Services honoring the late Larry Strother, a North Topsail Beach alderman who “had an unwavering commitment to protecting the shoreline and a profound love for his community,” have been scheduled for early May.

Strother’s family will receive friends from 6-8:30 p.m. on Friday, May 1 at Snead’s Ferry Presbyterian Church, 776 NC-210, in Sneads Ferry. A celebration of life will be held at the church at 11 a.m. on May 2. A private family inurnment will be at a later time.

Strother died April 12. He was 79.

The native North Carolinian was an accomplished high school athlete who honed leadership skills as a teenager, according to his obituary.

He left college and enlisted in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, serving his country from 1965 until 1970. During that time, he received several awards and medals, including the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat “V” for meritorious service. 

Strother went on to thrive in a career in the real estate and construction industries.

As a North Topsail Beach alderman, Strother chaired the North Topsail Beach Inlet-Sound-Advisory Committee. He was also vice chairman of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission.

“Larry understood the shoreline was more than sand and water — it was the heart of NTB, a source of livelihood, beauty, and connection for generations of residents and visitors alike,” his obituary reads.

A town release announcing Strother’s death last week states he was “a devoted public servant whose impact on our community will not soon be forgotten.”

“Throughout his years of service, he was a tireless advocate for the renourishment and preservation of our cherished beaches. His unwavering commitment to protecting North Topsail Beach reflected his profound love for this place and the people who call it home. He will be remembered not only for his leadership and dedication but for his kindness, his steady presence, and his deep-rooted passion for the community he served so faithfully. North Topsail Beach has lost a true champion, and his absence will be felt along every stretch of shore he fought so hard to protect.”

Strother is survived by his wife, Lori, two sons, Ryan F. Strother of Colorado Springs, and Christopher W. Strother, and wife Emily, of Athens, Georgia, six grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and multiple nieces and nephews.

Donations to the Snead’s Ferry Presbyterian Church’s building campaign, P.O. Box 758 Snead’s Ferry, NC 28460, are requested in lieu of flowers.

The North Topsail Beach Board of Aldermen announced Thursday that it is on the hunt for a new town manager.

Town officials did not specify the reason for Town Manager Alice Derian’s resignation, only that her last day as head of the town’s administrative operations will be June 1.

“The Town has already begun the process of hiring both an interim and full-time manager,” Mayor Richard Grant stated in a release. “We will be interviewing interim candidates this week and have begun the process of recruiting a permanent placement. Ms. Derian will continue in her role for the foreseeable future to ensure a smooth transition.”

Derian was appointed North Topsail Beach town manager in October 2021. According to the town’s website, Derian has more than 20 years of experience in local government.

The town board is “working closely” with the North Carolina League of Municipalities in its search for an interim manager, “to step in and ensure the continuation of smooth operations while the Board focuses on finding a permanent candidate to fill the role of Town Manager,” according to a release. “The Board of Aldermen will provide additional information regarding interim leadership and the process for selecting the next town manager at a later time.”

Post has been updated.

The nor’easter that swept up the East Coast this past weekend stripped ocean beaches of sand, inundated areas with floodwaters and pushed seawater over dunes and roads along North Carolina’s coast.

The Outer Banks suffered much of the brunt of the powerful system that brought wind, rain and coastal flooding.

On Saturday the North Carolina Department of Transportation closed sections of N.C. 12 on Ocracoke. Overwash forced officials to close portions of the road Sunday on Hatteras Island, where crews spent the weekend pushing sand and water from the road and rebuilding the dune line that divides the beach from the road.

As of late afternoon Tuesday, N.C. 12 on Ocracoke was the only road closed and the Hatteras-Ocracoke Ferry service remained suspended, NCDOT’s Assistant Director of Communications Jamie Kritzer said in an interview.

N.C. 12 is closed on the north end of Ocracoke Island between the ferry terminal and the National Park Service Pony Pens.

“This afternoon, we’ve been forced to close N.C. 12 again on Pea Island from Marc Basnight Bridge to Rodanthe, due to ocean overwash,” Kritzer said. “The stretch on Pea Island was reopened at 5 p.m. (Monday) but the wind increased this afternoon and we saw overwash around high tide.”

Kritzer said that NCDOT crews were continuing to push sand and water from N.C. 12 and restore the protective dunes on both islands.

“Our ability to reopen N.C. 12 will depend on whether the dune holds through the next high tide cycle,” he said.

In addition to NCDOT’s highway crews, the state’s Ferry Division played a critical role during the response to this weekend’s nor’easter, Kritzer said.

“At one point, all seven ferry routes were suspended this weekend. However, when the winds subsided, the ferries were able to make a special run to take Ocracoke visitors back to Swan Quarter,” he said. “The Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry have helped transport highway crews and equipment between Hatteras and Ocracoke, so the crews could work on clearing N.C. 12.”

Cape Hatteras National Seashore Superintendent Dave Hallac told Coastal Review early Tuesday afternoon that there has been a lot of coastal erosion in certain areas of the national seashore.

At the time of the interview, the National Weather Service forecast much of the Outer Banks to experience flooding through Wednesday. Hallac said that he expects oceanfront flooding as a result, which could make driving on the highway through the seashore hazardous.

“The beaches continue to remain hazardous, especially the beachfront in the Buxton area and the beachfront in the Rodanthe area due to the waves and high-water levels battering many threatened oceanfront structures,” he said.

Between Sept. 30 and Oct. 2, eight unoccupied beachfront houses fell in Buxton, five of which collapsed within 45 minutes of each other. Another unoccupied house gave way on Oct. 3 in Buxton, bringing the total number of houses that have succumbed to encroaching ocean waters to 21 within the past five years.

As of Oct. 3, nine homes on Hatteras Island have toppled into the sea, “but there are a number of significantly threatened oceanfront structures, and you know, collapse is definitely possible,” Hallac said. “Even if collapse doesn’t occur, pieces and parts of those homes have broken off over the last couple of days, including large structures like decks. So that’s the reason that the entire beach front in the village of Buxton remains closed.”

He recommended travelers avoid taking N.C. 12 during the high-tide window, adding that there’s a likelihood of some minor soundside flooding as the winds are switching more to the north and northwest.

“That could also make some of our access points on the sound side flooded, and also make highway driving hazardous,” he said.

Conditions were less dire further south along the state’s coast.

Carteret County’s Public Information Officer Nick Wilson said that the county didn’t see any significant damage from last weekend’s coastal low.

“Most of the impacts were primarily in the Down East,” he said, where some roads in Cedar Island and a few other areas experienced overwash.

“A couple of our convenience sites were closed on Sunday for safety but were back to normal on Monday,” he continued. “There haven’t been any reports of building damage or injuries. The high tides over the weekend, combined with king tide conditions, did cause some flooding in low-lying spots, but it quickly receded once the low passed.”

Carteret County Shore Protection Manager Ryan Davenport said Wednesday morning that Most of Bogue Banks fared well during the recent storm.

“We did see moderate erosion and some dune escarpments in western Pine Knoll Shores, Indian Beach, and Salter Path, but the impacts were no worse than what we typically expect from a winter storm. We remain on track for the island-wide nourishment project scheduled to begin in fall 2026,” he said.

Town officials from North Topsail Beach in Onslow County to Holden Beach in Brunswick County reported experiencing some erosion and escarpment.

North Topsail Beach officials assessed the town’s little more than 11-mile stretch of ocean shoreline throughout Monday and found most erosion to have occurred along the northern end of town toward New River Inlet.

“We noticed our typical hotspots had erosion,” North Topsail’s Town Manager Alice Derian said Tuesday. “There’s some escarpment there. There was some scarping south, but the dunes are still intact.”

All of the town’s public accesses remain open.

Topsail Beach’s ocean shoreline “held up well except at the very south end,” Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission Chair William Snyder said.

He said that there is some escarpment to the natural dunes that front a portion of the undeveloped southern tip of the island.

New Hanover County Coastal Protection Coordinator Bryan Hall said in an email Tuesday afternoon that Wrightsville, Carolina and Kure beaches all experienced some erosion over the weekend. Wrightsville Beach’s ocean shoreline also suffered some escarpments.

“As far as I’m aware, there was no significant public or private infrastructure damage or significant established dune damage, which is a testament to the well-established dunes and the County’s Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) projects,” Hall said.

Officials in Brunswick County beach towns that responded to Coastal Review’s requests for comments also reported minor erosion, including Bald Head Island and Oak Island.

“Honestly, I think we fared pretty well,” Ocean Isle Beach Town Manager Justin Whiteside said Tuesday afternoon.

One end of a privately maintained road that runs through a gated neighborhood at the eastern tip of the island has been partially eaten away.

Whiteside said roughly half of the cul-de-sac within The Pointe, a relatively new development of luxury homes, is gone.

“They’re sandbagging around the perimeter of where the cul-de-sac was,” he said.

“There have not been any reports to us of damage besides some flooding caused by tides and winds,” Holden Beach Town Manager Bryan Chadwick said in an email Tuesday afternoon. “We do feel fortunate because it could have been a lot worse.”

Storm recap

Warning Coordination Meteorologist Erik Heden with the National Weather Service office in the Newport/Morehead City office said that with this last storm, “we wanted to make sure people knew that despite it not having a name,” nor’easters can produce the same winds, flooding and rain as hurricanes.

There have been multiple offshore storms that have beaten and battered areas of the state’s coastline, particularly the Outer Banks, where N.C. 12 on Ocracoke and Hatteras islands has been closed for most of the last few days and Down East Carteret County has experienced high-water levels.

There was also a king tide, which means at certain times of the year the tides come in higher and go out lower than normal, that began early last week, leading to some flooding, which was not storm related, in Beaufort, Buxton and other spots on the Outer Banks, Heden said.

The combination of higher water levels with a king tide, a storm with gale-force winds, large waves and swells, and 3 to 4 inches of rain made everything worse, especially in low lying areas, he said.

Flooding occurred up the Neuse and the Pamlico rivers, pushing water levels in New Bern to their highest since Hurricane Ophelia in 2023.

Down East Carteret County had a “tremendous amount of water on the roads,” but nothing they haven’t experienced before, Heden said. The Outer Banks experienced significant ocean overwash, especially at the March Basnight Bridge southward to the Pea Island Visitor Center, where the man-made dunes are built.

Heden said that while the coast will experience slow improvements and fall temperatures the remainder of this week, some areas will continue to experience issues with water, especially at high tide.

“Today’s Tuesday, and we’ve got this advisory through Thursday, so it’s not going to be worse than it was this weekend. We don’t have the wind, we don’t have the swell, but it takes a while for that water to calm down,” he said.

“Pretty much all my paintings tell a story,” said Rik Freeman.       

“When I was growing up, my grandmother used to say I would eavesdrop on grown folks’ conversations because they were just always so colorful, and talking I would see images in my head of what they were talking about and everything said,” the Washington, D.C., artist told Coastal Review.

For the last few years, Freeman’s art has been telling the story about African American beach communities during the Jim Crow era.

His series, “Black Beaches During Segregation,” features several vibrant paintings representing different historically Black beaches on the Atlantic, including Ocean City on Topsail Island, and goes on display in Onslow County starting Saturday.

The exhibit is part of the 15^th annual Ocean City Jazz Festival set for July 4-6 in North Topsail Beach. The theme of the three-day music festival is “Celebrating History Through the Language of Jazz and Unity.” A full schedule and ticket information can be found on the website.

The festival was first held in 2009 to mark the 60th anniversary of Ocean City’s establishment. Now a part of North Topsail Beach, Ocean City was established in 1949 “as an African-American-owned community 15 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Ocean City was a unique community as it was the first residential beach community with Black home ownership in the state,” according to the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission, which is sponsoring the exhibit with Ocean City Jazz Festival.

Opening reception for Freeman’s show is at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 28, at the Jacksonville-Onslow Council for the Arts, 826 New Bridge St. in Jacksonville. Freeman is scheduled to give an artist’s talk at 3 p.m. and there will be time afterward to view the exhibit. Register online to attend.

Freeman, who spent his youth in Athens, Georgia, said he began drawing as a young child but really got into murals in his 20s, after college. He moved to Washington, D.C., in 1985 when he landed a job at the airport while he was visiting family for Thanksgiving.

He returned to art a few years later at 32. “It was in ’88. My father died — this is about to sound like an old blues song — my father died. I got fired from my job. My girlfriend left me, so I started working back with my art again,” he said.

The D.C. Commission of the Arts and Humanities posted in the newspaper an ad looking for artists willing to work with children during a summer program painting murals. Freeman applied and was accepted. “It started from there,” making a living off painting murals.

The idea for the “Black Beaches During Segregation” series was sparked when he learned that a Black-owned beach in California, which was taken from the family owners in the 1920s, had been returned to the descendants.

“I thought about that and that couldn’t have been the only one,” Freeman said, so he began researching. He came across Chicken Bone Beach, an African American beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He asked Honfleur Gallery owner Duane Gautier, who is from the Garden State, if he knew about the beach, but hadn’t heard of it. “And so I started telling them about others.” Freeman’s work is shown at Honfleur Gallery in Washington.

Gautier was interested and told Freeman to write a proposal for the gallery’s Artist in Residence Program.  This was in 2022.

He started with six beaches along the Atlantic Seaboard to research and paint, including Ocean City. He’s up to 14 or 15 beaches now, and he wants to represent at least one beach in every state south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

During his visit to Ocean City, Freeman met with people of the community, including Ocean City Jazz Festival co-chairs Carla and Craig Torrey.

Carla Torrey, originally from Fayetteville but now residing in Durham, is a second-generation homeowner in Ocean City. Her father was the principal builder when the community first started.

When she and others met Freeman in person, Torrey said that he explained how his series “uses art to visually document and celebrate the historical and cultural importance of places like the Ocean City Beach community, which played a crucial role in providing spaces for leisure and community for African Americans during a time of systemic racial discrimination. We are a perfect match.”

The exhibit features two paintings honoring Ocean City. One is based on a photo Torrey gave Freeman of herself as a young girl walking with her father on the pier with Ocean City Terrace in the background. Built in 1953 from an abandoned Navy missile observation tower, the restaurant is no longer standing.

“It’s so special to me, because my father really loved this community,” Torrey said. “I’m very grateful to Rik for doing that.”

She said that after talking to Freeman, the jazz festival organizers felt the series should be brought to the county, “so that they could see the other communities that he had visited and that existed and learn a bit about their legacy in history.”

The other painting features two men playing instruments with a modern-day interpretation of the Ocean City Terrace in the background. Freeman said he thinks they eventually want to get restaurant rebuilt, so he took artistic license when painting the building.

The piece on St. Augustine Beach in Florida, Freeman said, is the only piece that directly confronts the racism of the era.

“Because in June ’64 in St. Augustine, they had, instead of sit-ins, it was a wade-in because you’re wading into either a pool or a segregated beach, and a riot broke out, and a lot of people got injured. It was on the news,” Freeman explained. Around the same time, a motel owner threw sulfuric acid in a pool where high school kids were swimming because they wouldn’t get out of the water.

“Those two incidents led (President Lyndon Johnson) to sign the Civil Rights bill less than a month later. So, I figured I wanted to do at least one piece that did show that out-and-out racism, but most of the pieces are based on showing the joy, the camaraderie, you’re in a safe place, and people just having a good time,” he said.

“But the underlying thing is,” Freeman continued, is that when somebody’s looking at the work and they “say, ‘why is it just all these Black folks at the beach?’ Is this somewhere in the Caribbean, or is it Brazil, Africa?’ No, this is United States of America, and the beaches were segregated.”

In his painting depicting Atlantic Beach in South Carolina, “you can barely see it. You have to look for it. There’s a little orange rope that goes out into the water. And a lady down there was telling me that rope was basically the color line, and she just kind of laughed. She said, ‘What did they think that the water that touched us wasn’t going to come and touch them?’”

Ultimately, Freeman wants people who see the exhibit to see the camaraderie and look at the histories of these beaches.

“I want people to kind of look and see as it’s very commendable what people were able to do to be able to create those beaches and safe places. And you know, some of them had a little bit of trouble and everything, but by and large, they were safe,” he said.

Torrey said that the Ocean City Jazz Festival “provides the perfect historical setting and audience for Rik Freeman’s impactful art, while the NC African American Heritage Commission brings its expertise and mandate for preserving and promoting the rich, often untold, stories of African American heritage in North Carolina.”

North Carolina African American Heritage Commission Director Adrienne Nirdé has been with the state commission since 2020, acting as director for the last two years.

The commission has sponsored the Ocean City Jazz Festival for several years now, which Nirdé said is important for the division within the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

“When talking about segregation and Civil Rights, that’s often associated with lunch counters and schools, and that’s a big part of the history that people learn about, if they learn about it at all, but when you dive into deeper, in a place like North Carolina, this was something that touched every aspect of life,” Nirdé said. “People were recreating. They wanted to go on vacation, they wanted to go to the beach. They wanted to golf and experience swimming pools and all of these different types of spaces. This is just really an important way to share the other layer of this story.”

Council For the Arts of Jacksonville Onslow County Executive Director Kandyce Quintero said she and the council’s executive board “are extremely excited to have this exhibit be the kick-start to the festival this year.”

During Freeman’s talk on Saturday, he said he will discuss the work he curated for this exhibit.

“I really want the visitors to understand how important these paintings are. The stories behind each one and how generations have been affected even in today’s world,” she said.

Every summer, the women of Ocean City Beach organized crabbing trips to Topsail Island’s north end. On a waxing moon, when the tide was exactly right, moms and their kids skimmed the saltwater shallows hunting blue crabs, as many as they could carry. The fat jimmies and sooks were the promise of delectable family recipes: rich gumbo, savory crab casseroles and delicate crab-stuffed eggs.

“My mom would always say that on a growing moon, you get more crab meat than on a wasting moon,” Kenneth Chestnut says. “I didn’t believe it, but I became a believer.”

Chestnut’s faith arrived one unforgettable day. The tide had just begun to turn, creating tranquil waters that are a guaranteed feast for hungry blue crabs. Suddenly, the marsh teemed with them, and harvest baskets quickly overflowed.

“It was almost biblical,” Chestnut marvels. Faced with this unexpected bounty, the women had to think fast. How would they get such a haul home?

“They told us boys take off our jeans — we had on swimming trunks underneath — tie up the bottoms of them and fill them with crabs,” Chestnut says, chuckling at the memory.

Back at Ocean City Beach, everyone went to work steaming the mountains of crabs. Pickers meticulously avoided damaging the fragile back shells. Those were always set aside to dry in the sun for use in one of the most beloved dishes: deviled crabs.

Chestnut’s mother, Caronell, took her version to Michelin-star level. She began by sautéing minced onions and celery in rich butter before adding flour and milk to create a luxurious bechamel sauce. After gently folding in sweet crab meat and chopped, hard-boiled eggs, Caronell Chestnut mounded the exquisite mixture into the sun-bleached shells. She finished each serving with a dusting of cracker meal and “small tip of butter” before baking them golden brown for a neighborhood feast.

And it wasn’t just crabs at those delicious gatherings.

“They would prepare dishes and then share dishes. All kinds,” Chestnut reminisces. Food was the heartbeat of the hamlet, a profound expression of connection, so central, so vital, that someone eventually realized Ocean City Beach needed its own cookbook.

More than recipes

The crabbing and cooking memory Kenneth Chestnut relates resonates deeply with my own childhood in Jacksonville, just 25 miles away. Yet, our neighborhoods were worlds apart.

The Chestnuts were Black; my family was white. Although the Civil Rights Act had been law for a decade when we first drove through Ocean City Beach on our way to and from favorite crabbing spots in the early 1970s, Topsail Island’s lines of segregation were clear.

We understood Ocean City Beach as separate, “the Black beach.” Its enduring community cookbook, originally published in 1980 and titled “Ms. Winnie’s Seafood Cook Book,” is a powerful testament to Maya Angelou’s profound truth: “Human beings are more alike than we are unalike. And the minute we began to understand, just the slightest part of that, we recognize ourselves as family.”

Winnie Robinson, a long-time Ocean City Beach resident, painstakingly assembled that first recipe collection as a fundraiser. Chestnut imagines she walked house to house, asking cooks to share their most delicious creations.

The sumptuous dishes, often elaborate in their seasonings — fish chowder with a splash of white burgundy wine, dill- and nutmeg-scented clam fritters, grilled sesame trout, sweet-and-sour sauteed croakers, to name a few — tell a complex story.

In 1949, Edgar Yow, a white man and former Wilmington mayor, witnessed the harsh realities of racism. He envisioned a haven where people of color could enjoy the shore and own oceanside homes in peace.

Yow held seaside property and collaborated with Kenneth Chestnut’s father, Wade Chestnut, and Wade’s siblings to turn part of the acreage into the milelong Ocean City Beach. By 1954, this determined community had 15 homes, a welcoming motel, a bustling restaurant and, soon after, an Episcopal chapel, a church summer camp and the iconic Ocean City Fishing Pier.

“When growing up, I would go on the beach and I would see it was really crowded to the left, really crowded to the right, recalls Carla Torrey, editor of the cookbook’s latest incarnation, “Tried and True Recipes.” “And there would maybe be me and two other people on our beach. And I always was like, ‘Why is that? Is there something special about me?’”

“And then I later realized why. That it was this invisible line where nobody crossed over and came on our beach.”

Unwelcome at many restaurants and living somewhere set apart for no other reason than its residents’ skin color, Ocean City Beach’s talented chefs cultivated a culinary utopia.

Torrey shows a fuzzy black-and-white photo of a community garden thriving even in dry, sandy soil. She yearns for the creamed corn one neighbor prepared fresh from the cob. Chestnut recalls his dad salt-curing mullet in a barrel and neighbors carefully tending molting crabs that would become fried, soft-shell delicacies.

Kitchen creativity, Torrey and Chestnut explain, blossomed during the summers. Moms and their kids, home from school, lived at Ocean City all week. Working dads joined their families on weekends. The women supported each other by sharing meals and recipes. Those carefree days offered them the luxury of time to lovingly prepare food and experiment with fresh ideas.

“It was a joy to her if she didn’t feel pressured to cook,” Chestnut remembers about his mother. “I think that was why she especially loved it down here.”

Each cook infused delights with flavors and methods passed down through the generations along with the latest trends, like Carol King’s Prawn and Egg Curry and Bessie W. Hill’s shrimp-stuffed eggplant.

As Winnie Robinson herself wrote in the original cookbook’s acknowledgments, “Our source has been the ‘world of food.'”

Cooking up the future

Today, 30 Ocean City Beach homes survive from a peak of 100 that existed before hurricanes Fran and Berta took their tolls in 1996. Storms also claimed the Ocean City Beach pier, leaving behind only a solitary tower standing sentinel on a scrubby oceanfront lot. The village nearly blends into the relentless sprawl all around. In 1990, North Topsail Beach absorbed Ocean City Beach into its town limits.

The triumph of civil rights has slowly, gently, loosened ties to this community born of necessity. “Descendants (of original homeowners) can go anywhere and buy anywhere, as opposed to just here,” Chestnut notes. “That’s the way it should be.”

Yet, the important story of Ocean City Beach is far from forgotten. It lives on in an exhibit at Surf City’s Missiles and More Museum, tracing Topsail Island’s history. The community holds a place on both the N.C. Civil Rights Trail and the Jacksonville Onslow African-American Heritage Trail. A roadside marker near the old pier entrance humbly sums up Ocean City Beach’s founding. Blue street signs delineate its roads.

And there’s the cookbook.

While the societal injustices that compelled Ocean City Beach’s creation are a painful memory, they don’t diminish the deep nostalgia families feel for the idyllic summer days they spent in the village. Ensuing generations cling to heirloom recipes and the cherished tradition of sharing meals, a legacy of resilience and joy expressed in the community cookbook.

Chestnut carries on his mother’s clam fritter recipe, the one with dill and nutmeg. His daughter still prepares her grandmother’s Shrimp and Rice Surprise, an easy, irresistible mélange of ham, sausage, shrimp, mushrooms and melty cheese.

Torrey, driven by a passion for preservation, spent hours immersed in Robinson’s pages. She brought forth treasured recipes and solicited new ones for “Tried and True Recipes,” published in 2014, including her own elaborate citrus crabcakes with coriander and blood orange aioli.

Sales of “Tried and True Recipes” help fund maintenance of the chapel and community building, which continue to host gatherings. Potlucks and an annual Labor Day block party happen annually.  

Proceeds also support Ocean City Beach’s annual Jazz Festival. Every Fourth of July, people of all colors come together for two days of music. Torrey’s husband, Craig, organizes a historic walking tour during the event, guiding visitors through streets that hold so many stories.

“Tried and True Recipes” is always available at the festival and year-round online. Both the cookbook and the Jazz Festival are powerful vehicles to tell the story of Ocean City Beach, Carla Torrey says.

“And hopefully keep the history going so it’s not forgotten.”

Caronell Chestnut’s Deviled Crabs

½ cup chopped onion

½ cup chopped celery

½ stick butter or margarine

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

½ cup milk

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Seasonings as desired

1 pound crab meat

2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Cracker meal or cracker crumbs

Butter or margarine

Sauté onions and celery in butter or margarine until vegetables are tender. Remove from heat and add flour, milk, Worcestershire and seasonings. Return to heat and cook until thick. Add more milk if necessary for the right consistency. Mix this with crab meat and hard-boiled eggs. Fill crab shells or a baking dish with mixture. Sprinkle top with cracker meal or cracker crumbs. Place a tip of butter or margarine on top of each shell. Bake at 350 degrees until brown (about 25-30 minutes).

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

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

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

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

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

Topsail Island leaders are unwavering in their pursuit of stopping new leases of shellfish farms in the waters around them.

Months have passed since the island’s three towns — North Topsail Beach, Surf City and Topsail Beach — and their respective counties banded together to ask state legislators for a moratorium on new shellfish leases in Onslow and Pender’s coastal waterways.

“Of course, we all support aquaculture,” North Topsail Beach Alderman Mike Benson said during a recent town board meeting.

But the rising number of leases, fueled because of moratoriums in surrounding coastal counties, has led to what local leaders say amount to mounting conflicts between recreational uses of public waters and shellfish leases that restrict access to those waters.

Prohibiting all new shellfish leases across Onslow and Pender counties could be detrimental to the state’s growing shellfish industry, one that reportedly boasts an economic impact of $30 million annually in North Carolina.

“This industry is a particularly bright spot for North Carolina in that farming clams and oysters is quite sustainable environmentally,” said Dr. Jane Harrison, a coastal economics specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant. “We’ve seen a huge uptick in production numbers from farming oysters, in particular, over the last decade and we don’t want to lose that momentum.”

North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Coastal Federation have teamed up in hopes of launching a plan that would result in the creation of a Geographic Information System, or GIS, database that pinpoints areas where leases may or may not be suitable in the waterways behind the 26-mile-long island.

That database would be built by a GIS specialist from North Carolina State University using feedback the organizations aim to get from different focus groups made up of users of those waters, be it shellfish farmers, fishing guides, recreational fishers, or island waterfront property owners.

“We want to bring together many different voices to gather their perspectives and then put their information, their interest, into that GIS database,” Harrison said.

Sea Grant and the Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, have applied for a grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant Office to fund the plan.

If awarded the grant, the plan would kick off around September, when the GIS specialist would gather existing data, including information from the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Shellfish Lease Siting Tool, to work up a baseline of information that will be presented to focus groups. UNCW’s interactive tool assesses coastal conditions in the state to help shellfish growers locate new or expand current operations.

There would be three focus groups: one consisting of shellfish growers in Pender and Onslow counties, one that includes recreational water users and waterfront property owners in Onslow County, and one that includes those groups in Pender County.

Those groups would be initially separated out “because we want folks to feel like they can fully share whatever their concerns or needs are and we don’t want to create an environment of conflict,” Harrison said. “We just want spaces where people can give us every piece of information they have and then we will digest it, compile it, and then have some community conversations.”

Feedback from those conversations would be gathered and used to create a draft resource use agreement and guidelines for equal water access in partnership with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

Once finalized, that resource use agreement and guidelines would be published to the public, where it could be used in other coastal regions in not only North Carolina, but other states.

The proposal has gained traction with local officials. The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, and the counties, has signaled its support for the plan, Harrison said. The commission is made up of elected officials and local government appointees from the island’s three towns.

In an April 2 letter to the Division of Marine Fisheries, North Topsail Beach highlighted the plan as “another justification for a pause” on new shellfish leases.

“A temporary pause would allow us to evaluate the current situation, develop comprehensive management strategies, and ensure that future growth in the shellfish industry is balanced with the needs of our community and the environment,” the letter states.

The North Topsail Beach Board of Aldermen unanimously agreed to send the letter to the division ahead of its April 22 public hearing on six new proposed shellfish leases in Onslow County.

The hearing is scheduled to be held in person at 6 p.m. at the Holly Ridge Community Center and virtually via Webex.

That hearing will follow one on two proposed shellfish leases in Pender County scheduled for 6 p.m. April 15 at Topsail Beach Town Hall, 820 S. Anderson Blvd., and virtually via Webex.

During the April 2 meeting of North Topsail’s town board, Alderman Benson said the consensus of the island’s shoreline protection commission is that the towns and counties continue their request for a moratorium.

A proposed draft bill for a moratorium was not introduced in either the state Senate by its March 25 deadline or the House as of publication of this report. The deadline for the House was extended to April 10. 

“There are 111 leases in Onslow County,” Beson said. “We have 647 acres of land in those 111 leases.”

North Topsail Beach and the northernmost portion of Surf City are in Onslow County.

There are opportunities to identify areas within the waterways of the island that are “truly not well served by shellfish aquaculture,” Harrison said.

“There may be special fishing spots that the charter captains want to make sure they have access to,” she said. “There may be viewsheds that are very important to local residents. We have a lot of successful entrepreneurs in shellfish aquaculture in these two counties and shellfish aquaculture produces seafood that many of us like to eat. At the end of the day, it may be that the industry in Pender and Onslow counties can’t grow at the rate it has been. There might be a need for it to be less expansive because of existing leases and farms. But what I want to steer us away from is just a blanket prohibition, as if no new farm could ever take place in a copacetic way.”

Topsail Island towns are banding together to dramatically reduce the presence of an invasive plant that chokes out native vegetation on oceanfront dunes.

Beach vitex, a thick, woody vine that sheds its leaves seasonally, is growing on more than 170 properties spanning the three towns on the 26-mile-long barrier island.

Those properties were identified in what has been described as a cursory, “windshield” survey conducted to give officials an idea of where and how much of the plant is on the island’s oceanfront dunes.

“We know there’s more out there,” said Topsail Beach Assistant Town Manager Christina Burke.

The survey provided enough information for that town, North Topsail Beach and Surf City to jointly apply for a North Carolina Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Fund grant.

In May, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources awarded those towns a collective $690,060.50, enough to cover half of the total projected cost of the first two years of what will be a four-year project.

According to the interlocal agreement, the towns “will continue to work together to secure additional funding to carry the project out to completion.”

Each town will be responsible for matching its portion of the grant.

North Topsail Beach last week joined Surf City in adopting an interlocal agreement that sets the terms for the aptly named Topsail Island Vitex Eradication Project.

Topsail Beach commissioners are expected to consider the agreement at their meeting Wednesday evening.

If the board greenlights the agreement, a resolution to accept the grant funding will be put to a vote most likely next month, Burke said.

The idea is to put out a request for proposal, or a formal document asking for contractor bids, by either December or January.

Topsail Beach agreed to be the fiscal agent to administer the grant funds, which are the culmination of a partnership initiated by the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission.

The commission functions as a collaboration to preserve the beaches and surrounding waterways of the barrier island and is made up of elected officials and local government appointees from each town and Onslow and Pender counties.

Commission members began a couple of years ago discussing the need for an island-wide project to tackle eradicating the invasive plant that has wound its way over and along oceanfront dunes in the Carolinas after being introduced to the Southeastern United States in the mid-1980s.

But what was originally planted for ornamental purposes and sand dune stabilization escaped cultivation, crowding out sea oats, American beachgrass, seaside panicum and other native plants, ultimately threatening endangered loggerhead sea turtle nesting habitat, federally threatened seabeach amaranth and other rare plants and animals.

The state initiated efforts in 2005 to document locations of beach vitex and control its spread by creating the NC Beach Vitex Task Force in February of that year.

“Knowing it’s an invasive species and threatening to the dune system and the ecological system that we have here, the turtles, we decided to do something about it,” Burke said.

Based on the survey, Topsail Beach has the most properties – 93 – where beach vitex is present. Surf City has 45. A total of 35 properties were noted to have the plant in North Topsail Beach.

“That is just so incomplete still,” Burke said.

Eradicating beach vitex can be a rather painstaking process, one that requires a scratch-and-dab method where the bark of a vine must be scratched off before an herbicide can be applied.

Glyphosate, a systemic herbicide that blocks an enzyme essential for plant growth, is a chemical commonly used in killing beach vitex.

Beach vitex usually requires a couple of treatment applications, after which the plant must be monitored to ensure it is dying back. Treatment must occur only in summer.

“You have to kill it first and then you have to cut it out,” Burke explained.

Precautions must be taken when removing dead beach vitex to ensure seeds do not fall from the vines onto the ground and recultivate.

Treating the 93 properties in Topsail Beach alone is expected to cost an estimated $584,000.

The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission will provide up-to-date information on its website as the project moves forward and continue efforts to educate property owners about the pesky plant.

Property owners will receive a waiver to sign off on that will the contractor to access individual lots to begin treatment, Burke said.

“They see all this lush vegetation and they’re like, oh my gosh, look at my dune system, it’s great, it’s so healthy. I think with the education of vitex and how dangerous it is to the dune system, people are going to me more apt to allow us to come in,” she said. “We have people who call us that say, please put me on that list, I have vitex and I want to be part of this project so I think the attitude has changed with the education of vitex.”

The 14^th annual Ocean City Jazz Festival is set for July 6-7 in North Topsail Beach.

Digital tickets are available for the rain-or-shine event, which is held under a pavilion tent across from 2649 Island Drive, at the corner of Island Drive and Carver Street.

As it has in previous years, the festival boasts an incredible lineup of talent that caters to both jazz purist and lovers of contemporary jazz, organizers said.

The lineup this year includes James “PJ” Spraggins, Phylicia Rae, the Braxton Brothers, Kim Waters, Fred Wesley, Lin Rountree, Gerald Albright and Nnenna Freelon.

Free parking will be available at Onslow County Beach Access No. 2 at 2950 Island Drive. Shuttle services start at 4 p.m. daily.  The Jazz Fest Express Shuttle provides continuous round-trip transportation between the parking lot on the bath house side and the festival site.

Organizers have made Americans with Disability Act accommodations, including an ADA restroom and a golf cart available for assistance. Beach mats are to be placed on the festival lot to provide a stable walking surface for attendees with mobility issues. The festival program will be online for those with visually impaired.

The Ocean City Community was founded in 1949, 15 years before the Civil Rights Act, as the only place African Americans could purchase coastal property in North Carolina. The annual festival is a celebration of the community’s music, food, art and cultural heritage.

Today, the Ocean City Community is designated as an official African American historic site in Onslow County and is part of the North Carolina Civil Rights Trail.

The nonprofit Ocean City Beach Citizens Council is the host of the festival. Proceeds go to preserve the historic community, promotion of the history of the Ocean City Community and its significance to the state.

The festival will celebrate the community’s 75th anniversary with a White Attire Party on Friday, July 5. North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green is to read a commemorative poem for the occasion.

For more information and tickets, visit oceancityjazzfest.com.

North Topsail Beach is once again offering to split the bill for sea oats with beachfront property owners.

Through the town’s cost-share program with Coastal Transplants, property owners will pay $75 for 200 plants, enough to cover 450 square feet. North Topsail Beach will pick up the other half.

The discounted price is available for a limited quantity and property owners are required to plant sea oats within town limits.

Coastal Transplant’s online order form includes tips to help property owners calculate how many plants they will need.

Plants will be delivered to town hall at 2008 Loggerhead Court for pickup on specified days beginning in May. Property owners may select the dates they prefer to get their orders.

The town will follow up with inspections of individual properties two weeks after a homeowner picks up their order to ensure sea oats have been planted.

Sea oats are hardy, drought-resistant plants that can grow 3-6 feet tall with root systems as deep as 30 feet below the sand surface. The plants trap wind-blown sand, which helps build and stabilize dunes and create a natural line of defense in coastal storms.

Sea oats are protected by law. Tampering with the plants or plant seeds is illegal.

A North Topsail Beach couple and their contractor cited for damaging dunes hope to settle the alleged violation through mediation, a process allowed under a new state law.

The town’s zoning board of adjustment on Wednesday night agreed to push an evidentiary hearing on the case back by a month and, in the interim, try and resolve the matter in mediation.

The new law allows mediation “or other forms of alternative dispute resolution” on appeals to local boards of adjustment.

Steve Coggins, a Wilmington-based attorney representing the property owners, requested the mediation, noting that the law stipulates both parties had to agree to mediation in order to proceed.

That triggered a discussion on how the process of mediation should be navigated.

The state statute does not offer guidance as to which local government officials — town staff, members of the board of adjustment, or both — should be involved in mediation.

To avoid a quorum, the town’s attorney advised the board to appoint two of its members to sit through arbitration. North Topsail staff will also take part in the mediation.

The board appointed Chair Hannah McCloud and member Lisa Lee Kozlowski. Town staff, including North Topsail’s attorney Brian Edes, will also be involved in the mediation.

Property owners Philip and Kristen Buckley are appealing a citation they received Feb. 1 that alleges their contractor, Coastland Construction LLC, violated North Topsail Beach’s development ordinance by installing deck pilings within the town’s 5-foot dune buffer zone.

The citation included a $10,000 civil penalty and ordered that the natural area damaged or excavated be restored within one week.

Matthew Davis, the contractor the Buckleys hired to rebuild the two-story rear deck of their oceanfront home at North Permuda Wynd Drive, notified the state that the original layout of the stairs leading from the deck to the ground did not meet the current building code.

To meet the code, Davis said he would have to rotate a newly constructed staircase in a direction that would move the stairs into the frontal dune.

The N.C. Division of Coastal Management exempted the project from a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, minor permit, giving the contractor the greenlight to rotate the staircase so that it would be in compliance with the building code, according to information on the town’s website.

State coastal rules allow the repair of weather-related damage to oceanfront structures as long as the structure remains the same size, in the same location and the cost of the repairs does not exceed more than half of the market value of the existing structure.

State rules stipulate that “any and all necessary authorizations, approvals, or zoning and building permits” must be obtained at the local government level before work may begin on a project.

NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH — The town zoning board of adjustment is set to hold an evidentiary hearing later this month on a case of homeowners and their contractor cited for damaging dunes.

The hearing is to follow quasi-judicial procedures at 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 27, at the town hall, 2008 Loggerhead Court, North Topsail Beach.

The meeting is to hear and decide Case No. AA24-000001, an application by Matthew Davis, to appeal Citation 23-00117 dated Feb. 1, issued to owners of 114 North Permuda Wynd Drive, Philip and Kristen Buckley. The town alleges that the Buckleys’ contractor, Coastland Construction LLC, violated a town development ordinance and assessed a penalty to cover the cost of rebuilding damaged dunes.

Those interested in information pertaining to the public hearing should visit the town hall during business hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

A proposed management plan for New River Inlet in Onslow County calls for building a terminal groin at the erosion-battled north end of Topsail Island.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington District earlier this week published a notice of intent to prepare an environmental study for North Topsail Beach’s proposal to protect its shoreline.

The New River Inlet Master Management Plan for the north end of town includes building the hardened erosion control structure on the southwest shoulder of the inlet and placing fill material along the ocean shoreline.

This proposal comes years after North Topsail Beach attempted to curb chronic shoreline erosion at the north end by realigning the inlet channel and periodically renourishing the beach.

The realignment proved futile, the erosion rates at the north end only increased and the sand injection onto the beach rapidly washed away.

In 2014, the town applied for an emergency permit to build a sandbag revetment in front of homes, condominiums and infrastructure threated by the encroaching ocean. The town early that following year built about a 2,000 linear foot-long revetment, one that has been extended today to upwards of 3,600 linear feet.

Public comments will be taken after the draft environmental impact statement is released at a future date.

More information is available at https://saw-reg.usace.army.mil/PN/2023/SAW-2016-02091-PN.pdf

NORTH TOPSAIL BEACH – A group of property owners here hoping to salvage a proposed 50-year federal beachfront project North Topsail officials turned down last year because of funding issues wants out of the town’s limits.

But when it boils down to details of how and what it would take for those with properties in the southern section of the town to de-annex from North Topsail Beach and become part of neighboring Surf City, the likelihood of it actually happening doesn’t appear favorable to those pushing to get out.

Emotions ran high at a Friday, March 11, special meeting called by the North Topsail Beach Board of Aldermen on behalf of Rep. Phil Shepard, R-Onslow, who had asked to hold a meeting about the queries he’d been getting from the property owners.

Shepard told the standing-room-only crowd packed in the board’s chambers Friday that he was not taking a side but rather was there to explain the legal process of de-annexation and annexation.

Property owner George Fieser was first up at the podium to explain why he supports the annexation of the “Phase 5” area, a reference to the breakdown of North Topsail Beach’s beachfront for nourishment and dune projects.

Phase 5 is the southernmost 4½ miles of town and is not included in Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS, a federal designation that prohibits government funding such as Federal Emergency Management Agency money for properties within the system.

“We’re just a different community in that phase than other parts of the town,” Fieser said. “We have the opportunity for the next 50 years and we didn’t take that. It’s not just me, but it’s the state of North Carolina that benefits.”

North Topsail’s elected officials last year backed away from a proposed joint project with Surf City and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would secure routine nourishment of phase 5’s beachfront for 50 years.

After months of meetings, the town board concluded that, while they supported the project, the town simply could not fund its more than $33 million of the project’s cost.

The town still has another $14 million or so to pay off the U.S. Department of Agriculture loan it took out to cover the cost of a beach project in phase 5. The N.C. Local Government Commission would not permit the town to go into further debt.

Aldermen could not legally raise property taxes by the amount it would take to cover the joint project, the projected cost of which had grown exponentially from when it was first placed on the table by the Corps years ago.

North Topsail Beach aldermen last year discussed asking the North Carolina General Assembly to vote to approve the town raising the occupancy tax to generate additional revenue, a proposition that didn’t go far because of the powerful tourism lobby.

“There was not one board member that was against the project,” North Topsail Mayor Joann McDermon said. “It was, when it got down to the money and how it would affect all of the taxpayers town-wide,” not something the town could afford.

According to town officials, pro-annexation supporters are primarily property owners within one particular neighborhood, Village of Stump Sound, an area that consists largely of vacation rental homes along the beach and sound.

Shepard and a representative for North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore explained Friday that 100% of registered voters — meaning those who claim their homes in North Topsail Beach as their primary residence — in Phase 5 would have to vote in favor of annexation into Surf City.

“That’s an onerous thing to get 100 percent of the people,” to vote in favor of annexation, said Village of Stump Sound property owner Reed Abernathy.

And, Surf City’s town board would have to vote to approve annexing the nearly 5-mile stretch of Topsail Island.

If Surf City annexed that town would incur the USDA loan, extending town services to the additional properties, and have to come up with the more than $33 million portion of the joint project.

Surf City Mayor Doug Medlin said in a telephone interview Monday that town officials there would have to examine all potential costs associated with annexing Phase 5, if the property owners can get the land de-annexed.

“We’ll be glad to talk to them if they do de-annex,” he said. “We can’t say anything as far as what we can do until they’re de-annexed.”

That includes going to the Corps to find out whether Phase 5 could be put back into the plans.

The General Assembly is the only governing body that may approve de-annexation.

“That vote can go either way in the General Assembly,” Shepard said. “If you’re de-annexed and North Topsail cuts the water and sewer and everything off, there’s a lot to look at.”

Property owner Burgess Allison expressed his support for annexation and suggested the state has a “huge” interest in seeing to it that the project moves forward.

“The Outer Banks has seen this success first hand,” he said. “Here on Topsail Island, sadly, we are really stuck with old town boundary lines that stand in the way of moving this progress forward. Frankly, I think that the state legislature, especially if the law is you have to get 100 percent of every single voter to sign up for something, the state legislature can see the benefit of the Corps’ project.”

Several people in the audience applauded his comments.

Robert Box said that though he’s not a full-time resident, he as a property owner wants to see the project go forward in North Topsail Beach.

“I’m not thrilled that I’m hearing that our interests don’t count even through we’ve paid 100 percent of our property taxes,” he said. “This is game changing. This will preserve the legacy of the beaches for us. This is home. We will never sell. If we miss this window, it will not come again.”

Some suggested whether the best course of action is to ask Pender County, not Surf City, to annex.

The occupancy tax rate in North Topsail Beach is 6% and the revenues generated are split equally between the town and Onslow County.

The northernmost stretch of Surf City is in Onslow County.

But in Pender County, Surf City collects the full 6%. The town allocates revenues generated through its portion of the 3% for tourism-related activities and the money collected from the county tax goes toward beach nourishment projects, according to the town’s website.

Sandy Cofier, a full-time resident who lives in the Ocean City area of Phase 5 in North Topsail Beach, said she supports the joint federal project, but does not want to be de-annexed.

She urged the audience to think about how long the area might go without town services if Phase 5 were to be de-annexed.

“How long does it take to be annexed?” she asked. “That’s a question everybody should ask. We need to do something to fix the beaches.”

“We are working on that,” McDermon replied.

Phase 5 is currently getting sand injections through a project that entails trucking sand to the island. About 1,000 feet of beachfront will be renourished by April 30, when sand placement activities must halt for sea turtle nesting season.

Sand hauls are to resume for the remainder of Phase 5 in November. The FEMA project includes placing 636,000 cubic yards of sand along more than 12,000 feet of the shoreline.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is waiting on congressional approval of several draft revised maps for Coastal Barrier Resources System units, including a minor tweak of the map that includes more than half of North Topsail Beach.

The draft map for North Topsail Beach removes only about 2 ½ acres, a tiny fraction of what the town has, for years, been asking the federal government to omit from the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System, or CBRS.

About 56% of the Onslow County town is within the system, which was established in the early 1980s under the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, pronounced “cobra,” to discourage building on relatively undeveloped barrier islands by nixing federal funding and financial assistance in hurricane-prone, biologically rich areas.

This means anyone who owns property within a CBRS unit, for example, cannot participate in the National Flood Insurance Program or apply for a Veterans Affairs loan.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the maps, proposes a revision to Unit L06 in North Topsail Beach to correct land that was “inadvertently added to the CBRS in 2015,” according to the agency’s website.

“This error was primarily the result of challenges in georeferencing the original CBRS maps combined with the quality of aerial imagery available to the Service in the early 2000s, when the boundary for Unit L06 was first digitized from the 1990 paper maps,” the agency states. “The Service has prepared revised maps to reflect these minor changes and technical corrections, and has determined that no other changes are needed to these maps.”

The proposed change is one of seven draft revised maps the Fish and Wildlife Service submitted to Congress earlier this month. The draft maps also include units in South Carolina and Florida.

In all, 34 acres, primarily uplands, would be removed from the CBRS and a little more than 10,000 acres, mainly wetlands and open water, would be added to the system if Congress adopts the draft map.

The maps were last revised in 2019 after then-President Donald Trump signed The Strengthening Coastal Communities Act of 2018, which amended the CBRA to create more accurate digital maps of units within the CBRS.

The new law resulted in the removal from the CBRS of nearly 80 structures within a half-mile stretch of North Topsail Beach.

For years, the town has argued development started in North Topsail before Congress adopted CBRA.

The bridge linking the northern end of Topsail Island to the mainland was built 14 years before CBRA, according to information on the town’s website. The town incorporated in 1990.

“A 1982 Onslow County zoning map also documents direct access to paved roads for all lots, with a 1981 Fish and Wildlife infrastructure review confirming ‘paved road throughout the unit,’” the website states. “This significant infrastructure – evidence of development, which should have excluded North Topsail Beach from CBRA – was missed because of Fish and Wildlife’s flawed surveying methods.”

North Topsail Beach Mayor Joann McDermon and Interim Town Manager and police chief Bill Younginer did not return a call seeking comment.

The town has garnered support from congressional delegates who have in years past introduced legislation that would remove much of the town from the CBRA designation.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., last introduced bills in 2019 to revise the boundaries of Unit L06, but neither bill made it past congressional committees.

A spokesperson for Tillis did not respond to requests for comment.

A statement from Rouzer’s office indicates his continued support of the town, saying he was proud to join Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., in introducing legislation “to fix this problem.” Murphy replaced the late Rep. Walter B. Jones, who previously introduced legislation in support of the town, in a special election in 2019.

“The current CBRA lines must be revised to properly reflect the intent of the law and to allow for the disaster preparation work that all of Topsail Island deserves,” Rozer stated. “While it is a very heavy lift, we will continue to work to try to get this language cleared for passage in both the House and Senate during this Congress.”

Updated to include statewide awards

The Dare County Board of Commissioners approved during its regular meeting last week a $1 million grant from the state to help assuage the financial strain caused by last year’s Hurricane Dorian.

Like many counties and local and tribal governments, Dare County has been facing budget impacts caused by hurricane damage and applied for the  state-funded grant through the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, program, State Grants for Financially Distressed Local and Tribal Governments.

Governments can apply for grants of up to $1 million as short-term assistance to pay for everyday operating expenses or provide additional support for disaster recovery. Information on the grant application process is on NCORR’s ReBuild.NC.gov website.

“Our communities are committed to rebuilding smarter and stronger and these funds will help foster new partnerships and make North Carolina more resilient against future storms,” said Gov. Roy Cooper in a release.

Communities are also able to apply for zero-interest loans through NCORR, though the 2020 loan application period has closed. Another application period will be announced in the coming months for the revolving loans of up to $2 million. These loans are to help with disaster-related expenses while local governments wait for reimbursement from federal disaster response, recovery and resiliency programs such as those from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If approved, the loan principal must be repaid upon receiving federal reimbursements.

Clawson said that he identified what items the county needed that met the criteria outlined in the application.

“One of them was a vehicle for emergency management, and another one was if you had Hurricane Dorian costs that had not been reimbursed by FEMA or the state, and we have both of those. And then the rest, the grant application allowed you to use non-hurricane related — just straight up operating expenditures — you can use debt service, you can do payroll, I picked payroll,” he said.

The county, which applied for the grant Sept. 9, will use $55,000 for an emergency management vehicle that has been requested but not included in the FY2021 budget, $166,456 for debris costs from Hurricane Dorian that was ineligible for reimbursement, per FEMA, and $778,544 for economic relief to general fund, to be used for general payroll obligations, according to the county.

County commissioners approved a budget amendment for the grant and the memorandum of agreement during the meeting.

More than 40 local and tribal governments have been awarded about $50 million in grants and loans to help with operating costs and recovery expenses since the NCORR program was launched last year.

“Hurricanes damage not only individual homes, but also buildings and infrastructure that are critical for community stability and welfare,” said NCORR Chief Operating Officer Laura Hogshead in a statement. “Our office is committed to building local government partnerships that will support long-term disaster recovery throughout the state.”

Carteret County also received $1 million in grant money earlier this month from NCORR because of the impact recent major storms had on the budget.

“As a result of the hurricanes’ negative economic impact on the County’s operating budget, the award is a pivotal resource for our County. FEMA reimburses local government for direct cost incurred from disasters. It does not reimburse local governments for lost revenues, and these revenues pay operating expenses and debt service obligations.” said Dee Meshaw, Carteret County assistant manager, in a statement from the county. “By alleviating the need to use general fund money to pay for these debts, it will allow the County to be more resilient against future storms and continue to financially support future projects and improvements for our community.”

Pollocksville is using the $500,000 grant awarded in 2019 funds to reduce debt service, retain the services of a full-time employee to help with disaster mitigation and resiliency, and to cover additional accounting expenses and financial services, according to NCORR.

“The grant has been a financial lifesaver for our town,” said Mayor James V. Bender Jr.

In late 2018, Cooper established NCORR in the Department of Public Safety after the state experienced two devastating hurricanes in as many years.

The North Carolina General Assembly established the state recovery grants for county governments, incorporated municipalities and tribal governments to provide assistance under the Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Dorian Presidential Disaster declarations, according to the state.

NCORR announced in January that more funding was available through the grant and loan program established in 2019.

Cooper signed legislation Nov. 18, 2019, directing $10 million for NCORR to disperse as zero-interest loans that governments can use for recovery-related expenses while waiting for reimbursement from various federal programs. Additionally, $5 million was set aside for local government grants to help communities impacted by Hurricane Dorian. Those funds supplement $9 million in grant and loan funds for local governments that Cooper signed into law on September 2019.

The agency during the first round of funding in 2019 awarded more than $22.4 million in grants and loans to 22 local governments struggling financially because of costs related to Hurricane Florence.

The grants can be used to cover operating budget expenses not related to a disaster, such as payroll and payments to vendors for goods and services not related to disaster response and recovery, where nonpayment would result in a negative financial outcome. The grants can also be used for disaster response and recovery expenses denied for federal reimbursement, disaster-related repairs to facilities and infrastructure denied for federal reimbursement and debt service payments.

The following are the NCORR grants and loans to date for Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, counties and towns and reason for funding:

Grants 2019

• Cape Carteret: $500,000 for administrative expenditures such as payroll and debt service payments due to disaster recovery.
• River Bend: $300,000 for inspection specialist and a public works technician, vehicle used for the inspections and enforcement of building ordinances.
• Atlantic Beach: $500,000 for debt service payments, part-time building inspector.
• Emerald Isle: $370,000 for debt service payments.
• Navassa: $375,000 for stabilization of water and sewer fund.
• North Topsail Beach: $250,000 for debt service payment to USDA.

Loans 2019

• River Bend: $1 million for FEMA projects for debris removal, repairs to building, emergency response.
• Beaufort: $1 million for FEMA projects for debris removal, emergency response, cemetery clean up, additional payroll.
• Boiling Spring Lakes: $2 million for FEMA infrastructure projects.
• Jones County $2 million for FEMA Projects for debris removal, emergency response, utilities repair, inmate housing.
• Pamlico County: $2 million for FEMA projects for debris removal.
• Emerald Isle: $2 million for FEMA projects for debris removal.

Hurricane Florence Grants

• Belhaven: $97,500 for part-time building inspector.
• Oriental: $86,593 for Public Works position for three years, vehicle for disaster recovery support.
• Vandemere: $80,167 for bobcat excavator.
• Navassa: $500,000 for payroll obligation, debt services obligations, vendor payments.
• New Bern: $328,500 for resiliency consultant, truck.
• Morehead City Fire-EMS: $174,000 for equipment for water search rescue team.
• River Bend: $363,000 for debt services, payroll obligations.

Hurricane Dorian Grants 2020

• Hyde County: $500,000 for administrative functions to assist with disaster recovery, affordable housing study and $2,214,000 for budget shortfalls, individual assistance costs, housing recovering contractors.
• Dare County: $1 million for disaster expenses denied by FEMA, general payroll obligations, emergency operations vehicle.
• Carteret County $1 million for debt service obligations.

Loans 2020

• Topsail Beach: $2 million for FEMA beach nourishment fund project.
• Hyde County: $2 million for FEMA debris removal from Hurricane Dorian.
• Pollocksville: $1.66 million for FEMA project for elevation of main sewer pumping station and also a project to relocate town hall/train station.

The following are the loans and grants awarded statewide as part of the program:

Grants 2019

• Fair Bluff: $500,000 for administrative positions to assist with disaster recovery for three years.
• Pollocksville: $500,000 for debt service payments, engineering support .
• Robbins: $500,000 for debt service payments, computer equipment, equipment for waste water treatment plant.
• Boardman: $200,000 for administrative expenses such as payroll, utilities, construction expenses for town hall.
• Jones County: $1 million for debt service payments, emergency management position to assist with disaster recovery.
• Maysville: $450,000 for debt service payments, general payroll , radio read meters.
• Lumberton: $500,000 for debt service payment for water and sewer fund.
• Bladenboro: $500,000 for administrative expenses such as payroll and debt service payments.
• Trenton: $405,000 for sewer construction, repairs to city buildings.
• Elizabethtown: $500,000 for debt service payments, code enforcement officer, economic development manager, consultant.
• Chadbourn: $375,000 for general payroll obligations, water sewer repairs, assistant town manager, backhoe.
• Tabor City: $25,000 for position to Support Disaster Recovery Coordination.

Loans 2019

• Fair Bluff: $700,000 Debt Services and FEMA HMGP obligations for the town.
• Boardman: $130,000 FEMA HMGP Project obligations.
• Jones County: $2 million for FEMA projects for debris removal, emergency response, utilities repair, inmate housing expenses.
• Lumberton: $2 million for FEMA projects for debris removal.
• Robbins: 1,600,000 for various FEMA projects to include wastewater treatment repair, emergency response, and pump station repair.

Grants Florence 2020

• Marion: $245,773 for funds for administrative functions to assist with disaster recovery, affordable housing study.
• Tabor City: $ 475,000 for position to support disaster recovery coordination.
• Cerro Gordo: $358,085 for administrative expenses such as payroll, bonds, utilities water and sewer fund expenses.
• Jones County: $1 million for repairs to the water pump station that was denied by FEMA.
• Town of Fair Bluff: $500,000 for drainage equipment.
• Hoke County: $235,215 for equipment for water search rescue team.
• Rose Hill: $188,000.00 for debt services, payroll obligations.
• Wallace: $500,000 for debris removal, debris management consultant, and community development officer.
• Wilson County: $406,000 for debt services.
• Red Springs: $500,000 for consulting services, debt service obligations, payroll obligation.
• Pembroke: $280,050 for disaster recovery coordinator.
• Clarkton $96,000 for excavator.
• Maysville: $500,000 for payroll obligation, debt services obligation.
• White Lake: $155,000 for position to support disaster recovery coordination.

Loans 2020

• Princeville: $2 million for various FEMA projects to include town hall repairs, senior center construction and repair costs.
• Lumbee Tribe of NC: $2 million for construction and engineering costs for FEMA projects.
• Marion: $450,120 for FEMA project for Lincoln Avenue bridge reconstruction.
• Elizabethtown: $2 Million For FEMA Project for repair of local cemetery.
• Red Springs: $1,024,608 for FEMA projects for debris removal, emergency protective measure, repairs to buildings.
• Jones County: $2 million for FEMA project for buyout.

WASHINGTON, D.C.  –  Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., announced Wednesday that he had reintroduced a bill to change 30-year-old federal mapping that Jones and others say “incorrectly” placed much of North Topsail Beach off-limits to federal money for development and disaster assistance, including the National Flood Insurance Program.

In 1982, the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, was enacted to discourage development of hurricane-prone and biologically rich U.S. coastal areas. Jones and North Topsail Beach officials have long maintained that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s mappers in the early 1980s incorrectly classified more than 6,000 acres at the north end of Topsail Island as “undeveloped.”

While the area was largely undeveloped at the time, the designation was made years after the causeway linking North Topsail Beach to the mainland was built in the 1960s and county roads, water, sewer and power were provided to the north end.

Jones’ bill would direct the Secretary of Interior to revise the CBRA map for North Topsail Beach.

“North Topsail Beach has provided extensive documentation to show that in 1982, the area was already under development,” Jones said in a statement.  “As a matter of fairness, it is time to correct this error.”

The bill was referred to the House Natural Resources Committee.

North Carolina Republican Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr have introduced a similar bill in the Senate.