referring to the community’s resistance to change for much of its history. This resistance led to an outflow of population, as mainly younger residents left the town in search of new opportunities and did not return.

Sneads Ferry, on the other hand, has grappled with its connection to the massive base across the river. Like Newport, the community is in many ways split in two. There is the historic town area near the site of the former ferry, also known as Fulcher’s Landing and home to the Riverview Cafe. This area is the site of the annual Shrimp Festival. It is still tied to the seafood industry. A 2009 Our State feature on Sneads Ferry described the town as one defined by “shrimping, family, and the pleasures of life in flip-flops,” not as a military retirement community.

Beyond the waterfront, Sneads Ferry is growing. Businesses stretch back several miles up and down nearby N.C. 210. These are not historic seafood restaurants and local shops but are modern retail chains, much different from the coastal community at Fulcher’s Landing. 

Newport, meanwhile, continues to embrace its reputation as a small town that attracts current and former military personnel. Mayor Barber said he’d like to see Newport remain a military destination. Barber is a former Coast Guardsman and has been connected to the town for decades, loving both its military connection and its being the kind of small town where “people still wave at each other.”

Meanwhile, Sneads Ferry continues to develop its waterfront. When asked about Sneads Ferry’s future, Lisa Whitman-Grice, director of the Onslow County Historical Museum, credited Camp Lejeune with making the county part of a global community. But she added that despite the trappings of military-related growth, “Sneads Ferry really wants to keep its historical connections.”

Library assistant Amanda Summers agreed. A local with connections to the seafood industry, she noted that “the town is growing and everyone can feel it,” but she rejected the idea that there was any conflict associated with military growth.

Sneads Ferry and Newport continue to be defined by their relationships to the Marine Corps. Both towns welcome more military-related newcomers and the infrastructure challenges associated with rapid growth on the North Carolina coast. These challenges include land use, sewer, and water infrastructure. Newport, for instance, is about to build another water treatment plant, and town officials have touted the town’s exceptional water infrastructure for a municipality of its size.

Despite numerous obstacles and the threat to small-town life, proximity to a military base means money and activity for these towns, both of which many of its residents welcome.

As Dee Lewis, genealogist and volunteer at the History Museum of Carteret County, said when asked about Newport’s future as a military retirement center, “The weather is nice, the people are friendly, and you can golf all year round. Of course people would want to retire there.”

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath assumed the duties and responsibilities of Coast Guard 5th District Commander from Rear Adm. Laura Dickey at Coast Guard Base Portsmouth, Virginia, Wednesday.

According to a press release issued Thursday, Gilreath, as commander of the 5th District, Gilreath serves as the operational commander for all Coast Guard missions from the North Carolina-South Carolina border to New Jersey, encompassing nearly 5,600 Coast Guard active duty, Reserve, and civilian personnel and spanning 1.4 million square miles of oceans, bays, and rivers. The 5th District also includes several mid-Atlantic ports, the largest U.S. Naval base in the world, and the Capital region.

Prior to assuming command of the 5th District, Gilreath most recently served as commander, Personnel Service Center, in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for executing the Coast Guard’s human resource policies by recruiting, accessing, assigning, developing careers, maintaining well-being, compensating, separating and retiring the nearly 45,000 members of the active duty and reserve workforces.

“It has been a privilege to serve as the Fifth District Commander,” said Dickey in a statement. “The Fifth District is pivotal to the Nation’s security and the complex needs of the Mid-Atlantic Maritime Transportation System. Every day, Fifth District active-duty, civilian, Reserve and Auxiliary men and women exhibit the values and traditions of our service and ensure the continued safety of mariners.”

Dickey served as the 5th District commander since 2020 and oversaw Coast Guard response operations throughout the region, including response efforts to oil spills, search and rescue cases and numerous critical marine transportation issues. She will go on to assume the role of deputy commander, Coast Guard Atlantic Area, based out of Portsmouth, Virginia.

The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed a bipartisan measure that would treat toxic exposure as a cost of war, including judicial relief for victims of drinking water contamination at Camp Lejeune.

The Camp Lejeune Justice Act was attached to House Resolution 3967, the Honoring our PACT Act of 2021, which passed the House 256-174 on March 3. The bill had the support of all 222 Democrats and 34 Republicans and would improve access to health care and benefits for over 3.5 million toxic-exposed veterans.

That’s according to a statement issued by North Carolina 3^rd District Congressman Greg Murphy, who introduced the Camp Lejeune Justice Act and provided one of the Republican yes votes. The provisions are “long-overdue,” he said.

“When we send our men and women overseas, we make a promise to care for them when they come home,” said Murphy. “We failed our veterans when they were exposed to toxic drinking water at Camp Lejeune, and it is up to us to make it right. My bipartisan bill, the Camp Lejeune Justice Act eliminates burdensome red tape to ensure that those exposed to toxic chemicals, including servicemembers, Marine dependents, civil servants, and contractors, can receive their day in court. As the proud representative of more than 89,000 veterans, I am honored to lead the effort to make sure our Camp Lejeune community gets the care and benefits they’ve earned. I am relieved to see bipartisan support for the Camp Lejeune Justice Act today, and I look forward to bringing this much-needed bill across the finish line for families in Eastern North Carolina.”

According to the Veterans Administration, those who served at Camp Lejeune or Marine Corps Air Station New River for at least 30 cumulative days from August 1953 through December 1987 — and their family members — are eligible for health care benefits. The VA will reimburse out-of-pocket health care costs that were related to various illnesses associated with the contamination, including cancers and infertility or miscarriages. The bill would go further.

“PACT” in the bill’s title refers to “Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics.” The Honoring our PACT Act was introduced last year by Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

The measure would create new procedures for the VA to follow when establishing new presumptions for toxic exposure and improve data collection by VA. It would include those exposed to airborne hazards, burn pits, radiation and Agent Orange. The bill also authorizes the VA to conduct additional research studies and develop an outreach program and standardized training on toxic exposure.

“For too long, Congress and VA have been slow to act on toxic exposure — but today, the House took a bipartisan vote to change that and finally make good on our promise to toxic-exposed veterans by passing my Honoring our PACT Act,” said Takano. “After years of diligent input from toxic-exposed veterans, my colleagues, our staff, VA, and VSOs, we passed the most comprehensive legislation to date to treat toxic exposure as a cost of war and ensure that all toxic-exposed veterans can access the care and benefits they’ve earned. This fight is not over, but I will not rest until our veterans have a guarantee in statute that their government will take care of them when they come home— no matter the cost.”

The North Carolina History Center in New Bern has set aside a day in April to focus on the state’s naval history from the American Revolution to World War II

The North Carolina Military Historical Society and Tryon Palace are partnering to present the program, free of charge, scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. April 30.

Five presenters will cover a range of naval history, starting with Jeff Bockert, North Carolina Historic Sites east region supervisor, who will discuss the career of the battleship USS North Carolina during the Second World War.

Sion Harrington, North Carolina Military Historical Society vice president and former state military archivist, will focus on people, highlighting numerous North Carolinians who served in the naval forces during World War I.

Chris Meekins, Civil War roster editor with the North Carolina Office of Archives and History, will explore various naval actions around the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal in northeastern North Carolina during the Civil War.

Jim Greathouse, former museum specialist at the Fayetteville Area Transportation and Local History Museum, will highlight the naval history of North Carolina during the War of 1812, from the privateer Otway Burns to the Jeffersonian gunboats that patrolled the state’s waters.

Jim McKee, Brunswick Town-Fort Anderson State Historic Site manager, will discuss the operations of the British Navy in the Cape Fear region during the American Revolution, including their cooperation with former Royal Governor and Tryon Palace resident, Josiah Martin.T

Registration for the program opens at 8:30 a.m. April 30 at the North Carolina History Center’s Cullman Performance Hall, 529 S. Front St., New Bern. Those wishing to attend later in the day, may sign in and join anytime.  

For more information visit https://www.ncmilitaryhistoricalsociety.org/ or email ncmhs1@gmail.com.

The U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is hosting a roundtable on efforts to address toxic exposure at 2 p.m. Wednesday.

Veterans who wish to share their experience with toxic exposure with the committee before the roundtable can fill out an online survey.

The roundtable, “The True Cost of our Promise to Toxic-Exposed Veterans,” is to be livestreamed on YouTube. All hearing documents are on the Committee Repository.

Representatives from 11 veterans service organizations are expected to discuss during the roundtable the Honoring Our PACT Act, a bipartisan measure recognizing toxic exposure as a cost of war. The act approved by the committee last summer has 70 co-sponsors.

Congressman Mark Takano, D-Calif., is chairman of the committee.

“It’s a new year, but I have not relented one bit on my promise to pass legislation to finally recognize toxic exposure as a cost of war this Congress. That’s why I’m grateful for the opportunity to host a roundtable next week to check in with Veterans Service Organizations and advocates on our efforts,” said Takano in a statement.

“We made a promise to servicemembers when we sent them into harm’s way that we would care for them when they came home. The (Congressional Budget Office) estimate is in— we now know the true cost of that promise, and we cannot renege on our responsibility. When we go to war we don’t nickel and dime the Department of Defense, and we cannot try to pinch pennies when it comes to covering the care for toxic-exposed veterans. It’s time for us to hold up our end of the deal by passing my bipartisan Honoring our PACT Act.”

Guest commentary

For nearly a century, military personnel have been victims of toxic exposure to a wide range of toxic agents, oftentimes without them even knowing.

Doing a deep dive into the history of this issue only highlights a bitter irony: Veterans who have been trained and prepared to bravely fight and face the horrors of war are now suffering or being killed by a silent and slow enemy — toxic exposure. Moreover, their suffering often feels invalidated by the crushing bureaucratic process that is claiming Veterans Affairs benefits related to this issue.

Although toxic exposure in the military has been extensively discussed throughout the years and is a known issue, when it comes to connecting the dots between their disease and military service, many veterans and their families still have significant gaps, especially if they haven’t been deployed. This is exactly why it is critical not only to continue discussing, researching and informing about this issue but also to have a system in place that first and foremost acknowledges the full spectrum of side effects to toxic exposure and the existing link to veterans’ military service, facilitating their access to benefits.

Extent of exposure

Regardless of rank or role in the military, many service members have been exposed to toxic agents such as asbestos, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, agent orange, and many others that have been used throughout history and have contaminated military sites, locations, and grounds. The truth is that almost all veterans have been exposed to hazardous or toxic products at some point during their service, whether it was during training, work duties, or on the base. Many of these agents have been linked to cancer and noncancerous illnesses.

While the focus now in the media might be on the issue of toxic exposure related to burn pits in Afghanistan and Iraq, and rightfully so, it is extremely important to keep shining the light on the others as well. And unfortunately, there are many identified toxic agents and, worse still, full-blown hazardous disasters that have plagued military service ever since World War I with the rise and popularity of asbestos. But perhaps the worst one that needs more acknowledging is the disaster that was Camp Lejeune.

In the early 1980s, tetrachloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), dichloroethylene (DCE), benzene, and vinyl chloride were discovered in two water-supply systems on the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. These water treatment plants supplied the water systems that served enlisted-family housing, unmarried service personnel barracks, base administrative offices, schools, and recreational areas. They also supplied water to the base hospital and an industrial area. However, officials did not close the contaminated wells until 1985, when they finally informed Marine families that chemicals had been detected in the water. According to health officials, up to 1 million people may have been exposed to water toxins for up to 30 years before the wells were closed.

Because the chemicals used at Camp Lejeune are extremely toxic to humans, those who were exposed are now at a high risk of developing a serious, even fatal disease as a result of their exposure. Some of the most common diseases associated with the exposure at Camp Lejeune are bladder cancer, breast cancer, kidney and lung cancer, leukemia and reproductive health problems.

Although Camp Lejeune is widely regarded as one of the worst cases of water contamination in U.S. history, it is far from the only toxic military site. The Environmental Protection Agency currently has 128 military installations on its list of Superfund sites, which are areas so contaminated with hazardous substances that the federal government has designated them as National Priorities List sites for cleanup.

But that’s not all. When speaking of contaminated sites, one must mention the thousands of PFAS contaminated sites.PFAS are a group of toxic fluorinated chemicals whose primary source is aqueous film-forming foam, also known as AFFF. For years, PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” have contaminated thousands of sites in the United States, including military bases where thousands of service members and their families live and work. Because of their nature, efforts to clean up contaminated sites are slow and will most likely continue for quite some time, as there are approximately 2,854 locations in 50 states that are still known to be contaminated as of August.

Exposure to toxic agents, be it asbestos, PFAS or contaminated water can lead to very serious health consequences that many veterans are struggling with today. In many cases, those health consequences are cancers that slowly develop over a long period of time and that oftentimes are either misdiagnosed or discovered in terminal phases. It is truly a tragedy that so many veterans have to battle today with these diseases after years of service and, as if that’s not enough they also have to battle for their rights.

Problematic approach

While it’s true that there are ongoing efforts to clean up the contaminated sites and the VA does acknowledge the link between toxic exposure and some diseases (some being the key word here), what’s being done is not nearly enough.

One of the veterans I work with has recently stated that:

”Starting the process for accessing VA benefits feels like jumping through hoops. Sometimes even like a slap in the face, especially trying to prove a link between my disease and the publicly known contaminated base I was on. There is too much bureaucracy that gets too complicated that it just makes you wonder if you’re fighting for nothing. But in the end, all you can do is ask for some help and hope for the best.”

Hope indeed. In lack of clearer, more broad and efficient legislation, all veterans can do is hope that their benefits will get approved. And here is exactly what is problematic about it. Veterans shouldn’t “hope for the best” after completing their service and being diagnosed with a severe or terminal disease. They should be automatically protected, helped and have their diseases validated by the responsible authorities. By this point there is sufficient research on the effects of toxic exposure and more than enough evidence to its extent at military installations throughout history. So why are things moving so slowly? Why is it so complicated? Why is toxic exposure still treated as if it is a light issue in terms of urgency, although the reality shows just how serious it is and even declaratively, lawmakers acknowledge it?

A law passed in 2012 provides veterans and family members who lived on the base with health care coverage for 15 conditions. Veterans may also be eligible for disability benefits for eight conditions that are thought to be related to the contamination. As part of the Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012, qualifying veterans can receive VA health care (except dental care) if they served on active duty at Camp Lejeune for at least 30 cumulative days between Aug. 1, 1953, and Dec. 31, 1987.

There is some hope for veterans suffering as a result of toxic exposure at military bases with the traction that the Toxic Exposure in the American Military Act, or “TEAM” Act has recently gained. The TEAM Act was also proposed in Congress last year, but it failed to gain traction.

This is a bipartisan bill that would expand access to VA care and benefits for veterans who were exposed to toxic substances while serving, create a consistent process for determining presumptions of service connection for illnesses, create an independent scientific commission, and authorize additional research to determine whether conditions are linked to toxic exposure.

The TEAM Act would benefit not only veterans who served at Camp Lejeune, but also those who have been exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances. Now, Congress must act to ensure that military servicemembers and veterans who have been harmed by toxic exposure as a result of their military service receive the medical care and benefits they are entitled to. Unfortunately, to date, there doesn’t seem to be much urgency or significant movement in regards to this bill.

Earlier this year the Comprehensive and Overdue Support for Troops of War Act of 2021, also known as the COST of War Act, was introduced as part of a larger effort to assist veterans who have been exposed to toxic substances. If passed, this would automatically grant 3.5 million veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars access to VA health care. They would also, among other things, reform VA’s current process for handling toxic exposure claims and add new conditions to the presumptive list for toxic exposure. However, again, not much progress seems to have been made until now.

The lack of urgency to pass these bills and to reform the VA’s process for handling toxic exposure claims is problematic to say the least and should become a priority. The fact that after 100 years of proven toxic exposure in the military veterans still have to fight for their rights is a travesty. We need to do better, as a nation, for our veterans.

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

ROTA, Spain – The Navy announced that Petty Officer 2^nd Class Ryan Badillo, a native of Newport, is playing a critical role in the Navy’s efforts to maintain a healthy and ready fighting force in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

As a hospital corpsman working at Naval Hospital Rota, Spain, Badillo’s skills are vital to maintaining the health of the sailors in the Rota area, and by extension, the readiness of the Navy’s operational ships and submarines on which they serve, according to the Navy.

“The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic brought an invisible enemy to our shores and changed the way we operate as a Navy,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said in a statement. “The fight against this virus is a tough one, but our sailors are tougher. We must harden our Navy by continuing to focus on the health and safety of our forces and our families. The health and safety of our sailors and their families is, and must continue to be, our number one priority.”

Badillo is a 2010 West Carteret High School graduate and 2020 Purdue Global University graduate. According to Badillo, the values required to succeed in the Navy are similar to those found in Newport.

“Being able to face the current pandemic, I have applied the recognition that even the smallest action can help,” Badillo said. “With the contribution of many hands, any change can be adapted, and even the smallest voice can be heard and create the biggest impact.”

The Navy Hospital Corps is the most decorated career field in the Navy. Corpsmen have earned 22 Medals of Honor, 179 Navy Crosses, 959 Silver Stars and more than 1,600 Bronze Stars. 20 ships have been named in honor of corpsmen.

In its century of service, the Navy Hospital Corps has supported millions of sailors and Marines in wartime and peace around the world. As the years have progressed, technological innovations are transforming medical training for the next generation of hospital corpsmen, according to Navy officials.

“The legacy of the Navy Hospital Corps is knowing anywhere I go, the name corpsman is trusted as someone who anyone can go to for help,” Badillo said. “Following in the footsteps of my father, I’m always there with a helping hand and one to look to in times of trouble.”