The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Flood Resiliency Blueprint program has scheduled a public information session on draft flood resilience plans for two North Carolina river basins.

During the July 20 virtual session, officials will provide information and gather feedback on draft plans for the Lumber River Basin Action Strategy and the Tar-Pamlico River Basin Action Strategy.

The Webex session will begin at 6 p.m. using meeting number/access code 2424 744 7031, password blueprint (25837746 when dialing from a phone). To join by telephone dial +1-415-655-0003.

River basin action strategies tailor flood resilience plans to each basin’s unique characteristics and needs, and outline actionable steps to empower communities to proactively reduce flooding impacts.

The strategies were developed using data from the Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool with input from local Blueprint partners and the River Basin Advisory Groups.

DEQ is accepting public comment through a public feedback form on the draft river basin strategies through July 27. Comments may also be submitted by emailing the Blueprint Program at blueprint@deq.nc.gov with “RBAS Feedback” in the subject line.

The North Carolina General Assembly tasked DEQ with developing the Flood Resiliency Blueprint in 2021 to support the planning, evaluation and implementation of flood resilience strategies.

The Blueprint is designed to equip local governments, the state and supporting organizations with data, tools and processes to better understand flood risk, identify community needs and guide strategic investments to reduce the risk of floods and strengthen resilience.

DEQ has awarded more than $43 million for 84 Blueprint projects in six of the state’s 17 river basins.

The Lumber and Tar-Pamlico river basin action strategies are to be delivered to the General Assembly later this summer.

Lawmakers on Thursday sent their approved and long-awaited budget to Gov. Josh Stein, who on Tuesday signed the $34.4 billion spending plan, one that includes notable coastal environmental spending and policy provisions, as well as a blow for commuters who rely on the state ferries that have long been free to ride.

Republican leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly unveiled the measure, Senate Bill 257, on Tuesday, June 30. Despite short notice and the exclusion of Democrats in negotiations, the bill passed both chambers last week with bipartisan support. It’s the state’s first full budget in more than two years.

On Thursday, Stein told reporters he would carefully weigh its provisions, some of which further diminish the governor’s appointment powers.

“North Carolinians expect their elected officials to come together across our differences to deliver for people,” said Stein in a statement released upon signing the budget, in which he also added that the budget addresses serious concerns such as clean, safe water and disaster recovery.

Stein said the budget “makes meaningful investments” in community colleges and increases salaries for teachers and public safety officers. But the measure “has real flaws” and “unconstitutional and wrong-headed provisions,” the governor said.

“The legislature slashed more than 1,000 state government positions, making it harder for us to keep people safe and healthy,” Stein said in the statement.

The budget includes a provision mandating that the North Carolina Department of Transportation begin charging tolls on the state’s four free vehicle ferry routes. The measure does not set fare amounts. This prompted Sen. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, and Sen. Norman Sanderson, R-Pamlico, to cast preliminary “no” votes earlier last week, but both senators voted affirmatively in the final tally. Sanderson had been successful in striking down proposed ferry tolls during his tenure in the legislature.

Coastal environmental advocates were largely pleased with the bill’s coastal provisions, including those pertaining to water, wastewater, and stormwater projects. Among these are Flood Blueprint and other resiliency projects, creation of a state-nonprofit partnership with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, publisher of Coastal Review, to remove abandoned and derelict vessels from waterways, measures to protect wildlife and natural lands, and efforts to study and address per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, pollution.

“This is a very strong budget for North Carolina’s coast,” said Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis. “From investments in removing derelict vessels and improving stormwater management to addressing PFAS, the legislature and governor have reinforced their bipartisan commitment to making our coastal waters cleaner and safer. These investments will also strengthen the coastal economy by protecting the natural resources that support our communities, businesses, and way of life.”

The nonprofit Coastal Federation was also more fully empowered to establish and administer a stormwater retrofit pilot cost-share program and award grants, including to support a temporary position in the Division of Energy, Mineral, and Land Resources. This position would be to provide compliance assistance for existing stormwater permitholders.

The Coastal Federation was also awarded a $1 million grant for its Center for Coastal Protection and Restoration in Carteret County. That project will be completed this summer.

The budget incorporates language from Senate Bill 1053, the 2026 Water Safety Act, introduced by Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, and with Sen. Danny Earl Britt Jr., a Republican representing Hoke, Robeson and Scotland counties, and Sen. Val Applewhite, a Democrat representing Cumberland County, as cosponsors.

This section defines “emerging contaminants” as PFAS and 1,4-dioxane and establishes an Emerging Contaminant Mitigation Fund under the Division of Water Infrastructure seeded with $45 million nonrecurring under the Department of Environmental Quality to support efforts to offset the compounds’ negative effects on municipal and county public water and wastewater systems. The fund will also go to support detection, reduction, and prevention of exposure to PFAS and 1,4-dioxane, and related research and development. Another $10 million is to cover costs of emergency drinking water supplies resulting from emerging contaminants.

“For nearly a decade, families in the Cape Fear region have carried the burden of PFAS contamination they did nothing to create,” Lee said in a statement in response to Coastal Review. “This budget delivers the most significant state investment yet in confronting that problem: a new $45 million Emerging Contaminant Mitigation Fund to help local utilities test for and treat PFAS, more than $10 million in additional help for families on private wells, and a statewide sampling initiative to trace these compounds back to their sources. The fund is also built for the long haul, because when polluters settle in court, those dollars will flow directly into cleaning up our water. Add the moratorium on new water transfers out of the Cape Fear basin, and this budget treats clean water as exactly what it is: a public health imperative and the foundation of our region’s future.”

The budget authorizes the State Water Infrastructure Authority to award grants from the fund on a priority basis to public water or wastewater system operators to cover costs associated with sampling, treatment, emergency response, remediation and technical assistance to eliminate PFAS and 1,4-dioxane discharges.

About $7.68 million in federal infrastructure money is budgeted for grants for projects addressing emerging contaminants. And $16.5 million in federal Clean Water Act Emergency Response funding will go toward grants to help wastewater systems address emergencies.

The budget appropriates $1 million in recurring funds to DEQ for positions and operating costs associated with the increased need for emerging contaminant research and response. The department may create up to five positions for this purpose. An additional $7 million in nonrecurring funds are provided for the collection of samples for PFAS and 1,4-dioxane research to be conducted by the North Carolina Collaboratory at the University of North Carolina, as directed in the Water Safety Act language.

The Collaboratory is appropriated $15 million for research, development, and remedial activities associated with PFAS and its effects on firefighters. This includes funding of a partnership with the Office of the State Fire Marshal and North Carolina State University to develop and implement a pilot program for deep-cleaning firefighter protective gear to mitigate PFAS exposure and remediation activities related to PFAS at or near fire stations.

The Collaboratory, in cooperation with DEQ, is to conduct a two-phased study to identify and quantify measurable industrial PFAS discharges in the state, first, by collecting samples from publicly owned treatments works and National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permitholders and then sampling other significant dischargers. The final Phase 1 report is due to DEQ, the Environmental Management Commission and the Environmental Review Commission no later than March 31, 2028, and Phase 2 no later than March 31, 2029.

The Collaboratory must also conduct a study of PFAS contamination in biosolids.

The Collaboratory is further directed to conduct a Cape Fear River Basin study with $1.5 million appropriated for that purpose through the end of the decade, when a report is due, and conduct a study of long-term water supply needs in river basins experiencing high rates of growth.

Of the total $4.5 million in Collaboratory operating funds, $170,000 nonrecurring is to support the FerryMon water quality monitoring program that employs sensors mounted to state ferries, and $160,000 nonrecurring for the ModMon river monitoring, a Neuse River Estuary modeling and monitoring project.

DEQ’s total appropriation, net of $295.5 million in receipts, is $111.9 million.

Abandoned vessels

The budget directs the Wildlife Resources Commission to contract with the Coastal Federation to remove and dispose of commission-identified abandoned and derelict vessels with priority given to those in public waters. This refers to vessels left for more than 30 days in a wrecked, junked, or substantially damaged or dismantled condition, docked, grounded, or beached upon the property of another without owner consent.

The measure also provides for expedited vessel abatement during declared emergencies and liability protection for removal work absent gross negligence.

Lee told Coastal Review that owner protections are “built in” to the legislation. After a 30-day notice period, such vessels are deemed forfeited. Funding for removal is to come from boating registration fees, 10% of the total, which is estimated to generate about $1.01 million.

“Our coast has lived with abandoned and derelict vessels for too long,” Lee said. “This budget finally builds a standing program to get them out of our waters, with a dedicated funding stream and the Coastal Federation as the state’s partner on removal.”

The Coastal Federation launched its first coordinated, large-scale, marine debris cleanup in 2019 and has worked with the Wildlife Resources Commission on abandoned boat removals since 2021. The organization’s larger clean water effort dates back much earlier.

“Several of the investments included in this year’s budget strengthen programs that have been central to the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s mission of protecting and restoring the coast for decades,” Federation Chief Program Officer Ana Živanović-Nenadović told Coastal Review Tuesday. Noting the bipartisan support of coastal conservation, she explained how reducing amounts of polluted stormwater runoff keeps estuarine waters clean, supports shellfish harvesting and sustains healthy fisheries.

“Funding for abandoned and derelict vessel removal improves public access and navigation while restoring habitat. Together, these investments will deliver lasting benefits for North Carolina’s coastal ecosystems, communities, and economy,” she said.

Resilience spending

The budget appropriates $4.5 million for projects defined in the Flood Resiliency Blueprint, a planning tool geared to increase community resilience to flooding, and $850,000 for time-limited, associated DEQ positions. Another $250,000 is appropriated to the Resilient Coastal Communities Program to convert two temporary staff positions to permanent. This program administered by the Division of Coastal Management provides financial and technical assistance to help local governments in the 20 coastal counties become more resilient to flooding.

Other provisions

Lee said the budget also modernizes the state’s beach and inlet management planning with a required four-year cycle of planned maintenance and resiliency projects and with DEQ’s updated plan due July 1, 2027. The measure provides roughly $11.5 million combined for coastal storm risk management at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, and Kure Beach.

The budget eliminates two Department of Environmental Quality positions assigned to the Environmental Justice initiative. It also eliminates the state Office of Environmental Education.

Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, released a statement in which he said he was “glad” Stein had signed the bill into law and that he “recognizes how vital this budget is for the people of North Carolina.”

The North Carolina Democratic Party also released a statement, noting that after more than 1,000 days, the state finally has a budget that addresses some of the most urgent needs. “While this budget isn’t perfect, it takes real steps in the right direction,” party officials said.

The public is invited to ask questions and share their thoughts on a draft flood resilience plan tailored to the unique characteristics and needs of the Neuse River Basin.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Flood Resilience Blueprint program is hosting a virtual public information session on the draft Neuse River Basin Action Strategy at 6 p.m. June 11.

The strategy identifies actionable steps, including scientific data, local priorities and long-term sustainability objections, to enhance flood resilience across the river basin.

The River Basin Action Strategy equips local governments, the state and supporting organizations with data, tools and processes “to better understand flood risk, identify community needs and guide strategic investments to reduce flood risk and strengthen resilience,” according to a DEQ release.

The strategy, the largest proactive statewide flood mitigation in the state’s history, was developed using data from the Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool and input from the Neuse River Basin Advisory Group and local Blueprint partners.

The virtual meeting will be held via Webex with meeting number/access code 2422 493 1280 and password blueprint. To join by telephone call +1-415-655-0003 and use passcode 25837746.

DEQ is accepting public input on the draft strategy through June 12 through a public feedback form or by email to blueprint@deq.nc.gov with the subject line “Neuse RBAS Feedback.”

DEQ was directed in 2021 by the North Carolina General Assembly to develop a statewide Flood Resiliency Blueprint, the heart of which is an online decision support tool designed to help local governments, agencies and nongovernmental partners develop, evaluate and prioritize resilience actions.

There are 17 river basins in the state. So far, DEQ has awarded more than $43 million to 84 blueprint projects in six river basins.

Dare county residents and property owners are invited to participate in an interactive workshop on Tuesday to review and discuss key preliminary findings from an assessment of the vulnerability of unincorporated areas to flooding.

The North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program is hosting the action development program from 5-7 p.m. in room 238 of the Dare County Administration Building, 954 Marshall Collins Drive, Manteo.

The workshop will be a drop-in, open house-style event with interactive stations where participants can learn about the program, review findings of from the assessment, and provide input on topics ranging from natural resources, stormwater management, infrastructure and residential adaptation in unincorporated Dare County.

The workshop will begin with a brief presentation. Refreshments and light snacks will be provided.

The assessment was conducted by a consulting firm through the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which is administered by the Division of Coastal Management to support coastal resilience goals, assess community capacity, and identify and prioritize projects that strengthen resilience to coastal hazards. The division is under North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

North Carolina’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool now includes enhanced flood mapping and risk information for five river basins in Eastern North Carolina.

The online tool designed to help local governments, agencies and nongovernmental partners develop, evaluate and prioritize resilience actions has been updated with new nonregulatory or “advisory” flood maps for the Cape Fear, Lumber, Neuse, Tar-Pamlico, and White Oak river basins.

The need for new maps and modeling efforts were identified in the draft blueprint, which was created by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality at the direction of the General Assembly.

The updates were made through extensive coordination with local leaders, other state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, university researchers and evaluating programs in other states like Texas and Louisiana for guidance, according to an NCDEQ release.

NCDEQ Secretary Reid Wilson, in the release, stated that research from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill found that more than 90,000 buildings in Eastern North Carolina flooded at least once from 1996 until 2020, and 43% of those buildings were outside the mapped Federal Emergency Management Agency floodplain. “The General Assembly’s investment in updated modeling and mapping means that North Carolinians in five river basins now have a more accurate picture of their actual flooding risk, Wilson said.”   

The improved mapping was done in partnership with the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program, one overseen by the North Carolina Emergency Management.

“NC Emergency Management is proud to provide flood mapping support to DEQ which will produce additional flood mapping products to build resilient communities across the state,” N.C. Emergency Management Director Will Ray stated. “As part of a multi-year advisory flood data web application development project, which began in 2022, the NCEM Floodplain Management Program was able to provide data and resources to assist in this project, once again showing the whole-of-community approach to disaster preparedness In North Carolina.” 

The mapping includes numerical models that simulate surface runoff and routing on a landscape, and are available for previously unmapped or undermapped basins too small to be included on regulatory maps and extend beyond what is normally included in traditional regulatory floodplain mapping.

The maps also include areas that flood despite being many miles from the nearest stream and allow communities to explore their future risk associated with projected growth patterns and the changing climate fueling more frequent and severe storms and sea level rise.

“These new maps, available through our Flood Resiliency Blueprint Tool, mean that Eastern North Carolinians can make more informed decisions and better investments to build their resilience in the face of more frequent and severe flooding,” Flood Resiliency Blueprint Manager Stuart Brown said in a release.

River Basin Action Strategies for the five river basins are expected to be available this summer, and new maps for the French Broad River Basin available this fall, according to DEQ.

A federal judge last week ordered the Trump administration to restore millions in disaster mitigation funds previously awarded for projects across the country, including dozens in North Carolina.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns last Friday granted a motion to force the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reinstate its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program.

Stearns is the same judge who, on Dec. 11, 2025, sided with North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and 19 other state attorneys general, declaring FEMA unlawfully terminated the BRIC program.

Roughly $200 million had already been awarded to North Carolina communities, including those in coastal counties, for projects aimed at reducing and preventing storm damage, when the Trump administration decided to axe BRIC.

Despite Stearns’ issuance of an immediate, permanent injunction restoring BRIC, the administration has yet to comply and release the funds.

Jackson joined other attorneys general in heading back to court to ask the judge to force FEMA to comply.

“FEMA tried to cancel $200 million for North Carolina,” Jackson stated in a March 6 release. “We took them to court, we won, and then they defied the court order and refused to pay. So we just took them back to court – and won again. FEMA has 14 days to show the court they are complying. The clock is ticking, and we are ready to do this again if necessary.”

FEMA has 14 days from the time of the judge’s order to identify all selected, phased, and pending BRIC projects, and provide the steps the agency must take to reverse the termination of the program and provide a timeline to the states for existing project funding. The agency has also been ordered to open new grant applications within 21 days of the March 6 ruling.

Dare County officials invite residents, business owners and others with a stake in the unincorporated areas to participate in a brief survey to help inform the development of a resiliency strategy.

Through funding from the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which is administered by the N.C. Division of Coastal Management and supported by the N.C. General Assembly and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Dare County is assessing vulnerabilities and identifying priority actions to address both short-term and long-term risks. This planning effort provides a roadmap for future investments that strengthen safety, equity and environmental protection.

“As a low-lying coastal community, Dare County faces growing challenges from flooding, hurricanes, erosion and sea-level rise,” according to an item in the county’s February emailed newsletter. “A resilient future means reducing these risks while protecting homes, businesses, infrastructure, natural resources and economic assets that are central to the county’s identity.”

Officials define resilience as a community’s ability to prevent, withstand, respond to and recover from disruptions caused by natural hazards.

Dare County is home to six municipalities: Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head and Manteo. Unincorporated areas include Avon, Buxton, Colington, East Lake, Frisco, Hatteras, Manns Harbor, Martins Point, Mashoes, Rodanthe, Salvo, Stumpy Point, Wanchese, Waves and areas just outside of municipalities.

Officials said the plan for unincorporated areas of the county builds on the resilience strategy that was completed for Hatteras Island in 2022.

Officials said that community participation is essential to the process. “Local experiences and perspectives help ensure the resiliency strategy reflects countywide priorities and positions Dare County to pursue future funding for implementation.”

Those who want a say in unincorporated Dare County’s resilience are encouraged to complete the survey by the end of March.

For more information, contact Dare County Grants and Waterways Administrator Barton Grover at Barton.Grover@DareNC.gov.

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

The call from the North Carolina Attorney General’s office late last year relayed news of a victory.

A federal judge in Boston on Dec. 11, 2025, sided with Jeff Jackson and 19 other state attorneys general in their case against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, informed the caller.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled that FEMA unlawfully terminated a federal grant program under which roughly $200 million had been awarded to North Carolina communities, including Pollocksville, to tailor projects to reduce and prevent storm damage.

Stearns issued an immediate, permanent injunction restoring the Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities, or BRIC, program.

“And, that’s all we’ve heard,” Pollocksville Mayor Jay Bender said. “We’ve never heard anything official from FEMA saying yay or nay. We have not heard anything from North Carolina Emergency Management saying yay or nay.”

FEMA funnels BRIC grants to state emergency management offices, which are responsible for managing and passing funds on to grant recipients.

N.C. Division of Emergency Management’s Justin Graney, chief of external affairs and communications, said in an email that the agency had not been notified by FEMA as to when funding would be released.

“NCEM continues to work closely with FEMA to determine the next steps and looks forward to a resolution,” Graney said.

But any such resolution could be, at a minimum, months away.

The federal government still has time to appeal Stearns’ decision. The 60-day window to challenge his ruling closes before the middle of next month.

The N.C. Department of Justice’s communications office confirmed in an Jan. 26 email that FEMA had, at that time, not filed an appeal in the case.

“We are closely monitoring FEMA’s compliance with the court order,” the email states.

FEMA’s news desk at its regional office in Atlanta did not respond to requests for comment. 

The agency announced without any forewarning last April it was canceling the BRIC program, one created under President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

But just three months or so into Trump’s second term, an unnamed FEMA spokesperson stated in the announcement that the agency considered BRIC to be “wasteful” and “political.”

FEMA later clarified only projects that had been completed would be fully funded, erasing congressionally appropriated funding for more than 60 infrastructure projects in North Carolina.

Jackson joined a lawsuit filed last July by a coalition of state attorneys general who argued FEMA’s termination of the program was unlawful.

The court agreed, concluding that FEMA did not have the authority to end BRIC because Congress, not the federal agency, appropriated funds for that program.

“The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,” Stearns wrote.

“Our towns spent years doing everything FEMA asked them to do to qualify for this funding, and they were in the middle of building real protections against storms when FEMA suddenly broke its word,” Jackson said in a release following the court ruling. “Keeping water systems working and keeping homes out of floodwater isn’t politics – it’s basic safety.”

Pollocksville and Leland were selected to each receive about $1.1 million through the BRIC program.

Leland plans to relocate the town’s sewer system away from Sturgeon Creek from which floodwaters rise often after storms and natural disasters.

Jessica Jewell, Leland’s communications manager, said in an email that the town is exploring other grant opportunities to help fund their project.

At the time of FEMA’s announcement last April, Pollocksville had already paid out about $18,000 in legal, advertising and procurement fees ahead of the project the Jones County town had secured to raise six commercial buildings in its downtown next to the Trent River.

“I mean, this is a project that we thought was done,” Bender said. “We had a contractor. That was probably one of the most frustrating things. We were already under contract.”

Before the state attorneys general filed their lawsuit, town officials were contacted by the state and encouraged to submit their project proposal through the Hazard Mitigation Grant program. The HMGP is federally funded, but managed by the state Division of Emergency Management.

“Having to file all the same paperwork over – I don’t know that I can convey to you the complexity of the paperwork,” Bender said. “The positive thing about this, going through HMGP as opposed to going through FEMA, is that HMGP will be at no cost to the town. There’s no match and so that will obviously make it a more financially attractive proposal than FEMA.”

He went on to say that the town will take “the best deal that comes the quickest.”

“I will feel much more confident when there is an actual piece of paper to sign and when I see people on the street preparing elevate a building,” he said.

Rachel Veal, conservation horticulturist with the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island, is the featured speaker for the second webinar in the “Landscapes that Last: The What, Why and How of Nature-friendly Landscaping” webinar series created by North Carolina Sea Grant and the Coastal Landscapes Initiative.

The series explores sustainable practices that protect North Carolina’s unique coastal environment. Registration is open for the second webinar set for noon on Jan. 15, 2026, on the Zoom platform.

Veal, in her role at the aquarium, oversees plant selection, installation and ongoing maintenance throughout the facility, and surrounding grounds.

The webinar session will focus on “The What, Why and How of Nature-friendly Landscaping,” organizers said.

What makes a landscape truly sustainable, and why does it matter along North Carolina’s coast? This introductory session explores the core principles of conservation landscaping and how they support healthy land and water systems.

Participants will learn practical, science-based concepts for eco-friendly landscaping that will help you make informed choices and create thriving, resilient coastal properties.

Each session in the “Landscapes that Last” series features subject matter experts who will share practical strategies ranging from choosing salt-tolerant plants and conserving trees to improving stormwater ponds and sourcing eco-friendly plants. The series is for coastal residents, local governments, homeowner associations and nurseries and aims to build shared knowledge and healthier coastal communities.

 Professional development credits are available for the N.C. Environmental Education Certification Program: Criteria III or Continuing Education.

More information about the rest of the series is online.

The sector known as the Blue Economy, which includes companies operating on oceans and waterways that are focused on environmental sustainability, saw a 1.36% decline in November, according to the University of North Carolina Wilmington Blue Economy Index, but still showed relative stability compared with industrial benchmarks.

By comparison, in November, the S&P 500 was down 0.57%, the MSCI All World Index, which measures global equity portfolio performance, dropped 0.66%, and the S&P Industrials Index ended the month with a 2.07% decline.

The Blue Economy Index (Bloomberg Ticker: BLUEECO) slipped from 2,592.91 to 2,557.57, “reflecting broad-based softness across global equity markets,” according to a UNCW news release.

“November’s decline was driven by weakness across industrial, maritime, and consumer-related segments as global risk sentiment softened,” the release continues. “Cooling manufacturing activity, lower freight demand in key trans-Pacific routes, and cautious spending patterns in developed markets contributed to a more defensive posture among investors.”

The November results, while reflecting what UNCW called “a broadly negative month for global markets,” were buoyed by the index’s diverse mix of marine transport, renewable infrastructure, and essential services companies.

Consumer discretionary spending was down 5.71%, reflecting weaker seasonal demand for leisure, travel and discretionary goods. “Slowing economic momentum and reduced spending appetite weighed on retail-linked and service-oriented holdings,” UNCW said.

Consumer staples, however, increased 1.18% in November, the month’s only gain. “Strong demand for essential goods, along with resilient pricing in food and aquaculture producers, supported modest gains despite broader market weakness,” according to the university.

Utilities were down 1.48%, reflecting what UNCW called “softer sentiment toward renewable and grid-focused firms as project timelines and regulatory decisions remained in flux. Nonetheless, core power and distribution operators maintained stable operational fundamentals.”

Industrials declined 1.13%, which UNCW said was due to lower freight volumes, moderating shipbuilding activity and softer machinery demand across Asia and Europe. “Despite the downturn, the sector remained more resilient than the broader industrial benchmark,” UNCW said.

Notable gains that helped cushion overall Blue Economy Index performance included Himalaya Shipping, which rose 20.48%; Vestas Wind Systems, which posted a 16.62% gain as renewable equipment supply chain sentiment improved and turbine orders rebounded in key markets; and Wallenius Wilhelmsen, which posted a 14.95% gain driven by vehicle logistics demand and continued strength in roll-on/roll-off shipping activity.

“Together, these names demonstrated the index’s capacity for selective outperformance even during periods of broader market weakness,” according to the release.

The Blue Economy Index was developed in collaboration among the UNCW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Alliance for the Blue Economy, or AllBlue, and the Cameron School of Business, and it relies on data from FactSet. UNCW says the index “represents a fusion of academic insight, environmental science, and financial market expertise.”

The index measures the performance of leading global firms that demonstrate both commercial viability and environmental responsibility, aligning with the World Bank’s definition of the Blue Economy: “the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods, and jobs while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem.”

It serves to provide investors “a timely and transparent benchmark for evaluating the sustainable growth potential of ocean-based sectors such as shipping, offshore energy, aquaculture, and marine infrastructure,” according to the release.

The University of North Carolina’s Center for Marine Science has been awarded a $500,000 grant to help enhance flood safety and resilience efforts in New Hanover County.

With the two-year planning grant, CMS will convene a Flood Resilience Consortium “that unites agencies and organizations focused on community preparedness, facilitating outreach, workshops, research, and implementation planning to guide long-term flood resilience efforts,” according to a release from The Endowment, which awarded the grant.

“This consortium will connect the many agencies and experts already working on flood issues, allowing them to move forward with shared priorities and clear roles,” The Endowment’s Director of Community Safety Mary Vail Ware stated in the release.

The Endowment was established with proceeds from the sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center from the county to Novant Health five years ago. Since that time, millions in grant funds have been awarded to projects and endeavors in the community.

The grant “will help align ongoing resilience efforts, pinpoint high-risk areas, and guide cost-effective solutions that reduce future impacts and support faster recovery,” the release states.

The consortium will produce an inventory of existing resources and tools, including maps, models, and data, a plan detailing vulnerabilities, priority projects, timelines and responsibilities, and a funding strategy that aligns public, private and philanthropic investments with the most critical initiatives.

“This is about building a community that can withstand, adapt, and bounce back,” Ware said. “By investing in early planning and bringing partners together, we’re laying the foundation for solutions that safeguard our environment, infrastructure, and future.”

“Preparing for the future means learning from the past,” Sophie Dagenais, The Endowment’s interim president and chief executive officer, said in the release. “We remember the storms that have shaped this community, and we are committed to supporting efforts strengthening New Hanover County’s infrastructure, so residents, businesses, and ecosystems are better protected. This investment supports a coordinated, data-driven approach to flood resilience.”

Hatteras Islanders will not soon forget Hurricane Isabel, which formed a new inlet and destroyed the only highway connection when it slammed the island Sept. 18, 2003.

The storm and its aftermath further increased residents’ sense of isolation and their appreciation for the people who make their living on the water and are credited with restarting the local economy.

Nearly a quarter century later, an annual event celebrates the hurricane’s heroes, the commercial fishing and commercial charter operators, and the islanders’ perseverance amid the devastation. This year’s Day at the Docks is set for Sept. 19-20.

The family-friendly event offers numerous activities along the waterfront and docks in Hatteras Village.

Events include a fishing contest, live music, maritime storytelling and cooking demonstrations. There will be an education tent that features a variety of organizations that support the coast through advocacy, education and habitat restoration and preservation.

The groups include the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review and whose representatives will be on hand to share information about National Estuaries Week, Sept. 20-27, and its work in partnership with the South Atlantic Salt Marsh initiative.

At the Coastal Federation tent, visitors can join interactive activities to learn about nature-based solutions and ongoing projects that strengthen the community’s coastal resilience. Guests will also be invited to share the places that matter most to them, helping guide future efforts to protect and restore the coast.

The organizers’ website has more information and Day at the Docks event schedules.

Part of a series about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

POLLOCKSVILLE – North Carolina’s attorney general is confident federal funding unceremoniously stripped from local governments earlier this year will be reinstated under a court ruling.

“I think we’re going to win in court,” Jeff Jackson said Tuesday afternoon. “I think our argument is very strong.”

Jackson had just wrapped up a short tour of Pollocksville’s Main Street, where the town’s longtime mayor pointed to building after building tapped to be raised higher off the ground and out of the path of future flooding that might spill over the banks of the Trent River.

“This building’s got great potential,” Mayor Jay Bender said as the two men strolled a sidewalk toward the river. One that, in September 2018, rose more than 25 feet when Hurricane Florence dumped more than 30 inches of rain.

Floodwaters forced most of the town’s residents to evacuate and destroyed or damaged more than 80% of its buildings.

“There’s nothing woke, there’s nothing political, there’s nothing wasteful,” Bender said to Jackson.

There’s also nothing left of the federal program that helped communities tailor projects to reduce and prevent damage from future storms.

Four days before Pollocksville officials were to sign contracts to kickstart their project to raise buildings, President Donald Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency killed the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, grants program.

The agency said only projects that have been completed will be fully funded.

Gone was the nearly $1.1 million in funding this small Jones County town had worked so hard to secure through a process vetted by FEMA for more than 30 months.

“The rug was pulled out from under us,” Bender said.

A coalition of 20 state attorneys general, including Jackson, filed a lawsuit on July 16 in a federal court in Boston accusing FEMA of unlawfully terminating the BRIC program.

“The basic argument is that was not FEMA money to cancel,” Jackson said during a press conference under a picnic shelter in the town’s waterfront park. “That was congressional money. Congress gave that money to FEMA and told FEMA how to spend it. They said we want you to spend it helping small towns like Pollocksville defend themselves against the next flood. That is exactly what Pollocksville was doing with this money.”

Tuesday’s visit to Pollocksville was his second in recent days to a North Carolina town awarded BRIC funding only to have it ripped away.

Several days ago, Jackson went to Hillsborough to visit a pumping station that flooded when Tropical Storm Chantal swept through parts of central North Carolina early this month. Plans were to construct a new pumping station outside of the floodplain with more than $5 million in BRIC funds.

“We’re going in order of indefensibility,” he said Tuesday in what seems to be a campaign of sorts to raise awareness of FEMA’s decision to cut the BRIC program.

Pollocksville is one of 68 towns, cities and counties in the state that have been awarded BRIC grants since the program officially began its first round of funding in 2020. As previously reported by Coastal Review, almost half of the local governments awarded funding are in the 20 coastal counties.

The only completed BRIC project in the state is a living shoreline in Duck.

Congress approved the program in 2018 with bipartisan support and Trump’s signature during his first presidential term. Since then, nearly $5 billion has been committed to communities across the country for projects to elevate buildings and roads, relocate vulnerable sewer pump stations, control flooding, and strengthen building codes.

“Yes, we want to get this money back to Pollocksville,” Jackson said. “If we’re successful it means we get money back for the entire state.”

He said he expects the court will hold a hearing “within the next few weeks” over a request by the attorneys general for an injunction to lift the funds from being blocked.

“That’s been our request that they treat this as an emergency,” Jackson said. “What we want the court to do is say, while this matter is winding its way through court, which will take six to nine months to fully resolve, the money can continue to flow.”

Jackson said there’s no lack of evidence to support the importance of BRIC funding for communities like Pollocksville that are trying to better protect its residents and infrastructure from floods and other natural disasters exacerbated by the changing climate.

“The flood here, the flood in Hillsborough that happened three weeks ago, there’s fresh evidence with respect to an enormous number of these things,” he said.

More than 30 North Carolina coastal communities have been awarded grants to boost their resilience to hazardous weather events.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced Thursday the award of nearly $6 million in Resilient Coastal Communities Program grants to 32 counties, cities and towns along the coast.

“Increasingly catastrophic storms like Helene and Chantal underscore how important it is for communities to take concrete steps to strengthen their resilience to hazardous weather events,” DEQ Secretary Reid Wilson said in a release. “These grants provide technical assistance and resources so that community leaders can identify the most important actions they can take to safeguard their residents, their infrastructure, and their economies.”

Of the grant money awarded, $1.9 million has been funneled for the completion of phases 1 and 2 of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or RCCP, which includes technical assistance in risk assessment and resilience planning and incorporating resiliency into Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, land use plans.

Those plans, which communities use to guide development and drive future public investments, will include resilience policies and projects that focus on highly vulnerable areas.

“Given that many existing land use plans are outdated and typically only designed to be relevant for up to 20 years, the RCCP aligns with the growing demand in North Carolina for updated land use plans to better anticipate future development and weather hazards,” according to a release.

During phases 1 and 2, the division contracts with third-party firms, which directly receive the funding, to provide technical assistance services to the local governments.

Funding for those phases is going toward technical assistance for Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, New Hanover, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Pender and Tyrrell counties.

Municipalities for those phases include: Carolina Beach, Wilmington, Colerain, Holden Beach, Elizabeth City, Jacksonville, Manteo, Murfreesboro, Newport, Oak Island, Shallotte, Southern Shores and Southport.

More than $4 million in grants have been awarded to communities for phases 3 and 4 of the program to assist with engineering, design, construction and implementation of projects.

Nearly $3 million of that is being passed to five counties, including Beaufort, Carteret, Dare, Hyde and Pasquotank for the engineering and design of projects that will incorporate natural and nature-based elements like wetland restoration and living shoreline design. Municipalities receiving funding for engineering and design projects include Aulander, Belhaven, New Bern, Edenton, Elizabeth City, Holly Ridge, Plymouth and Washington Park.

Burgaw, Nags Head and Vandemere have been awarded a total of more than $1.2 million to complete phase 4 projects for stormwater management and flood mitigation. Those projects include building rain gardens and living shorelines to mitigate flooding and erosion.

The RCCP has awarded a total of about $16 million through 108 grants to 56 coastal communities.

This is the first in a series of stories about the effects federal budget and staff cuts and the cancellations of programs and services are having in coastal North Carolina.

POLLOCKSVILLE – Jay Bender is rightfully proud of his town hall. Lovingly restored when it was moved to higher ground a few years ago, the old train depot has come to symbolize the grit of this little river town that a hurricane once tried to drown and its government in far-off Washington now has abandoned.

The mayor for 42 continuous years – a record in North Carolina – Bender fashioned his office to look like one that the stationmaster might have used when the depot was built in 1893. An antique rolltop desk anchors the room, accented by sturdy wooden chairs for visitors and framed railroad maps on the walls.

He led me to the handsome town council chambers with its wide-beamed oak floor and huge, sliding, wooden cargo doors that bear names and other graffiti that people scrawled during the building’s lifetime. “All of this was under water,” explained Bender. “We lost everything. We lost our records. We lost our computers. Everything.”

Related: North Carolina among most successful states for BRIC awards

The depot, which even then served as town hall, was a few blocks away, down on the banks of the Trent River, a pretty, usually placid stream that languidly flows northeast a dozen or so miles to its confluence with the Neuse River in New Bern. In these parts it’s known primarily for its catfish and largemouth bass. It was the little town’s biggest attraction.

Until it became the source of its destruction.

That would have been during those three, grim days in September 2018 when Hurricane Florence dumped more than more 30 inches of rain and unleased a biblical deluge. The river had overflowed its banks before, of course – back in 1999 after Hurricane Floyd, for instance – but never like this. Some experts would later speculate that the Trent hadn’t flooded that badly in maybe 1,000 years. It rose more than 25 feet, covering much of Pollocksville to its rooftops. Most of its 300 or so residents had to be evacuated. More than 80% of its buildings were destroyed or damaged, including every town commissioner’s home.

Bender, living in his grandfather’s old place on high ground, was spared. That’s where they ran the town until the river receded and the power was restored 11 days later.

The slow recovery then began.

Aided by state and federal grants, the town moved and refurbished the waterlogged old depot in 2021 and began getting pieces of its sewer and water systems out of the floodplain. Owners raised some buildings, and the town gussied up U.S. Highway 17, its main road, with a bike path, planters and banners.

The place was starting to look almost normal again, and Bender was feeling optimistic about his town’s revival until the Trump regime in Washington suddenly and without warning pulled the rug out from under him.

Killed without warning

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced about a month ago that it was cancelling its major grant program that provided seed money to communities that wanted to be better prepared for the next flood or weather catastrophe. FEMA didn’t contact Pollocksville or the 67 other communities in the state that were awarded grants but had not yet received any money. Neither did it notify the N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which administers the grants, or the media. The agency made the surprise announcement on one of its websites after 5 p.m. on a Friday, presumably to attract the least amount of attention.

Bender didn’t find out about the cancellation until the following week. It was the first time a federal grant program had been killed in midstream.

It would be another 12 days before FEMA clarified that only grant projects that had been completed would be totally funded. Those that have started might receive partial funding. Everything else was dead. In North Carolina, that meant almost $186 million in projects intended to help communities ward off weather catastrophes and save lives would have to be shelved unless the recipients could come up with the money elsewhere. That total includes about $81 million in the state’s 20 coastal counties, including $1.1 million for Pollocksville to raise six commercial buildings to revive its downtown.

“Losing the grant is very disappointing,” said Bender, whose town operates on an annual $600,000 budget. “It would have funded the next step in our long-range plan. Replacing the grant money will be difficult.”

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants, known as BRIC, was the federal government’s showcase program to help communities help themselves by funding projects to lessen and prevent storm damage. It committed almost $5 billion to communities across the country since it was approved by Congress with bipartisan support and signed by Donald Trump in 2018 during his first term. Local governments had planned to use the money to help raise buildings and roads, relocate vulnerable sewer pump stations, control flooding, strengthen building codes and on similar projects to reduce the damage of future storms. The program was so popular that last year FEMA had to reject nearly 2,000 applicants because it didn’t have enough money to go around.

About $1 billion was allocated to the program as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. Under President Biden, the BRIC grants were key parts of the government’s efforts to address climate change, and a special emphasis was placed on helping Black and other historically underserved communities. It was those directives that likely put BRIC on the regime’s hit list.

‘Wasteful,’ ‘political,’ fearful

An unnamed FEMA spokesperson said in the April announcement that the agency now considers BRIC to be “wasteful” and “political.” I called FEMA’s “news desk” at its regional office in Atlanta several times to get some examples. Each call disappeared into the ether because the number listed on the agency’s regional website didn’t even generate a dial tone. I sent an email to the address listed on the site. It remains unanswered. As do the emails and phone message I sent to the state’s two Republican senators, Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, asking for their reactions.

Many county and town officials also didn’t return emails and phone calls. They watched the bullying of the country’s biggest universities and law firms and heard the threats about withholding federal funds to public schools and museums. They apparently got the message. They would need FEMA someday, and all depended on federal funding for something. Bender understands his counterparts’ desire to remain under the radar. He’s relying partially on federal money to upgrade his water and sewer plants. “We lose this grant and we’re out maybe $20,000,” he said. “But I can’t build half a sewer plant.”

Anna Weber, however, needed no coaxing. She’s a policy analyst for the National Resources Defense Council and helps communities prepare for the violence of an unstable climate. She has a hard time understanding how spending money to prevent death and damage from future storms can suddenly be considered wasteful.

“In fact, investing in adaptation and resiliency against climate change is one of the least wasteful things we can do,“ she said. “It’s actually one of the best investments in preventing future local damage and loss of life from storms.”

She noted that studies have consistently shown that every dollar invested on projects to prevent storm damage results in at least $6 in savings when the pieces later have to be picked up and put back together.

BRIC also seemed to dovetail with the regime’s desire to require states to pay more for cleanup and reconstruction costs after a disaster, Weber said. The grants pay 75% of project costs. The applicant is responsible for the remainder. “These were communities that were doing this right,” she said. “The federal government wanted communities to step up and take some responsibility. These communities did step up and do what the government asked, and now the rug is being pulled out from under them.”

The charge that the grants were doled out as political favors by the Biden administration makes little sense in North Carolina, which Trump carried handily in all three of his elections. The 22 counties, which include the state’s most populous, that Biden won in 2020 received only about a quarter of the grant money, while the 20 coastal counties, many of which Trump won with 60-70% of the vote, received almost 45%.

Jessica Whitehead was North Carolina’s first chief resilience officer and helped evaluate the state’s first BRIC applications in 2020. She’s now director of the Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience at Old Dominion University.

“Politics?” she said. “It never came up.”

No one asked Bender about his politics when the town applied for its BRIC grant.

“This had nothing to do with politics,” he said, “and I don’t know how you can consider it wasteful. This is all about trying to get our town back to normal.”

BRIC and North Carolina were made for each other.

Since the first applications were accepted for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants in 2020, state and local-government officials had developed a keen sense of what the Federal Emergency Management Agency wanted to fund. A steady flow of successful applicants was the result.

“North Carolina was one of the most successful states to get BRIC funding,” noted Anna Weber, a senior policy analyst with the National Resources Defense Council. “As a result, it will be one of states with the most to lose.”

Related: Coastal towns awarded resilience grants see funding pulled

Sixty-eight cities, towns and counties in the state have been awarded grants since that first cycle of funding, according to the N.C. Division of Emergency Management, which administers the grant program. Thirty-three are in the 20 coastal counties. Those grants range from $120,000 to Bertie and Hertford counties for watershed studies to more than $18 million to Fayetteville for stream-restoration and bridge-relocation projects.

About all of it is now gone. FEMA releases BRIC money as work on a project is completed. The agency has said that only projects that have been completed will be fully funded. Those that have started may be partially funded. A living shoreline in Duck is the only completed BRIC project in the state, according to the division, and is the only one that will be completely funded. The project in Princeville to move municipal buildings out of the floodplain has started and will likely be partially funded.

Both projects in Fayetteville, the largest in the coastal counties, are currently being designed to lessen storm damage and flooding, Loren Bymer, the city’s marketing and communications director, explained in an email. He said the city “anticipates” being reimbursed by FEMA for the design work. The grants, however, won’t pay for construction as anticipated, he wrote. To complete the projects, the city would have to find other sources of income, such as issuing bonds or raising property taxes, or delaying other projects, Bymer said.

BRIC funding for all of the other projects on the list below has been killed. That amounts to about $81 million in coastal projects and more than $186 million statewide.

Two University of North Carolina Wilmington professors are collaborating this semester on a documentary celebrating community resilience, adding a new perspective to the overall effort of the Down East Resilience Network.

The network, often referred to as DERN, evolved in the years after Hurricane Florence ravaged coastal North Carolina in September 2018. It’s a project of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island, which was hit particularly hard by the slow-moving Category 1 storm.

Museum Executive Director Karen Willis Amspacher coordinated the network of government agencies, researchers, residents and nonprofit organizations.

The idea was to connect similar and overlapping research on flooding, saltwater intrusion, infrastructure damage and other risks associated with rising sea levels in the 13 Carteret County communities, and to offer resources to navigate the changes.

“Our DERN partners continue to work in the Down East area with mapping projects, continued flood monitoring, along with journalism and documentary students during spring semester and the 2025 class of interns this summer,” Amspacher told Coastal Review.

The network holds meetings a few times a year to discuss the research and projects that are carried out year-round. The most recent gathering was in late January on Harkers Island.

UNCW’s Jennifer Biddle, associate professor of environmental policy, and Laura Dunn, film studies professor, attended the Jan. 31 meeting — their first.

Biddle told Coastal Review that she and Dunn attended the meeting to identify how they “could plug in,” and after listening to the research and types of projects, she really appreciated the intention of the network, “to help the local people and local communities adapt to all these changes.”

The next morning, during a roundtable discussion, Biddle and Dunn recognized that their original plan to use a short documentary to help raise awareness had been done.

So, they worked with Amspacher on finding a new perspective, to identify what was missing, “and what was missing is the voice of the future — younger people’s voices. What have they heard and learned from the elders that they want to carry forward? And how do they do that in a changing political and economic society, as well as a changing landscape?”

The documentary became about the community’s resilience. It has “weathered a whole lot of big storms. This is just another big storm,” Biddle said.

The spent February organizing the trip then headed to Down East March 3-7 to film interviews. They stayed in a vacation rental on Harkers Island, where it “was so amazing was to be immersed in the community,” and the week provided a chance for the students to bond and meet people, Biddle said.

The 10 students divvied up into three teams. “We affectionately called them Nature, Culture and Resilience,” Biddle said.

The Resilience crew focused on what’s happening in the area, and how the people are resilient, with a focus on the Core Sound museum.

“The museum itself is a kind of hub of social activity,” Biddle said, adding that one morning there they had seen preschoolers learn about commercial and recreational fishing.

While observing a high school shop class build a skiff, Biddle said they asked the students what they saw for themselves for the future.

“They all had an answer. A lot of it was things they wanted to do, but maybe couldn’t do full time, like shrimping and building boats, because there wasn’t a lot of money there.”

Some said they wanted to work at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and shrimp in the summers, or be a chef and build boats on the side. “They had these cool, but very realistic plans in terms of how they could make a livelihood,” she said.

On the Nature crew’s first day filming, Biddle said they stumbled upon an oyster farmer who had just pulled in bushels of oysters. He explained how he had grown the oysters, and then opened up a few. “We all got to cheers over half-shells that were really delicious.”

Residents and transportation officials talked to the students about the status of the roads, and a scientist gave an interview about visible signs of change, such as ghost forests and marsh migration, Biddle added.

The students met a father-son team and mother-daughter team of decoy carvers. Witnessing the “passing on of these beautiful traditions and the bonds it builds was really touching.”

Biddle said she joined the Culture crew for an interview with a shrimper and his daughter. The old-timer had described how his kin dated back to the 1700s in Carteret County and are a multigeneration commercial fishing family.

“What was really cool, especially for my policy students to hear, was he described how they self-regulated,” Biddle said. “Up until the ’80s, they were self-regulating their catches” by being assigned a night to catch certain fish, and the fish houses would only buy so much.

The man’s daughter had spoken “eloquently but passionately about her love of gigging flounder and how she would go out at night with her sister to spend time together and how impactful the moratorium” on flounder fishing has been, Biddle said. The state has limited or canceled flounder season altogether over the last few years because of overfishing and being overfished.

Seeing how policy affects people is why she takes students out in the field, to witness how rules can have unintended consequences, especially to those being the most impacted, she said.

Coastal and ocean policy graduate student Kennedy Huntsman is part of the documentary team who visited Down East. She said that policy and documentary film “share intrinsic goals.”

They “both serve as powerful tools for translating complex issues, like science, into accessible and meaningful information for the public. But effective science communication requires a deep understanding of the intended audience. Too often, the communities most impacted by these issues are left out of the conversation, their perspectives overlooked,” she said.

Being able to put this into practice Down East “was an invaluable experience, one that simply couldn’t be replicated in a classroom,” Huntsman said.

Abigail Schindler, a senior in the film studies department, said her favorite moment Down East was the boat ride on the last day of filming.

“This was a truly unique and impressive group of people who love the place they live,” she said, adding they had seen the wild horses, “which was such a cool experience.”

Her biggest takeaway from the experience was understanding why the people Down East love their home so much.

“It’s not just about one thing — family, nature, tradition — it’s everything combined about the place. I heard the phrase ‘why would I want to live anywhere else’ several times and by my last day I finally understood. It’s a place with so much natural beauty and land without hotels and chain restaurants covering its landscape,” Schindler said.

The next step for the documentary is to edit.

“We have probably 150 hours of footage,” Biddle said.

The documentary will likely be a series of vignettes focusing on commercial fishing, boatbuilding and decoy carving. The plan is to give the recordings back to the community and the documentary will be available to the museum.

The project is funded through the Seahawks Advancing Interdisciplinary Learning, or SAIL, program to integrate policy-rich content into short documentary films to help educate and raise awareness about the threats facing coastal communities and what can be done to help them adapt.

Another new face at the Jan. 31 meeting was Jenny Adler, who was getting ready for a stint as a visiting professor at the Duke University Marine Lab on in Pivers Island in Beaufort.

“Having never lived in North Carolina, I knew I had a lot to learn before teaching a course in Science Journalism at the Duke Marine Lab this spring,” Adler explained. “I felt confident I could teach the journalism part of the course and help students report on science, but it was unsettling moving to a place where I had no community connections.”

While writing a grant proposal to fund the students’ stories, she said she came across a ton of coverage in Coastal Review and also quite a few pieces by visual creator Ryan Stancil and photographer Baxter Miller, who are both members of the network and have worked extensively Down East.

Adler said she contacted the two, who then told her about the network meeting.

“So, a week before I started teaching, I drove to Harkers Island from Massachusetts and walked into a meeting where I knew nobody,” she said, and the next eight hours “were informative and inspiring.”

She said the connections she made that day held strong.

“Karen (Amspacher) and several other members I met that day have spoken with my class, been interviewed by my students, shared local knowledge, and provided guidance and stories that have made training the next generation of journalists in a new place such an incredible experience,” Adler said.

Haven Cashwell, a postdoctoral research scholar for the State Climate Office at North Carolina State University, has been coordinating communications for the network.

Over the last few months, she and other members have been working on a website. It wasn’t quite ready at publication, but those attending the Jan. 31 meeting had a sneak peek.

“The goal of the website is to have a place where community members and those interested in the Down East Resilience Network can access information about areas of concern,” which include saltwater intrusion and sunny day flooding, Cashwell said in an interview.

Plans for the website include providing resources, such as how to navigate Federal Emergency Management Agency, raising your home, obtaining a fortified roof, and updates about the network.

“We are currently asking researchers about information they think should be included on this website that community members should know about. We hope this will be used in the future by both community members and DERN members,” Cashwell said.

Dr. Kiera O’Donnell, another member of the network, is a postdoctoral associate at Duke University and is working on a study to better understand coastal water quality concerns in North Carolina.

Residents are being asked to fill out a survey “to help us understand the water quality concerns for surface and ground water throughout Carteret County. We are currently taking surface water quality samples to get a snapshot of the water quality throughout Down East and the surrounding areas,” O’Donnell said. “But we are looking for local perspectives and water quality concerns to help inform us about the current issues locals are dealing with and what they care about when it comes to water quality.”

The N.C. Division of Coastal Management is taking applications from local coastal-based governments to participate in the state Resilient Coastal Communities Program’s phases 1-4.

Phase 3 is designed to provide funding to assist coastal communities in the engineering and design of a project identified by an applicant in phases 1 and 2 of the program.

Phase 4 provides funding to assist with the implementation of previously identified and prioritized resilience projects  and supported by engineered site plans developed in phase 3.

Other eligible projects not identified in phases 1-2 may be eligible if a community has completed an evaluation to bypass those phases. Examples of eligible projects include wetland and stream restoration, flood mitigation, living shoreline stabilization, and infrastructure to improve stormwater management.

An estimated $2 million will be available for phases 1 and 2 and about $6 million available for phase 3 and phase 4 projects in fiscal 2025-26, according to a N.C. Department of Environmental Quality release.

The Resilient Coastal Communities Program aids communities in getting a better understanding of and enhancing coastal resilience at the local level. Phases within the program guide communities in assessing local risks and vulnerabilities, engaging representative stakeholders, and collaborating to identify and prioritize projects and actions to enhance resilience and protect critical assets.

County and municipal governments within the 20 Coastal Area Manage Act, or CAMA, counties and contractors who provide technical assistance to the localities selected may apply.

Eligible contracts include private planning and engineering firms, Councils of Government, nongovernment organizations and public and private academic institutions.

Applications are also being taken from coastal communities to be matched with a contractor to fully update local CAMA land use plans that will integrate core elements developed through the program’s resilience strategies.

Communities that are selected will work to incorporate resilience into land use planning and support proactive risk-reduction measures. This work may be done in conjunction with phases 1 and 2 for new communities accepted into the program or independently completed in communities that have completed those phases.

An informational webinar about the application process will be held 2-3:30 p.m. March 21. Register online.

Phases 1-4 community application materials are available online.

Applications will be accepted until 5 p.m. April 25.

Questions about the new Resilient Coastal Communities Program and completed applications may be sent to RCCP@deq.nc.gov.

Registration is open now for the daylong “Adaptation Planning for Coastal Communities” course being offered in April through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The class is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 2, at the NOAA Beaufort Lab Auditorium, 101 Pivers Island Road, Beaufort. Being offered at no charge, registration is required to attend.

“Coastal communities increasingly realize the need for adaptation strategies, but many are unsure where to begin. Attend this course to gain a thorough grounding and practical skills for incorporating adaptation strategies into planning processes,” organizers said.

Planners, public works staff, floodplain managers, hazard mitigation planners, sustainability managers, emergency managers, community groups, members of civic organizations, and coastal resource managers are encouraged to attend.

Trainers from NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management will lead the course that has the following learning objectives:

• Apply the basic elements of an adaptation planning framework to organize future preparedness efforts.
• Translate climate science into impacts on local community assets.
• Determine local vulnerabilities based on an existing assessment or hazard visualization tool.
• Interpret and apply results of a vulnerability assessment to inform adaptation priorities.
• Identify, compare and prioritize locally relevant adaptation strategies and actions.
• Organize adaptation options into a cohesive long-term strategy using an adaptation pathways approach.

American Institute of Certified Planners and Association of State Floodplain Managers can earn continuing education credits by attending this course.

Sandy Cross, senior planner for Duck, recently brought Coastal Review with her as she walked along the edge of Currituck Sound, where a project to make the Dare County town more resilient was completed in May.

Cross excitedly pointed out signs of continuing progress at the site.

“See this little grass right here? This is a black needle rush or Juncus roemerianus,” she said, growing more excited as the stroll continued another 10 to 15 yards farther along the shoreline.

“Wait a minute. See this grass that looks kind of like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree?” she asked. “That’s called Spartina cynosuroides, which is a coastal wetland species. We did not plant that.”

The project funded with local, state and federal money also elevated a portion of N.C. Highway 12 to reduce flooding, and it restored native marsh to protect the shoreline and improve natural habitat.

In October, the American Planning Association recognized the project, honoring the town with its Marvin Collins Planning Award in Sustainability and Resilience.

The award-winning projects and programs were selected for their “high quality, originality, and innovation, as well as a degree of transferability,” according to the association. “They are also impactful, in that they address a known community need and position the community for a stronger, more equitable future.”

Most vulnerable infrastructure

N.C. 12 is the only road that connects Duck to the rest of Dare County to the south and Corolla village in Currituck County to the north. At the north end of Duck’s business district, the highway was prone to flooding. When the wind was strong enough for long enough, revetment rocks that were placed alongside the road were lifted from their bed and strewn across the highway.

“For anyone that’s been in Duck any length of time, they know that a good southwest wind will inundate the roadway,” Cross said.

Town officials knew well that the quarter-mile stretch of the road was at risk. A 2019 Western Carolina University vulnerability assessment, “indicated that this section of roadway was the most vulnerable infrastructure we had in the in the town,” Cross said.

The project cost a little more than $4.3 million, which was mostly paid for with grants, although the town did contribute $398,500 of its own. Construction began in October 2023 and took six months to complete.

Sills were installed to protect a new living shoreline. Marsh grasses were planted after the invasive phragmites reeds that had taken over the nearshore were removed. The small riprap rocks were replaced by Class III Armor Stone, revetment stones that weight more than a ton each and should withstand even the strongest winds and waves.

The roadbed was raised 2.5 feet and a new sidewalk was built, all with resilience features.

“They put in strips,” Cross said of the design, “intended as a small stormwater mechanism. They’re probably about 2 feet deep, and at the base there’s some filter cloth, and then there’s a rock bed, and then there’s bio-retention soil.” 

There is also a wild grass planted between the road and the sidewalk— liriope.

In the past the town had used little bluestem between the highway and sidewalk, but Cross really wanted to find a grass that would work better as a barrier.

“They (little bluestem) get really tall, and they get really floppy when they get wet,” she said.

Liriope is a flowering grass that Cross said, “is probably the only plant that can survive the soot and the very small space in which it has to survive.”

Duck has created a series of vision documents beginning in 2009 with its “2022 Vision” that describes the town as “a pedestrian first community that is safe and easy to navigate by walking and cycling.”

That same document stressed environmental stewardship with an emphasis on living shorelines for protection on the sound side of the village.

Phase 4 of the sidewalk project was to be at the north end of the business district, and plans called for a living shoreline to create additional defense from soundside flooding.

Standing at the south end of the project area, Cross explained how the project went from an ambitious but relatively limited shoreline plan to an award-winning project, a process kickstarted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We were going put in a sidewalk, and we were going to put in a living shoreline. That was all scheduled to begin in 2019,” she said. “Then FEMA came out with their Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities grant program and there was a huge pot of money for resilience projects.”

With possibility of funding for raising the road in conjunction with the living shoreline and sidewalk project, the town paused to “apply for this BRIC grant to raise the road and then really make it a resilience project,” Cross recalled.

The state, Cross said, said the project was a good candidate for funding but advised the town to hold off on the sidewalk and living shoreline components.

“You need to encompass it all in order to really fare well in the scoring of the grant,” she said. “So we started the grant process with BRIC in 2020. Fast-forward to 2024, when we actually saw the money for the grant.”

The roughly $1.9 million appeared to be enough to raise the roadbed and replace the riprap.

“Then COVID happened,” Cross said. “Everything you thought was going to cost one thing ended up costing double that. We were able to apply to the Department of Emergency Management with the state for some additional funding. We ended up getting an additional $1.5 million and change to offset some of the increase in cost of the project.”

There were other grants as well, including the $398,500 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for the living shoreline, $148,000 from the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau for the sidewalk, and an additional $20,000 grant from the Community Conservation Assistance Program administered through the soil and water districts by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Division of Soil and Water Conservation.

Ricky Wiatt, senior landscape architect with environmental and government consulting firm VHB, which has long worked with the town, wrote on the company’s blog that the project, “was not merely a one-and-done solution but rather a dynamic and layered approach designed to adapt and thrive in the face of ongoing challenges. By embracing the principles of resiliency and incorporating diverse strategies, the Town of Duck is not only safeguarding its infrastructure but also fostering a more sustainable and vibrant community for generations to come.”

For Cross, however, although construction has been completed, there is still work to be done.

“We do expect this to be a case study. That’s one of the things I am continually telling people, and one of the reasons why I want to get some monitoring program together,” she said. “This is all fine and dandy, but if we don’t have a way to track it when it’s done, then what have we done it for?”

The state office that helps homeowners and local governments with disaster recovery and resiliency is accepting public comments on proposed new mitigation funding use to help owners of properties at risk of flooding by elevating structures.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency will accept comments until 5 p.m. Dec. 14 on a proposed amendment to how it administers Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant-Mitigation funds.

Changes being considered include allocations to the Affordable Housing Development Fund, the Public Housing Restoration Fund, the Infrastructure Recovery Program and Strategic Buyout Program, among other updates.

A draft of the new Substantial Action Plan Amendment 6 for mitigation funding is available for review online.

“The proposed action plan amendment is intended to address homeowner mitigation needs, including establishing the Residential Property Elevation Fund, which will be used to rehabilitate, reconstruct or replace properties located in a floodplain or at risk of future flooding,” according to the state. “The new fund will help protect properties against future flood damage through structural elevations and related activities.”

This fund is separate from the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery-funded ReBuild NC Homeowner Recovery Program, which mostly serves properties that do not need home elevation.

Submit comments to either ncorr.publiccomments@ncdps.gov or to NCORR Public Comments, P.O. Box 110465, Durham, NC 27709.

In addition to mitigation initiatives, the office administers programs that include long-term disaster recovery, resiliency, community development, affordable housing, strategic buyout and local infrastructure.

WANCHESE — Dr. Pail Taillie, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environment, is the featured speaker for the next “Science on the Sound” Lecture Series at the Coastal Studies Institute on the East Carolina University Outer Banks Campus.

The monthly, in-person lecture series brings perspectives from all over the state and highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina. This month, Taillie is to present his lecture, “Coastal Ecosystems and Rising Seas: Impending Collapse or Conservation Opportunity?” at 6 p.m. Sept. 26.

The program being offered at no charge to the public is taking place on campus, 850 N.C. Highway 345, Wanchese.

“The negative consequences of climate change seem to be everywhere, making it hard to be optimistic about the future,” campus officials said in the announcement. “For anyone suffering from climate anxiety, this lecture promises some relief. Dr. Taillie will discuss the many ways that coastal ecosystems are highly resilient and capable of adapting to increasingly rapid changes in sea level. From simply counting birds with pen and paper to remote cameras and telemetry tags, he uses a variety of different techniques and tools to better understand how coastal plants and animals are responding to rising sea levels and how these responses can be used to help inform how we manage our coasts. He’ll conclude by arguing that this resilience represents a unique conservation opportunity where the impacts of climate change don’t have to be so depressing.”

Taillie earned both a master’s and doctorate in fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology from North Carolina State University. Following graduate school, he worked at the University of Florida as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. His research and teaching broadly aim to address the implications of global change for biodiversity conservation, with a particular emphasis on wetlands, estuaries, and coasts.

The program will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

SUPPLY – Tens of thousands of acres of wetlands and hundreds of acres of salt marshes will be restored and protected in the state with funding from a multimillion-dollar federal grant recently awarded to a coalition of states, including North Carolina.

The $421 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, will also result in the addition of 3,000 acres to North Carolina’s state parks system, reforestation of 55,000 acres, the initiation of an urban tree planting program, and “so much more,” Gov. Roy Cooper said.

Against the backdrop and under the canopy of towering longleaf pines rising from sandy peat soil and wiregrass covering the forest bed of the Green Swamp Preserve in Brunswick County, Cooper, EPA Administrator Michael Regan, U.S. Rep. Wiley Nickel, and others on a balmy Tuesday afternoon touted how the funding will be used to reduce carbon emissions, boost the economy, and help communities become more resilient to natural hazards.

Related: EPA awards $421 million to multistate-nonprofit coalition

“You think about what this money will do — fight climate change to protect communities from flooding, put money in the pockets of North Carolina families to boost our tourism industry,” Cooper said. “We know that nature itself can play a significant role in carbon reduction. Renewable energy and the power sector and (electric vehicles) on the road get most of the headlines and attention when we’re talking about carbon reduction and it’s important for us to keep doing those things. But, it’s estimated that this grant will have the equivalent carbon reduction of taking six million gas powered cars off the road.”

The EPA announced last week that the Atlantic Conservation Coalition, which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and The Nature Conservancy, are to receive the funds that will be used to work in conjunction with nonprofit organizations for conservation and restoration projects.

In all, there are 21 proposed projects that are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28 million metric tons by 2050.

“The peatlands here in the Green Swamp Preserve have existed for millennia, remaining natural and undrained the way a peatland is supposed to be,” Regan said. “Peatlands like this cover around one-third of the Earth’s surface and store twice as much carbon as all of the world’s forests. Because these swamps contain vast amounts of carbon, when they’re drained or burned, they release huge quantities of climate pollution and can no longer serve as natural buffers for flooding and wildfires, not only threatening biological diversity and ecological health, but also threatening the health of the surrounding community.”

The Biden administration has made the largest investment ever to tackle climate change, he said, including initiating what he referred to as the most innovative and exciting programs – the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program.

The program aims to help implement community-driven solutions to reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice and help accelerate the country’s transition to clean energy.

North Carolina’s Department of Natural and Cultural Resources applied for the grant in April as part of the multi-state coalition, one that is “focused on the protection and restoration of over 200,000 acres of coastal habitat, forest and farmland,” Regan said.

Department of Cultural and Natural Resources Secretary Reid Wilson focused on two major benefits of the grant, the first of which is conserving and restoring degraded streams, forests and wetlands that will pull carbon out of the sky and reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the air.

“And then, second, these preserved and restored natural lands and waterways will make our state more resilient to the increasingly frequent and intense storms and other devastating effects from climate change,” he said. “Our department is really excited about this.”

Regan later said that all four states have signed a memorandum of agreement, well before the deadline set by the EPA.

Congressman Nickels called the grant an “incredible investment.”

“By making these important investments we’re ensuring a sustainable future, not only for our environment, but for our economy as well,” he said. “It’s essential that we maintain this for generations to come.”

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced Thursday that it is awarding 20 grants totaling more than $6.21 million to 19 town and county governments.

The grants are for Phases 3 and 4 of the four-phase Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which was created to provide a community-driven process for setting coastal resilience goals, assessing existing and needed local capacity, and identifying and prioritizing projects to enhance community resilience to coastal hazards.

The primary objective of the program’s Phase 3 is to provide funding to assist communities with the engineering and design of prioritized projects identified in their RCCP Resilience Strategy or other existing plans that meet the program’s Phases 1 and 2 planning criteria. The division also said that some communities will receive money to develop or amend ordinances to enhance their resilience to coastal hazards.

“Funding the valuable resilience work of these communities allows them move their projects from concept to completion, building a stronger future by protecting residents and the coastal economy,” Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in a statement.

A total of $4.31 million is to be available to complete 15 projects in Phase 3. Most of these engineering and design projects incorporate natural and nature-based elements, such as wetland restoration and living shoreline design, the division said.

Specific projects include living shoreline construction to reduce erosion along public shorelines, updating development ordinances to align with resilience strategies, and comprehensive stormwater action plans with detailed drainage studies and easement acquisitions.

Dare County is to receive $234,000 for its Salvo Flood Mitigation Project, and the following 14 municipalities will receive engineering and design money for the completion of their Phase 3 projects:

• Ahoskie: $500,000 for stormwater action plan, upgrade the stormwater system.
• Aulander: $173,250 for permeable pavement and green stormwater infrastructure implementation projects.
• Beaufort: $100,000 for development ordinance resilience updates.
• Belhaven: $500,000 for stormwater action plan and easement acquisition plan, upgrade the stormwater system.
• Burgaw: $55,000 for rain garden installation and educational demonstration.
• Creswell: $500,000 to reduce flooding impacts in the First-Fourth street area.
• Elizabeth City: $140,000 for resilient stormwater ordinance project.
• Holly Ridge: $143,000 for multi-use greenway connection feasibility study.
• Nags Head: $500,000 to design living shorelines to restore and protect coastal community infrastructure in the Roanoke Sound.
• Ocean Isle Beach: $170,000 for living shoreline feasibility study and demonstration project.
• Plymouth: $500,000 for Stormwater Action Plan upgrade stormwater system.
• Vandemere: $57,800 for Vandemere Waterfront Park living shoreline.
• Washington: $500,000 for living shoreline and levee at the wastewater treatment plant.
• Washington Park: $237,300 for living shoreline at public shoreline areas.

Phase 4 money will go to implement shovel-ready projects to enhance coastal resilience previously awarded funding for Phases 1-3.

A total of $1.9 million is to be available to complete five projects in Phase 4 featuring a range of nature-based solutions, infrastructure improvements, and community-focused strategies to manage stormwater and mitigate flooding.

Specific projects include the construction of bioswales to store and filter stormwater runoff and ocean overwash, creating low-impact development demonstration sites with educational components for the public, stabilizing road shoulders with environmentally friendly materials that promote natural vegetative growth, and improving flood-prone roadways with permeable pavers and bioretention basins.

The following will receive implementation funds for the completion of Phase 4:

• Aurora: $1.1 million for wetland restoration and berm improvements at wastewater treatment plant.
• Beaufort County: $194,166 for low impact development demonstration site at Beaufort County Community College.
• Dare County: $160,000 for Hatteras Village bioswales.
• Duck: $144,000 for Teresa Court stormwater management improvements.
• Surf City: $331,535 for roadside infiltration resilience project.

Community applications were reviewed based on project alignment with the community resilience strategy and priority ranking; project outcomes including environmental, social, and economic impacts; the project’s ability to reduce the vulnerability of a critical asset or population; the project’s inclusion of nature-based or hybrid components; and the project’s ability to achieve the community’s vision and goals.

The program receives funding from a combination of state and federal sources.

For more information about the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, go to the division’s program website.

This story has been updated.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a $421 million grant for a coalition of North Carolina and three other states working with nonprofit organizations for conservation and restoration projects that reduce carbon emissions and make communities more resilient to natural hazards.

The 21 proposed projects are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28 million metric tons by 2050. The grant includes roughly $30 million over five years for the Newport-based North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

North Carolina, via its Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, had applied for the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program funding in April as part of a partnership called the Atlantic Conservation Coalition with South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and The Nature Conservancy.

The coalition plans to use the federal money for conservation and restoration projects for peatland wetlands, coastal habitats, and forests across all four states.

The projects proposed include salt marsh restoration, farmland preservation, conservation of land for outdoor recreation, construction of living shorelines. Cost assistance could be provided to small forest landowners, trees planted in cities and reforestation work.

The coalition has identified nearly 600 tracts as both low-income or disadvantaged communities that could benefit from the funding.

The nearly $30 million grant to the North Carolina Coastal Federation will be used in several key areas with an overall goal of protecting and restoring approximately 595 acres of coastal habitats in North Carolina, the organization said.

“The Federation is honored to be part of this historic award,” said Coastal Federation Executive Director Braxton Davis. “This grant will enable us to undertake major projects over the next five years by first identifying the most endangered coastal habitats, and then protecting and restoring at least 600 acres. We will also engage world-class scientists to determine the long-term fate of the carbon stored by these projects, which would otherwise contribute to sea level rise if lost to the atmosphere. By preserving these invaluable habitats, we are also supporting healthy fisheries, improving water quality, and reducing damaging flooding.”

The Coastal Federation said the funding would play a critical role in protecting and restoring coastal habitats that can store vast amounts of carbon. “These vital habitats face threats from persistent erosion, adverse land usage, and increased sea levels. By preserving these vital ecosystems, the initiative ensures that the stored carbon remains sequestered, preventing it from being released into the atmosphere and exacerbating global warming,” the organization said in a statement.

“Coastal habitats are some of the most efficient natural carbon sinks on the planet,” said Davis. “This funding will enable us to protect these critical areas and enhance their ability to sequester carbon, which is an important component in our fight against climate change.”

Jacob Boyd, the Coastal Federation’s salt marsh program director, noted that the collaboration among federal agencies, state governments and nonprofits sets a precedent for climate action.

“This is a model for not only how we can use natural infrastructure to help achieve our climate goals but how we can have a much greater impact through partnerships and collaboration,” said Boyd.

Boyd said the funding includes money for Duke University in both the coalition’s budget and in money marked for the Coastal Federation for assistance with project and research management.

He said a $350,000 contract with a company called Natrx will result in real-time satellite imagery-based analysis for evaluations and selections of project sites and for monitoring.

A $1.5 million contract with the U.S. Geological Survey is for advanced research to closely monitor carbon sequestration and storage results realized by the projects. “Project consultants include specialized experts to help with project development, site selection, management, and other specialized services that are needed to complete project tasks,” Boyd said.

$4.3 billion in grants

The funding is part of more than $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition, EPA said.

Gov. Roy Cooper released a statement Monday, noting that the grant was one of the largest grants the EPA has awarded and the largest for nature-based climate solutions.

The statement also noted the grant’s fit with the directives in Cooper’s Executive Order 305, which set goals to conserve and restore natural and working lands by 2040, and the North Carolina Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, which the Department of Environmental Quality published in 2020.

“Protecting our natural lands for future generations is not only critical to our fight against climate change but also our state’s economy and tourism industries,” said Cooper. “This major award from the Biden-Harris administration will strengthen our bipartisan partnership to conserve and restore public and private lands across state lines.”

Each of the four states will receive $50 million for “shovel-ready” projects. An additional $200 million will be allocated to The Nature Conservancy for additional high carbon-sequestering forest and wetland restoration projects across the entire coalition region, which will be implemented in collaboration with respective states and local partners. The 21 projects identified by the coalition will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 28 million metric tons of CO2e by 2050. These projects include salt marsh restoration, conserving land for outdoor recreation, building living shorelines, cost-assistance to small forest landowners, urban tree planting, farmland preservation, and reforestation among other activities.

The 25 selected applications will fund projects in 30 states, including one Tribe, that target reducing greenhouse gas pollution from six sectors: transportation, electric power, commercial and residential buildings, industry, agriculture/ natural and working lands, and waste and materials management.

The EPA said it plans to announce up to an additional $300 million in selections under the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program for Tribes, Tribal consortia, and territories later this summer.

EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan was set to announce the awards Monday in Pittsburgh.

“President Biden believes in the power of community-driven solutions to fight climate change, protect public health, and grow our economy. Thanks to his leadership, the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program will deliver unprecedented resources to states, local governments, and Tribes to fund the solutions that work best in their communities,” Regan said in a statement. “Selected recipients have put forward ambitious plans to advance sustainable agriculture, deploy clean industrial technologies, cut emissions and energy costs in homes and commercial buildings, and provide cost- and energy-efficient heating and cooling to communities, creating economic and workforce development opportunities along the way.”

Nearly $6 million of $30 million in state disaster-relief money is marked to go to 10 resiliency efforts along the coast.

North Carolina Emergency Management announced Tuesday that a total of 27 grant recipients statewide were selected for the first round of funding through the 2023 Disaster Relief and Mitigation Fund. Emergency Management is under the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

State agencies, local governments, nonprofit organizations and public authorities could apply for the $30 million authorized through the 2023 Appropriations Act.

Eligible categories of work authorized for the grant are flood mitigation efforts, transportation resilience, disaster relief and flood mitigation technical assistance for small and underserved communities, and local cost share assistance for federal funds on approved federal mitigation grants.

“I would like to thank all of the applicants for taking the time to submit well thought out and actionable projects that will reduce North Carolina’s vulnerability to natural disasters” N.C. Emergency Management Director Will Ray said. “It takes all members of a community to come together to find solutions to the disasters that threaten our state.”

The funding for coastal communities includes the following:

• $1.26 million to North Topsail for beach stormwater infiltration.
• $1 million to Duck for N.C. Highway 12 living shoreline resiliency.
• $1 million to Leland for Old Fayetteville culvert replacement.
• $820,000 to Elizabeth City for Flora Street stormwater improvement.
• $770,000 to Dare County for Old Lighthouse Road Stormwater Improvement.
• $565,200 to Surf City for roadside stormwater project.
• $425,000 to Friso Volunteer Fire Department Fire Station for resilient design.
• $400,000 to Vandemere for Shell Castle Lane improvement.
• $270,500 to Pine Knoll Shores for phase three of its East End stormwater project.
• $225,000 to River Bend for stormwater system assessment.

The full list of grant recipients is available on the state Department of Public Safety website.

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

BEAUFORT – The state’s Rachel Carson Reserve protects more than its herd of around 30 wild horses.

The dedicated nature preserve’s five uninhabited barrier islands, totaling 2,315 acres, protect historic downtown Beaufort from the ravages of ocean winds and tides.

“You can see just how vulnerable the town of Beaufort can be during storms coming through that Beaufort Inlet,” Central Sites Manager Paula Gillikin said early Friday afternoon from the boardwalk on Carrot Island, one of the five islands making up the site.

Gillikin was speaking to North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality leadership, local, state and federal elected officials, fiscal research and governor’s office budget staff, partners, residents and volunteers, as part of a “Discover the N.C. Coastal Reserve Tour.”

The gathering of about 20 had met earlier that morning at Beaufort Hotel to tour the Rachel Carson Reserve. It was the third stop on a multi-year campaign launched in June 2023 when the Currituck Banks Reserve reopened after repairs. The second stop was at Bird Island Reserve in December 2023.

NCDEQ Chief Deputy Secretary Tim Watkins explained before the tour how 50 years ago, “North Carolina enacted the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, as we all know it.”

“Passing CAMA in 1974 was a bold and important step that was intended to balance economic development and protection of coastal resources through coordination and planning under the umbrella of state and local partnership,” Watkins said. “CAMA was also intended to reflect the will of coastal residents in finding this balance.”

He noted how CAMA was amended in the 1980s to establish the state Coastal Reserve Program, which “provides public access to coastal areas, essential habitat, fisheries and wildlife, and a cleaner healthier environment for all. The reserve sites also strengthen our communities by developing a sense of place and creating opportunities to reconnect and recharge with our natural world.”

Coastal Reserve Program Manager Rebecca Ellin said that the reserve program protects more than 44,000 acres of coastal and estuarine habitats across the 10 sites.

These sites provide essential habitat for wildlife, educational opportunities for students, teachers and the public, living laboratories for scientists to inform the management of the state’s coasts and estuaries, public enjoyment for citizens and visitors and protection of local communities from storms and erosion, Ellin said.

“The reserve program in North Carolina started nearly 40 years ago with the designation of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve. This happened in 1985 via a state-federal partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Estuarine Research Reserve System and the Division of Coastal Management,” she said.

The designation of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve provided an inspirational model for the state of North Carolina to protect additional habitat areas, Ellin continued.

“In 1989, the General Assembly amended the Coastal Area Management Act to do just that and formally established the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, which includes the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve.”

There were a handful of past and current elected officials on hand, including Rett Newton, who was raised in Beaufort and is a former town mayor. He said that protecting the Rachel Carson Reserve is “personal for us. It is personal. It may not be personal for Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, or Washington, D.C., but I assure you it is very personal for us.”

Beaufort Mayor Sharon Harker, who is in her second term, added that the reserve has a lot of talents, and the town is working with the state programs to protect the island for future generations. “It’s a classroom, it’s a laboratory, it provides us information so that we can inform policies to be better and proactive caretakers of the island, but the reserve is a gem. It’s part of our character, it’s part of our history.”

Sen. Norm Sanderson, R-Pamlico, who also represents Carteret County, told attendees that the reserve is worth fighting for and worth protecting, “not only for its beauty, but its protection” as a barrier island.  “It’s up to us to save it for the next generation.”

Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, was on the coast for the tour, as well. A resident of Greensboro, Harrison said she spends her weekends patrolling the shoreline of the Rachel Carson Reserve and has for 34 years.

She extended her gratitude to those who have made the reserve “such a special place” adding, “I love this place. I’m going to do what I can save it.”

Rep. Celeste C. Cairns, R-Carteret and Craven counties, spoke briefly, stating she is “so proud of this district. It’s impossible to express how much I love it here.”

Gillikin, who grew up in Beaufort and is currently a town commissioner, has been with the reserve program since 2007, and oversees both the Rachel Carson Reserve and Permuda Island Reserve near Topsail Island.

Gillikin said she feels “privileged to coordinate the stewardship of this site and to work with all the passionate community members and commercial users and teachers and advisory committee members. It really is all about people.”

She echoed Newton in that the site is very personal to her, because five generations back, her family owned a lot of the land, and “I never thought that I would come back to Beaufort and be a steward of the land.” She left Beaufort to attend the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

“Their blood, sweat and tears are out there. And mine are too,” she said, clarifying “no big injuries, just some nicks and cuts.”

After the tour, Ellin expressed her gratitude for those who joined, “to celebrate the Rachel Carson Reserve, share their perspectives, and take in its beauty and the diverse roles the reserve plays for ecosystems and people alike.”

About the Carrot Island Living Shoreline Project

Part of the event included a quick peek by boat of the Carrot Island Living Shoreline Project, currently under construction.

A representative of consulting firm Moffatt & Nichol, which is a contractor on the living shoreline project here, told Coastal Review Monday that work began April 12. A joint project between Carteret County and the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, the work includes around 1,475 linear feet of living shoreline, extending along the east side of Carrot Island, which is adjacent to Taylor’s Creek. 

The design features two sills. There is a sill of wave-attenuation units, called ExoForms and manufactured by Natrx, a nature-based resilience and restoration company in Raleigh, and a sill with oyster habitat units called Oyster Catchers, which are manufactured by Sandbar Oyster Co. in Beaufort.

The footprint for the ExoForms is around 11,250 square feet, with a length of 1,250 feet, and the footprint for the oyster habitat sill is about 6,960 square feet, and about 1,270 linear feet.

The sills run parallel to one another with a gap of 10 feet in between. Both are 100-foot segments with 10-foot gaps between the segments to allow water and wildlife to move through.

Plans include planting marsh grass, both Spartina alterniflora and Spartina patens, to support stabilization of the shoreline and enhance the ecological value of the project, according to the company.

“The length of shoreline to be protected was chosen to provide maximum benefit to the Carrot Island shoreline based upon available funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the North Carolina Land and Water Fund, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality,” according to the company.

Gilikin said monitoring the project’s performance over time and sharing successes and lessons learned could inform future living shoreline design and estuarine shoreline management in coastal North Carolina.

About the reserve program

The North Carolina Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve program initiative began in 1982 with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Estuarine Research Reserve System.

Three sites were dedicated in 1985 to be part of the North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserve: Rachel Carson, Currituck Banks and the Zeke Island reserves. The fourth national site, Masonboro Inlet Reserve, was designated in 1991.

The state initiated the parallel program in 1987. This move, according to NCDEQ, was to protect other coastal areas that could not be incorporated into the national program. The state acquired Permuda Island near topsail Island that year and Buxton Woods in the southern Outer Banks in 1988.

In 1989 CAMA formally established the North Carolina Coastal Reserve Program. In the following years, the state program grew to include Kitty Hawk Woods Reserve in 1992, Bald Head Woods Reserve in 1993, Emily and Richardson Preyer Buckridge Reserve in Tyrrell County in 1999, and Bird Island Reserve, the southernmost site, in 2002.

Gov. Roy Cooper has proposed around $150 million to go toward conservation and resiliency, with $20 million of that for grants to improve draining and reduce flooding, in the recommended budget his office released released last week.

The $34.5 billion proposed budget, “Securing North Carolina’s Future” for fiscal 2025 announced April 24 recommends investing more than $148 million in land and water resources conservation and resilience to natural disasters, according to the 223-page summary of the suggested budget. The focus of the budget is education with with a proposed $1 billion investment in the state’s public school system.

“This budget is an opportunity to build on our state’s momentum and make up ground in areas like public education, quality child care and clean drinking water, where legislators have fallen short,” Cooper said in a statement. “As the number one state to do business in the country for two years in a row, we have the formula for success in our high-quality public schools, talented workforce and thriving economy. We must make targeted investments strengthening public education, boosting economic development, and protecting our natural resources to secure a bright future for North Carolina.”

The $148 million to conserve land and water resources and build resilience will “promote land conservation through tax credits, reinforce ongoing efforts to preserve the state’s natural and working lands, and aim to mitigate future damages from storms, flooding, and wildfires,” according to his office.

One line item specific to Carteret County is the $50 million for infrastructure improvements at Radio Island as a way “to support economic development at the site.”

To address emerging compounds, Cooper proposes $100 million for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to help communities with new federal drinking water per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, standards and address gaps in available federal funding for PFAS remediation.

Highlights of the conservation and resiliency allocations include the following:

• $2 million recurring and $30 million nonrecurring to improve state parks, matching grants for local projects, and access to beaches and coastline.
• $2 million recurring and $30 million nonrecurring for projects that protect and restore the state’s land and water resources, preserve military buffers, restore degraded streams, and develop and improve stormwater treatment.
• $2.46 million in recurring to help the state preserve farmland through grants for conservation easements, farmland preservation plans, and agricultural development projects.
• $1 million nonrecurring to support agricultural water supply and efficiency increases for agricultural water use, with a focus on increasing assistance for on-farm water storage.
• $1 million recurring to expand sustainability and conservation efforts at the Department of Adult Correction, which manages more than 1,040 acres of natural lands and 54 correctional facilities.
• $20 million nonrecurring to support organizations working to reduce flooding through the restoration and maintenance of streams, waterways, and drainage infrastructure across the state.
• $5 million for the Coastal Resilient Roof Grant Program administered by the N.C. Insurance Underwriting Association to create storm-resistant houses by strengthening roofs against natural disasters.
• $5 million to strengthen an application for $68.5 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, and the Division of Coastal Management have partnered on the funding opportunity through NOAA for living shorelines, the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, stormwater improvements, and land conservation to protect against extreme weather in the 20 coastal counties.
• $5 million nonrecurring to enable the N.C. Forest Service to conduct prescribed fires and contain wildfires.
• $4 million to enhance the Flood Resiliency Blueprint with more data about impacts from storm surge and coastal flooding.
• $3 million in nonrecurring funds for grants that support nature-based projects.
• $300,000 nonrecurring to replace the trailers required for transporting mobile units designed to quickly depopulate swine following disease outbreaks, natural disasters, or other catastrophic events.
• A new conservation tax credit to support land conservation efforts.

Republicans have indicated willingness to consider some of Cooper’s proposals and expressed a desire to vote on a budget and adjourn before July.

In a new plan to address climate pollution, state officials have taken what they call a “different approach” by making natural and working lands conservation and restoration a priority to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials announced late Tuesday the state Priority Climate Action Plan, which “identifies high priority, ready-to-implement” greenhouse gas reduction measures that will provide “significant climate, air quality, and other co-benefits” to the state and its communities.

As required under the first phase of a federal grant program, the plan was developed over the past six months and then submitted this week to the Environmental Protection Agency. The state intends to use the plan to inform the application due April 1 for the $4.6 billion in competitive grants, the second phase. The EPA is to award these grants ranging from $2 million to $500 million later in the year. If NCDEQ is awarded the grant, the action plan will be developed into a Comprehensive Climate Action Plan due July 5, 2025. 

While most of the measures in the 189-page plan focuses on greenhouse gas emissions sources — transportation, electric power generation, industry, buildings and waste management – NCDEQ “took a different approach to develop priority (natural and working lands) measures, performed separately but in parallel to the development and prioritization of measures to reduce (greenhouse gas) emissions in other sectors.”

The plan explains that there is “compelling potential” for natural and working lands to “substantially offset (greenhouse gas emissions) by permanently storing atmospheric carbon in the ground and plants,” the report states. “The natural and working lands “sector ‘netted out’ 34% of the state’s gross GHG emissions in 2020.”

Jacob Boyd, who helped develop the natural and working lands section of the plan, told Coastal Review Wednesday that incorporating natural and working lands into the plan has been considered since the start.

“From the very beginning, the department had made the decision that natural and working lands should be a component, not just the greenhouse gas emitting sectors,” he said.

Boyd, who is the new salt marsh program director for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, was involved in the plan through his previous role as habitat and enhancement section chief at NCDEQ’s Division of Marine Fisheries. Boyd was with the division for 17 years, serving in various roles until last month when he joined the nonprofit conservation organization that also publishes Coastal Review.

Boyd explained that with past plans and strategies, the focus was on resilience with carbon sequestration as a side benefit. “We’re still highlighting the resilience co-benefits,” Boyd said, but now it’s more carbon-focused. “This is really the first time we’ve had an opportunity to do that, which I think it’s great.”

An interagency effort, the Priority Climate Action Plan was built using nearly 50 existing state reports, including the greenhouse gas inventory, a clean energy plan, a clean transportation plan, a zero-emission vehicle plan, climate strategy reports, and a natural and working lands action plan. These were reviewed and consolidated into sectors.

Natural and working lands offer protection and restoration and voiding emissions, Boyd explained.  

“All land is comprised of carbon, which is a greenhouse gas, and some soils and land have higher amounts of that carbon, “Boyd explained, adding coastal habitats such as salt marshes, pocosins and peatlands are some of the highest carbon-rich habitats in the world.

If we lose those, most of that carbon gets emitted back into the atmosphere, but when we protect those coastal habitats, it keeps the carbon in those soils and emits less carbon, and the emissions can be avoided.

“We not only get those carbon benefits, but we also protect natural resources and critical habitat and provide flood resiliency,” he said.  

Boyd said he’s been involved in this type of planning since 2018 when NCDEQ began developing its Natural and Working Lands Action Plan, published in 2020, and related projects, including the recent N.C. Coastal Habitat Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

Because of this experience, Boyd said he was asked to be involved in the action plan development and implementation. It took about six months to develop.

The working group used as a roadmap the 2020 land action plan, which highlighted strategies like high-carbon coastal habitats that help avoid emissions and with carbon sequestration, as a roadmap for this section. As they progressed through developing, these important strategies rose to the top as being needing to be some of the important components of the plan.

The Coastal Federation will be one of a few organizations being brought in to implement projects to conserve and restore these high-carbon habitats.

“We are excited to partner with the State to safeguard and rejuvenate coastal ecosystems given their important role in storing and sequestering carbon. Salt marshes, peatlands, and adjacent working lands also provide an important buffer for coastal communities, offering resilience against extreme weather events and sea level rise,” Executive Director Braxton Davis said. “This Plan seeks to harness the strength of nature itself as a key line of defense in combating climate change and sea level rise.”

Boyd said though he’s transited from NCDEQ to the Coastal Federation, he will continue to work on the action plan for the natural and working land sector.

The plan also notes there are five executive orders in place for climate action and greenhouse gas reduction targets, many of which are focused on the transportation sector.

Transportation, the largest emissions sector, represents about 36% of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. That makes transportation measures a top priority. These include increasing zero-emission and electric vehicles, including in the state fleet as well as school and transit buses, installing and maintaining an electric vehicle charging network, and going after programs to increase efficiency and reduce emissions at port and freight terminals.

“The N.C. Department of Transportation is working with its partners in the public and private sectors to ensure North Carolina is prepared as we transition to a clean energy economy and invest in more sustainable and accessible transportation options,” Jamie Kritzer, assistant director of communications for NCDOT, told Coastal Review Wednesday.

In keeping with the Cooper administration’s executive order to increase the total number of registered zero-emission vehicles, Kritzer continued, NCDOT led the creation of the Clean Transportation Plan, which was developed in about a year by a diverse group of stakeholders and released last April.

“NCDOT is working to carry out the plan’s strategies to encourage the transition to zero-emission vehicles, ensure electric vehicle charging stations and other clean transportation infrastructure are in place, and help make clean mobility options accessible to everyone,” he said.

NCDOT and the NCDEQ also are working on the measure in the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program related to reducing vehicle miles traveled, Kritzer explained.

“Together, our agencies will identify bicycle and pedestrian projects in the rural parts of the state, especially in lower income and disadvantaged communities where current funding through NCDOT programs does not exist. These projects will help reduce vehicle miles traveled, which supports important goals set forth in the Clean Transportation Plan,” Kritzer said.

Southern Environmental Law Center Climate Initiative Leader Alys Campaigne said in a statement about Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina submitting Priority Climate Action Plans to the EPA that the South plays an outsized role in contributing to climate change and severe, accelerating impacts are impacting vulnerable residents with higher pollution exposure and less ability to adapt.

“We applaud Southern Governors and Mayors for developing bold local strategies to protect people from pollution and invest in innovative projects that spur a cleaner economy and more resilient communities. We now have sector-based data on the sources of climate pollution and a roadmap for taking meaningful action in each of our six states,” Campaigne said. “These plans will help draw other competitive public and private investments to our region to deliver on the clean energy transition and respond to community needs.”

DEQ is accepting comments and suggestions through June 3 for program, which will be considered as the state develops its Comprehensive Climate Action Plan for the implementation phase. Send comments through the online form, via email to cprg@deq.nc.gov or by calling 919-707-8757.

Guest commentary

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

Over the past five years, North Carolina communities have endured storm after storm. From the estimated $16 billion of damage caused by the powerful forces of Hurricane Florence to excessive rainfall that engulfed mountain towns during Tropical Storm Fred to the lasting impacts from various unnamed storms, we’ve seen firsthand how flooding disasters are changing North Carolina and its communities.

Now, more than ever, new approaches are required to address the increasing rate and severity of extreme rain events in North Carolina to safeguard communities, ecosystems and local economies. One way to reduce these risks is to build flood resilience across the state, an effort that has proven to save $6 for every $1 spent pre-disaster.  

North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is developing the state’s first-ever Flood Resiliency Blueprint in collaboration with numerous stakeholders, including Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), conservation partners, agricultural organizations, business representatives and local governments. And we are thrilled to celebrate the release of DEQ’s draft plan, which was presented to the General Assembly on Jan. 23.  

At the Joint Legislative Commission on Government Operations Hurricane Response and Recovery subcommittee, DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser envisioned that “five years from now, other states will be looking to North Carolina because our process lets communities get back to day to day living quicker after storm events.” The Blueprint is a big step forward, resulting in a massive statewide effort dedicated to building resilient communities equipped to reduce and manage flood risk and vulnerabilities. 

What is the Flood Resiliency Blueprint?  

In 2021, the North Carolina legislature provided funding and a directive for DEQ to develop North Carolina’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint in response to increasing flood risk. Since then, community leaders, government partners, technical experts and academics have worked together to advance this initiative, ultimately designed to help all North Carolinians make informed flood resilience planning decisions.  

The Blueprint will compile all relevant resources and knowledge into one place, and once completed, will function as an online-decision support tool for state and local leaders. This dynamic tool will help establish a single standardized methodology for North Carolina’s flood planning and includes strategies specific to each of the state’s major river basins, including aspects of stormwater maintenance and holistic watershed management. 

DEQ plans to also include components such as multi-scale modeling, scenario exploration systems, guidance documents and planning tools. Additionally, DEQ will continue to update and refine the Blueprint draft by referencing advisory group feedback and community engagement, in addition to other resources. 

How will the blueprint support NC communities? 

One goal of the Blueprint is to help state and local leaders determine where to invest in flood resilience. The Blueprint will give leaders a better understanding of which communities are most vulnerable to flood risk and who needs financial support and technical assistance. 

To achieve this, DEQ will work with communities across five river basins in 2024. They will host information exchanges in each basin to allow communities the opportunity to co-design an action strategy to reduce flood risk within their river basin.  

Ahead of these exchanges, communities will have access to online tutorials and technical assistance to learn more about the Blueprint and how to use the platform. Additionally, the state legislature has pre-allocated nearly $100 million to DEQ to begin implementing projects upon completion of the Blueprint. 

How to continue advancing the Flood Resiliency Blueprint 

It is essential to get the Blueprint right. All levels of government need to work together on this – and we need to trust in science and look to our community leaders for guidance.  

To support downstream communities, the Blueprint must be able to evaluate flooding at a watershed scale to understand how much water is coming down the river and where that water flows out of the river during a flood. When communities seek solutions to reduce their vulnerability to flooding, they should consider what the area’s watershed looks like and how solutions could impact different areas. It’s recommended to look in-town and upstream to ensure the most cost-effective solutions are grounded in science and achieve the resilience results a community needs. Meanwhile, we must also avoid selecting solutions that increase flooding impacts on a neighbor’s property or in towns downstream. The Blueprint could make all this possible, leading to wiser investments of public funds and better outcomes for residents. 

Additionally, EDF encourages DEQ to continue prioritizing North Carolina’s communities in flood planning to align state resilience goals with local community needs. Community members need to understand the purpose of the Blueprint and have access to it so that they can help improve it. Ultimately, a fully built online decision support tool can help a community understand the trade-offs between various flood solutions.  

EDF looks forward to working with DEQ to continue advancing this important initiative and build resilience for the beautiful state of North Carolina.  

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

Nature-based infrastructure and new understanding of flooding and sea level rise must be considered in designs for all new state construction projects, according to a set of standards the North Carolina Department of Administration released Tuesday.

This includes higher elevation requirements for state construction in coastal areas and other provisions to make state government and university buildings more resilient.

Officials said the new Uniform Floodplain Management Policy updates design and construction requirements for flood-prone areas for the first time in more than 30 years. The policy will increase climate resiliency for public buildings and structures, save taxpayer money, protect public investments and promote nature-based design solutions, officials said.

Nature-based designs are those that incorporate into construction features that mimic processes or effects seen in nature, such as natural hydrology. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says such designs use sustainable planning, design, environmental management and engineering practices that weave natural features or processes into the built environment.

State construction officials said the policy promotes sustainable flood risk-management measures such as green roofs, constructed wetlands, rain gardens, permeable pavement, and vegetated swales. These design features are to help minimize or negate the effects that state-owned buildings have on drainage in surrounding areas.

“This policy makes North Carolina a national leader in protecting state government assets from the threats of climate change,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “Constructing new state-buildings out of harm’s way from sea-level rise and flooding is the smart thing to do and will save taxpayer money for decades to come.”

It was Cooper’s Executive Order No. 266 issued in July 2022 that directed the department’s State Construction Office to update the floodplain policy with stakeholder input. The state departments of Environmental Quality, Transportation, and Emergency Management and the Office of Recovery and Resiliency were consultants and numerous design professionals, academic researchers and nature-based design proponents provided input and expertise.

The new rules apply only to the development of new state government-owned buildings.

Department of Administration officials said the goal was not only to protect state-owned assets and increase flood resiliency, but also to create a policy that could serve as a model for state, local and regional governments.

The new policy features provisions that officials described as “proactive and innovative” and that in some cases exceed National Flood Insurance Program-based regulations.

In addition to increasing elevation requirements for construction in coastal areas to account for increasing storm severity, frequency and anticipated sea level rise, the policy calls for preventing, with narrow exceptions, state-owned construction in what is known as the “100-year” and “500-year” floodplains. The state floodplain management policy had not been updated since 1990 during Gov. James Martin’s administration.

“In the three plus decades since North Carolina’s floodplain policy went into effect, research and real-life events have improved our understanding of floods, flooding, sea level rise, and hydrological best practices,” said Administration Secretary Pamela Cashwell. “In fact, four of North Carolina’s costliest and deadliest storms – Hurricanes Florence, Matthew, Floyd and Fran – have occurred since our flood policy was last updated. It’s imperative that North Carolina establish best practice guidance for smart development that also helps to preserve our environment and resources.”

Groups supporting the move have included the Southern Environmental Law Center, which submitted comments during the public process.

“While we understand that requiring all state construction to integrate nature-based
standards will require some state agencies to build technical expertise and capacity, now is the time for North Carolina to embrace the potential of nature-based solutions for unavoidable construction in floodplains,” the organization said in its comments.

After more than a year, a statewide flood-planning tool remains in development, but North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officials said this week that their “goal is to begin helping some of the most impacted communities as soon as possible,” and they plan to use the nearly $100 million released to the agency in the last month to get there.

NCDEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser outlined Tuesday for the Joint Legislative Commission on Governmental Operations, Subcommittee on Hurricane Response and Recovery, the progress made on the North Carolina Flood Resiliency Blueprint, which the agency was tasked with creating in 2021. She and department Blueprint Manager Todd Kennedy also detailed how the department is spending state dollars.

Held in the legislative building auditorium with a handful of people in attendance and about 130 online, DEQ officials were joined for the hearing by AECOM Senior Program Manager Dave Canaan and John Dorman, who oversees strategic funding and disaster management. AECOM is the consulting firm contracted for the blueprint project.

The resiliency blueprint is a historic endeavor, Biser said, adding that the approach is the first of its kind in the country.

“I want to be clear that the end goal of this project is making North Carolina and our residents more resilient to storm events. The blueprint is the tool that will get us there,” she said.

With the state experiencing more frequent and more intense storm events, and hurricanes and tropical storms such as Fred, Florence, Michael, and Matthew causing billions of dollars of damage and loss of life, “we know it’s a matter of when, not if, we see another storm of that magnitude. At the same time we’re continuing to see flooding in communities without a major hurricane,” Biser explained.

And North Carolina’s economy is booming. “With that growth comes more people, more buildings, more roads and more infrastructure that we need to protect, more impervious surface that we need to account for because it does increase our flood risks, and it puts more of our residents at risk,” she said. adding, “Making our state and our residents more resilient to future storm events is what the blueprint will accomplish.”

House Majority Leader Rep. John Bell, R-Wayne, reminded the committee before Biser spoke that NCDEQ had been appropriated $20 million to develop the blueprint, to study river basins prone to flooding, and create a decision-making tool for flood mitigation, investments and strategies from local watersheds to the entire river basin. The “committee wants to know where we are in that process,” Bell said.

Of the $20 million from the 2021 allocation, close to $6 million has been obligated, Biser said.

Roughly $1.9 million was spent on contracting for the simultaneous development of the draft blueprint and draft Neuse River Basin Action Strategy, which is referred to as the blueprint’s Phase 1.

Both plans should be available to the public in the next few months, officials said.

For Phase 2, another $4.08 million is going to develop the online decision-support tool, which will allow decision-makers and the public to access and benefit from the data modeling and analysis that’s being done, expected later this year.

“The remainder — around $14 million — and I will note that we have been trying to be very good stewards of this $20 million because we know that it’s going to take a lot to get to this next stage — will support the development of river basin action strategies for the next five prioritized basins: the Cape Fear, the Tar-Pamlico, the White Oak, the Lumber and the French Broad,” or Phase III.  

They chose the Neuse River basin for the model strategy because it likely has the most data related to flooding compared to other basins in the state, a past report states.

As part of the allocation, the North Carolina General Assembly directed DEQ’s Division of Mitigation Services to contract with an organization to develop the blueprint, which is how AECOM, a global consulting firm that provides technical and consulting services with an office in Raleigh, was selected. The firm was given a statutory deadline of Dec. 31 for delivering the draft document.

An executive summary for the draft, was released Friday ahead of the meeting on the blueprint website, where other actions and reports can be found.

Once the agency had the draft, $96 million was released to implement flood resiliency projects.

NCDEQ Deputy Secretary for Public Affairs Sharon Martin told Coastal Review Wednesday that the agency is working to begin implementing the projects using the $96 million and what is learned from those projects will be incorporated into the blueprint and action strategies.

Biser, during the hearing Tuesday, explained that officials were in the process of looking at how to develop a phased approach to spending the $96 million.

“In the Neuse Basin, we’ve already identified a list of potential projects and are actively prioritizing them for quick implementation,” adding the agency will expand that to the other five basins over the next year,” Biser said. There’s about a thousand different mitigation strategies in the Neuse River action strategy and now the key is “prioritizing those projects because we don’t have an infinite amount of funding available. So, we’re having a look at what’s going to be most impactful to spend money on.”

Kennedy, DEQ blueprint manager, said the process to prioritize those projects had begun and that they’re in “high gear” to begin the implementation process.

“I anticipate the first wave of projects coming here over the next six months or so. Things that we can again, implement more quickly, and then expect a second wave coming after that, both within the Neuse and those other five basins where we’ll look to get projects on the ground.

Biser said that the data from the initial projects would be incorporated into the blueprint as strategies continue to be developed, and there are plans to provide a list of available funding.

Biser responded during the questioning that there are different levels of capacity in various local governments. “You’ve got some local governments who are going to have engineering staff on hand or at the call, and they’re able to really have their own staff to work through it. Other small, smaller, rural municipalities may have a harder time with capacity.” She in turn asked legislators, “how much technical assistance and engaging with a tool do you want to see?”

Biser was asked about the draft blueprint document, which she reiterated was still in draft form. “I will put emphasis on the word ‘draft’ at the moment,” she said.

Currently, the 150 technical experts from state agencies, academia, nonprofits and other organizations that have been working with NCDEQ to build the blueprint over the last year “are in the process of reviewing the work AECOM gave to us,” Biser said, adding that the Dec. 31 deadline was met.

Kennedy noted during the meeting that there is an executive summary on the website and the larger draft document would be refined over the next few months and then made public.

Sen. Steve Jarvis, R-Davidson, clarified that they expect it to take months to refine the draft, adding “I understand the executive summaries there. But as soon as possible. I think we need to see the draft. We would like to make that public.”

Biser said they want to make sure that they’re not creating any confusion.

“I think that’s the biggest part of this is making sure that we’ve got everything refined to the point where it’s going to be most useful. But we hear you in terms of the timeframe and we’re we are working as quickly as possible to get that public and to get it ready and in your hands.”

Bell, when it was his opportunity to ask questions, began by saying, “first, will be a probably a little snarky comment, but it needs to be said $2 million on a very, very rough draft. Probably not the best use of taxpayer money. You know, we should have a better draft than very, very rough draft.”

Guest commentary

To stimulate discussion and debate, Coastal Review welcomes differing viewpoints on topical coastal issues. Opinions expressed by the authors are not necessarily those of Coastal Review or our publisher, the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

MANNS HARBOR – Here, on the front lines of the battle against climate change, the war looks lost.

Point Peter Road leads straight into the Croatan Sound where rising seas, higher tides, and monstrous storms batter the fragile coastline. The saltwater poisons and erodes the peaty soil before what’s left disappears under the relentless waves. A man-made canal carries the seawater inland where it kills cypresses and pines and turns the forest into shrubby marsh. Freshwater, blocked from running into the bay by the rising sound, pools under trees and kills them.

This corner of the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge stands no higher than one foot.

“This particular stretch of the coastline, due to the hydrology, experiences extremely high rates of erosion,” says Sarah Toner, the visitor services manager for the Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuges Complex. “This is ground zero.”

All, however, may not be lost. A healthy infusion of climate-fighting cash — $27.5 million — from the Inflation Reduction Act will likely help Alligator River and a handful of other nearby refuges and state lands keep the ravages of climate change at bay. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partners will deploy “nature-based solutions,” including oyster reefs, marsh sills, dredge spoils, and re-wetted peatlands, to protect the coast from a steadily warming world.

“The threat is that more of these communities out here will become really challenging places to live with more flooding, more soil erosion, and more frequent wildfires,” says Chris Baillie, the climate adaptation coordinator for the North Carolina Coastal Federation. “There is a need to be really judicious in how climate funding is spent because there simply isn’t enough money out there to address all the climate vulnerabilities faced by people and nature.”

‘We’re trying to hang on’

The Alligator River refuge — “mile after uninhabited mile on both Highways 64 and 264,” reads a 1990 Service brochure – is an otherworldly expanse of dredged peat fields, fresh and brackish marshes, pocket forests, and lakes. Established in 1984, the refuge is surrounded by water and serves as the second line of defense, behind the Outer Banks, against a marauding Mother Nature. The 152,000-acre refuge is one of nine, low-lying refuges in eastern North Carolina, all facing varying degrees of climate-induced threats.

Its purpose: protect the pocosin wetlands, which provide ample habitat for the wintering waterfowl that fill the skies, the black bears in numbers found nowhere else on the East Coast, and the elusive, and federally endangered, Red Wolves. Another goal: to save the eastern black rail, “the most secretive of the secretive marsh birds and one of the least understood bird species in North America,” according to the Atlantic Coast Joint Venture, a federal-state bird conservation partnership.

The birds, federally listed as threatened, once flitted across salt marshes from Connecticut to Florida, including those alongside Point Peter Road. But habitat destruction, due to drained marshes and rising seas, has decimated the population by 90 percent. Maybe 350 breeding pairs remain, according to the Joint Venture, “a catastrophic decline over the past 30 years.”

Seas, worldwide, rose on average 1.2 millimeters a year for most of the 20th century. Since 1993, though, the rate has more than doubled to 3.2 millimeters, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet reports show the seas have been rising three to four times as much as the global rate between North Carolina and Massachusetts which leads to more frequent inundations and salt marsh loss.

“We’re losing a lot of land,” says Fred Wurster, a Service geomorphologist who’s leading the climate-fighting project. “Not only is the shoreline retreating rapidly, but the habitat we manage is transitioning very rapidly to salt marsh or open water. It creates a situation where we’re trying to hang on to what’s here long enough to give species a chance to move further inland.”

Much of Alligator River, like much of the coastal plain, was logged of cypress and Atlantic white cedar and drained for farmland which dried out the peaty soils. When the mega-farms proved unprofitable, the scarred and desiccated fields became refuges and wildlife management areas. Yet the salty water from surrounding estuaries creeps relentlessly inland poisoning the soil and further drying the spongy peat bogs. Without rain, the carbon-rich pocosins become tinderboxes for wildfires that can last months and cause significant damage to the ecosystem, and global health.

In 1955, a fire on the other side of the Alligator River burned 203,000 acres. Thirty years later, the Allen Road fire burned 95,000 acres. The 2008 Evans Road fire, though, sticks most in locals’ craws. It burned — above and below ground in the deep peat — for seven months before it was extinguished. Air quality as far north as Norfolk, Virginia, suffered. More than 40,000 acres, mostly in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, burned. The Service estimated that the fire released six million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Peatlands cover only three percent of the world’s land mass, yet they store twice as much carbon as all the planet’s forests. They are enormous carbon “sinks.” Duke University calculated in 2022 that rewetting and restoring 250,000 acres of abandoned peat bogs across the Southeast could prevent 4.3 million tons of carbon dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere each year.

“Southern pocosin peatlands punch far above their weight in terms of their capacity for carbon storage,” says Curtis Richardson, founding director of the Duke University Wetland Center. “Acre for acre, they can store significantly more carbon than forests or grasslands.”

Largest climate-fighting act

Arch Bracher stood at the end of a long pier casting mullet into Rose Bay where the freshwater Pamlico River turns brackish at the Pamlico Sound. It was an unseasonably warm, Carolina-blue morning and the red drum weren’t biting. And neither was Bracher when talk turned to climate change.

“They talk about sea level rise, blah, blah, blah,” says Bracher, a charter boat captain who runs the Pelican out of Oregon Inlet. “But the ocean’s not getting higher. It’s just eating away stuff. They’re talking about the water rising one inch over the next 100 years. I think that’s just propaganda.”

A forest of dead, ghostly pines stood in the adjoining Swanquarter National Wildlife Refuge. Rising seas have eaten away the banks on both sides of the Bell Island Pier. A study a decade ago showed that an average of three feet of peaty soil disappeared each year due to ever-higher water. In 2012, The Nature Conservancy and the Service built a limestone sill 30 feet offshore. The reef reduces the power of the waves that pound the shoreline. Erosion slows. Sand and silt accumulate between the shore and the sill creating new beach for plants to take hold and marsh to reform. Oysters and mussels attach to the marl further strengthening, and renourishing, the reef.

“We’re building good oyster habitat, and getting recruitment, which helps with water quality as well,” says Aaron McCall, a regional land steward for The Nature Conservancy. “We don’t want to reach a tipping point where the system gets destroyed and it doesn’t provide any service to the environment or the local community.”

The Conservancy surveyed 10 sites — six protected by the reef, four unprotected — near the pier to determine whether erosion continues apace. Erosion stopped or slowed at all protected sites; it continued at the unprotected sites.

Limestone sills and oyster reefs are major components of so-called living shorelines and hallmarks of nature-based solutions to climate change. And they are precisely the types of projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act that will be built across eastern North Carolina.

The IRA, at $369 billion, is the largest climate-fighting package in U.S. history. Its goal is to move the country fully towards renewable energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. Billions of dollars are dedicated to agricultural conservation, forest protection, and wildfire risk reduction.

“There is often an assumption that tackling the climate crisis requires only technological solutions,” the White House said in November 2022 describing the IRA’s nature-based offerings. “Too often, the power of nature is overlooked and undervalued as a core element of a more just, livable world today and for future generations.”

The Service received $250 million; nearly half will help restore federal wildlife refuges and state wildlife management areas “that have been affected by adverse weather events.” No other project received as much money — $27.5 million — as the Albemarle-Pamlico region. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission will likely get $5 million of that amount for climate-fighting work at wildlife management areas across the coastal plain.

There’s really nothing new or radical about enlisting nature to solve nature’s problems. The Roosevelt administration, during the Dust Bowl, paid farmers to plant 220 million trees from Texas to North Dakota to reduce erosion, protect livestock, and create wildlife habitat. Oyster reefs have long been deployed off Florida. Sand is pumped on barrier islands across the Mississippi River Delta. The Service and partners also spent $38 million pumping sand, restoring marsh, and replumbing the hydrology at Delaware’s Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge which was decimated by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

Nature-based engineering contrasts the coastal hardening tactics — sea walls, jetties, bulkheads, rip-rap — of centuries past. Sea walls, for example, only protect shorelines for so long against rising seas. More vicious storms and hurricanes easily top them. And the walls may protect one section of coast while causing erosion along another section.

“Nature-based solutions are definitely the way to go because you’re designing something that takes into account the natural hydrology and actual landscape in the first place,” Wurster says. “The things you’re building will be more stable in the long run. You’re not fighting against nature. Plus, these strategies tend to be more resilient and less expensive in the long run.”

Buying time

Climate change’s past, present, and alarming future unspools along Mashoes Road on the Alligator River refuge’s north end. A somewhat healthy marsh on the right gives way to shrub, pine, and oak on the left. In the distance, the skeletal remains of once-prominent trees hug East Lake. Eventually, inexorably, the salt water will reach the forest and destroy it too.

“We see, year after year, the forest retreating and turn into this ghost forest,” says the refuge’s Toner, a biologist by training. “We’re trying to keep what we have here for as long as we can.”

Help’s on the way. Much of the $27.5 million will be spent restoring fragile coastal ecosystems via shoreline protection and peatland restoration. IRA money could plug drainage ditches and add dikes, tidal gates, or wooden risers to keep saltwater at bay while restoring the natural flow of water over the land. Culverts may be dug to let water flow beneath roads. Restoration, or preservation, of trees, shrubs, and wetlands could provide habitat for Red Wolves, black rails, and other migratory birds. Communities near and far will likely benefit from a reduction in wildfires and a sequestration of carbon.

Oyster reefs, for example, could be built, or expanded, at Cedar Island and Pea Island refuges. A canal might be dredged, and a pump station added, at Lake Mattamuskeet. A logging road could be removed at Roanoke River refuge to let water flow naturally again. The marsh sill at the Bell Island Pier could be expanded.

Work is set to begin in 2024. Baillie, with the nonprofit Coastal Federation, says there’s no time to waste.

“It would be really disingenuous to say, ‘Hey, these funds are going to take care of all of our problems and let people live the way they currently do forever,’” he says. “There are tough decisions to be made. But these funds can have a big impact helping people and natural communities adapt while buying some time to figure out what’s the best way forward.”

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The Down East Resilience Network is hosting a property insurance community roundtable this month for owners to learn more about their current insurance coverage to help better prepare for the future.

The open house is from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 17, at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center on Harkers Island.

The Down East Resilience Network is a group of researchers, agencies, educators, students and others invested in the adaptation and resiliency that was formed three years ago to raise awareness of the environmental changes taking place in the region, which includes 13 communities in eastern Carteret County. To help with planning, register online.

During the open house there will be representatives from the state’s departments of Insurance and Public Safety, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, the National Flood Insurance Program, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other specialists.

Roundtable discussions with insurance specialists are scheduled for 10:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Registration is not required to attend.

“This is not an insurance sales pitch, but rather an opportunity to learn more about coastal insurance changes/challenges,” organizers said.

This event is intended to give community members the opportunity to ask the following questions and address other concerns:

• Are you ready for the next storm, the next high tide or the next nor’easter?
• Is your home or business in a flood zone? What does that mean? Do you have questions regarding flood maps?
• Do you need flood insurance? Can you afford flood insurance? Can you afford not to have it?
• What resources does FEMA provide for pre-storm mitigation, post-storm recovery, long-term resilience?
• What companies are still covering coastal NC? What is the long-term projection for these companies?

The insurance roundtable is a recommendation from the Down East Resilience Network meetings held in Sept 2023.

Food will be available throughout the day for lunch, supper, and snacks. Organizers thanked Chalk & Gibbs Insurance of Morehead City for supporting the discussion.

Email museum@coresound.com with any questions.

RALEIGH — While the need to manage water in the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula is a centuries-old endeavor, rising sea levels and increasing impacts from climate change have been overwhelming prior flood-mitigation methods in the sprawling lowlands within the nation’s second-largest estuarine system.

“The Scuppernong River Basin in the heart of the Albemarle-Pamlico region in eastern North Carolina faces significant water management challenges due to factors such as changing precipitation patterns, manipulated land-use, and increasing water demand,” the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, or APNEP, explained in a recent newsletter.

Piecemeal efforts to address the challenges are now starting to be stitched together in a regional approach, spurred by a $50,000 grant for community engagement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office for Coastal Management Digital Coast and the National Estuarine Research Reserve Association, followed by a $200,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Quality and a $200,000 in-kind matching grant for the recently launched Scuppernong Water Management Study.

“The goal was to have that community engagement and local input shape the study and inform, so it’s not just a desktop exercise, an engineering exercise,” Stacey Feken, APNEP project manager, recently told Coastal Review.

Origins of the study go back to plans to update a water-management plan for Lake Phelps, which had not been updated since the early 1980s. Pettigrew State Park was trying to figure out how to do the update, Feken recalled and, in the process, park officials decided that since water knew no boundaries, it would make sense to look at its management on a regional basis.

“We wanted to do this in collaboration with partners in the area, other land-conservation managers and the landowners and the communities,” she said, recounting what Pettigrew officials had conveyed.

Pettigrew had approached APNEP about five years ago for help, Feken said, and the partnership has since taken the helm in developing the study. 

“They brought us in to serve as a neutral, science-based partner,” she said. “So, we’re serving as a convener, doing everything from technical assistance and grant writing to the community engagement associated with the study.”

Grant applications for state parks were able to be broadened beyond park boundaries, and a funding request was made for the planning and engineering feasibility study through DEQ’s Water Resources Division.

Although the focus was initially on Washington County, where most of the 5,830-acre Pettigrew State Park and Lake Phelps are located, it was soon discovered that nearby local governments in Tyrrell County and organizations representing the counties and communities had been long asking for state assistance to cope with flooding issues.

Then, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the planning. Once the crisis passed, APNEP contacted the Albemarle Commission, a regional government council, to help in the effort. Other partners that have joined are Buckridge Coastal Reserve, Washington County, Tyrrell County, Washington County Soil and Water, Tyrrell County Soil and Water, Pettigrew State Park, Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, and the North Carolina State University Cooperative Extension.  

A steering committee comprised of local stakeholders was created to serve as a liaison to the communities, ensure effectiveness and to advise the engagement team, which, in addition to APNEP, includes representatives from the North Carolina Coastal Reserve, North Carolina Sea Grant and The Nature Conservancy.

Cary-based contractor Kris Bass Engineering, through models, mapping and other tools, is to identify flood-prone areas, enhance understanding of water movement throughout the region and identify potential solutions to flooding.

“The study will help inform development of a comprehensive plan to address water management issues on both private and public lands inter-connected by an extensive drainage network on the northern portion of the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula,” the APNEP newsletter said.

As part of the comprehensive study, organizers are asking the public to share observations of how flooding impacts these communities by Jan. 15 through an online survey.

Results from the study could be used to inform other more localized studies, such as the Pettigrew State Park water management plan update, Feken said.

“My understanding with the engineers, they’re developing the modeling for the study so that it can be easily replicated in other areas of the region,” she said.

Feken said that she expects that another study would be done in the near future for the southern portion of the Albemarle-Pamlico region, which includes Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County and the Pungo River area.

Located within some of the most rural and economically distressed counties in the state, communities in the Albemarle-Pamlico region have often felt forgotten as surrounding beach communities and urban areas with fat tax bases were thriving. 

But the uniqueness and ecological importance of the region have lately brought remarkable amounts of attention from conservation groups, nonprofits and government agencies, as reflected in efforts of groups including the North Carolina’s Natural and Working Lands initiative, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, Coastal Resilience Community of Practice and the Audubon Society’s community-driven projects, among others.

The ecosystem is extraordinarily rich, and situated just feet above sea level, vulnerable, with pocosin peatlands, forests, sounds, bays and lakes that provide habitat for wildlife that includes endangered red wolves, black bears and numerous other mammals, plus thousands of waterfowl and other birds, as well as countless amphibians, fish and reptiles.

“It’s just such an amazing landscape in different ways,” Feken said.

The divisions of Coastal Management and Marine Fisheries, both under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, have received funding to expand efforts along the coast.

The Division of Coastal Management has received more than $13 million in state and federal funds to provide final engineering and design technical assistance for local government projects through the four-phase Resilient Coastal Communities Program.

Of that, $13 million, $3 million is one of 109 grants announced by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in November. The division was allocated $10 million in the recently passed state budget to be used for the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, as well.

“These most recent investments in our Resilient Coastal Communities Program will help more coastal communities plan, design, and complete projects that help reduce impacts and speed up recovery following coastal storm events,” Braxton Davis, Division of Coastal Management director, said in a statement.

Additional details about the local government grants, including timing, eligibility, funding levels, allowable activities, and match requirements, will be published to the Division of Coastal Management website in early 2024, followed by a request for proposals.

The department’s Division of Marine Fisheries was awarded more than $89,000 as one of the 109 grants for final design and planning to install living shorelines and low-impact stormwater retrofits.

The division, in partnership with the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences, is planning to install a living shoreline along about 775 feet of the adjacent properties in Morehead City, as well as install stormwater retrofits to reduce runoff at the division’s headquarters campus.

Matching funds of $5,500 brings the total amount of Phase 1 of the project to more than $95,000. The division plans to seek funding in subsequent years for the construction and monitoring phase of the project.

“The project will demonstrate dual benefits to both coastal communities and habitats and will result in the restoration of natural systems to increase the resilience of communities from coastal hazards and improve habitats for fish and wildlife,” Division of Marine Fisheries Director Kathy Rawls said in a statement.

The grants were awarded through the National Coastal Resilience Fund, a partnership between Fish and Wildlife, NOAA, the Department of Defense, Shell USA, TransRe, SalesForce and Oxy. The fund supports capacity building and larger-scale planning, design, and implementation projects to help improve community and coastal habitat resilience and reduce risks and devastating impacts of rising seas, coastal flooding, and more intense storms.

The State Employees’ Credit Union Foundation is awarding a $250,000 grant to the North Carolina Coastal Federation to help improve coastal resilience in five communities.

Carteret Community College, SECU Foundation, State Employees’ Credit Union and Coastal Federation representatives will meet at 11 a.m. Friday at Carteret Community College’s Bryant Student Center in Room 3209 to kick off this new project.

Open to the public, the check presentation is hosted by Carteret Community College, where a living shoreline was recently completed in partnership with the Coastal Federation.

The $250,000 grant will enable the nonprofit membership organization to work within five coastal communities that will be selected next year to implement restoration projects with the goal to improve the health and resilience of both the local ecosystem and the built community, organizers explained.

“Over the past four decades, the Federation has helped dozens of local governments plan and implement projects that support the community and the ecosystem, ranging from salt marsh restoration, watershed plans, living shorelines, and more,” Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller said in a statement. “These projects make our communities more resilient to storms and sea level rise and bring federal dollars to support coastal improvement projects. We’re grateful for the leadership support of the SECU Foundation in launching this new partnership.”

This partnership will focus on underserved communities in the state’s 20 coastal counties and will work closely with community leaders to prioritize local needs and implement one on-the-ground project in each community.

“This project is a wonderful opportunity to proactively support coastal communities by protecting and restoring our state’s coastal areas that are threatened by environmental and economic challenges,” SECU Foundation Executive Director Jama Campbell said in a statement. “This valuable and important work will help sustain community infrastructure and ensure future cultural and economic opportunities for residents, visitors, and our state.”

The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

Do you have concerns about what’s happening along the state’s coast? The Coastal Society, North Carolina Sea Grant and the University of North Carolina Wilmington are hosting a forum Monday, Nov. 6, to address many of these coastal issues.

“Priority Issues in Coastal North Carolina,” a full-day gathering of coastal experts, professionals and officials will take place in UNCW’s Center for Marine Science, 5600 Marvin K Moss Lane, Wilmington.

The Coastal Society is an organization of private sector, academic and government professionals and students dedicated to actively addressing emerging coastal issues by fostering dialogue, forging partnerships and promoting communications and education, according to its website.

Keynote speaker will be North Carolina Division of Coastal Management Director Braxton Davis. Also planned for the day are three speaker panels, breakout discussion sessions, student poster session and contest, and a networking happy hour at Wilmington Brewing Co. to close out the day. The full agenda is available online.

Topics to be discussed include offshore wind planning and permitting, research and control of toxins, such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and planning and implementing coastal resilience strategies.

Lynker Inc., North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, North Carolina Coastal Federation, Duke University Marine Lab and East Carolina University are supporting the event.

Tickets, including fees and taxes, are $19.10 for students, $64.78 for professional Coastal Society members, and $76.19 for general admission. Tickets can be purchased through an online platform.

Reduced registration rates are also available for those who are able to demonstrate financial need on an individual basis by contacting the event planners. Registration discounts will be provided through promo codes issued only to those individuals.

Contact Coastal Society Executive Director Judy Tucker at admin@thecoastalsociety.org or Regional Event Planning Chair Jeff Flood at jflood@udel.edu with any questions regarding registration or event logistics.

Salary increases for state employees included in the recently adopted budget are expected to help narrow the gap of staff vacancies within the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

As of the first of this month, 256 out of 1,797 department positions were empty, holding the vacancy rate at just over 14%, according to DEQ Deputy Secretary for Public Affairs Sharon Martin.

Though that’s about a 5% decrease in the number of vacancies the department had around this same time a year ago, the department continues struggling to fill certain jobs where the pay is substantially more in the private sector.

The 2023 Appropriations Act that became law Oct. 3 includes state employee raises of 7% over two years and a laundry list of fee increases tacked on to permits and applications handled by DEQ’s various divisions.

Related: Budget strips certain powers from local governments

The legislative salary increase that is 4% the first year and 3% the second, fee hikes and money from the Labor Market Adjustment Fund of which more than $730,000 is included annually to recruit and retain critical staff positions “are helpful in beginning to address DEQ’s below market salaries,” Martin said in an email.

“However, we are still faced with the challenges of a highly competitive market, especially for engineers and environmental specialists,” she said. “DEQ continues to look for opportunities to address salary concerns and fill vacancies.”

DEQ’s vacancy rate is at 22% for engineers and environmental specialists.

Martin pointed out that the budget also includes 25 additional full-time positions, including one dozen jobs aimed at addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. PFAS are chemical compounds used in a variety of consumer products because of their resistance to heat, water, oil and grease.

There are well over 10,000 PFAS. Researchers are just scratching the surface on understanding how these chemicals, which are being released into the environment through the air, soil and drinking water sources, affect human health.

DEQ is monitoring PFAS in the Cape Fear River and other drinking water sources in the state, and the agency is working with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to test fish for PFAS to issue fish consumption advisories based on those test results.

The department also oversees the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or NC RCCP, which received a $10 million budget allocation. 

NC RCCP aims to boost resilience efforts in the state’s 20 coastal counties and encourages those who live and work along the coast to participate in finding solutions and prioritizing projects designed to help their communities bounce back from flooding and storms. The program is a product of the state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment & Resilience Plan, which was the result of Executive Order 80 signed by Gov. Roy Cooper in October 2018.

Also included in the budget is $2 billion in investments for water and wastewater infrastructure throughout the state.

Fee increases range anywhere from around $200 to $400, and more in some cases.

Martin said more than 15 years have passed since the last fee increases had been implemented for many programs within the department.

The budget became law without Cooper’s signature. The governor, who is wrapping up his final term in office, called the budget “bad,” saying that, among other things, some provisions within it violate the constitution.

A provision of the law stipulates that DEQ cannot refuse to accept or issue an application for a permit, authorization, or certification if the applicant has not first received those from any other state or federal agencies “except to the extent required by federal or State law.”

The provision also restricts local governments’ authority by mandating that they cannot deny a draft erosion and sedimentation control plan if an applicant has yet to receive other environmental permits, “aside from a permit required for stormwater discharges from construction sites.”

Local governments must grant conditional approval on a draft plan “upon the applicant’s compliance with federal and State water quality laws, regulations, and rules.

Legislators also repealed a previous law that eliminated a fast-track permitting option for stormwater permits.

The fast-tracking process will exempt applicants who meet certain requirements from going through a technical review.

“DEQ will allocate the resources necessary to address required actions under the budget – including rulemaking,” Martin said. “On express permitting, the rulemaking requirement will allow for a public process as we codify the procedures governing existing express permitting.”

Other provisions in the Act prohibit the department, the state’s Utilities Commission and Environmental Management Commission, and the governor from requiring electric public utilities to participate in programs that offset carbon dioxide emissions.

DEQ and other state agencies, including the Department of Transportation, cannot adopt or enforce emissions control standards on new motor vehicles.

Five coastal communities are in line to receive a total of $1.1 million in grants to carry out resilience projects.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced the grants Tuesday. The funds are awarded through the four-phase Resilient Coastal Communities Program. The communities are in the final phase, which is to implement a project identified and planned during the previous three phases.

Belhaven will be awarded $263,200 for its project for tidal gates and flood attenuation at Wynne’s Gut on Pantego Creek.

New Bern will receive $175,320 for Duffyfield resilience improvement and Rose Street basin restoration and enhancement.

Pine Knoll Shores will be awarded $215,000 for tree street swales.

Vandemere will receive $250,000 for draining improvements.

Washington will receive $263,200 for Jack’s Creek floodplain and greenway improvements.

“Thanks to the proactive work of these communities in earlier phases of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, they are ready to take advantage of grant funding to implement shovel-ready resilience projects that will protect their residents from coastal hazards,” Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in a statement.

The program supports communities in developing and implementing locally driven resilience strategies, and implementing projects or activities which reduce the impacts of coastal hazards like flooding and storms, and receives funding from a combination of state and federal sources.

More than $600,000 in grant funding through a state-private partnership will help kick-start 10 resilience projects in eastern North Carolina.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, partnered with the Duke Energy Foundation to select the recipients for the Duke Energy Resilience Accelerator Grant Program.

Over the last few years, NCORR’s Regional Resilience Portfolio Program has worked with nine Council of Governments in the eastern part of the state, particularly those with areas hit hard by the September 2018 Hurricane Florence, to create regional vulnerability assessments and resilience portfolios. The winning projects were established in these regional portfolios.

“The goal of the program was to help local leaders work with one another to identify priorities, challenges and then strategies for climate hazard resilience,” the state’s Chief Resilience Officer Dr. Amanda Martin said in a statement. “The accelerator grant seed money will move these projects to the next step of implementation.” 

The Albemarle Commission has been awarded $65,000 to develop a toolkit of customizable stormwater, water quality and flooding outreach for its member counties. The Albemarle Commission is the Council of Governments organization for Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

In the Cape Fear region, $65,000 has been awarded to expand Men and Women United for Youth & Families, an organization serving historically underserved communities with disaster mitigation and recovery assistance. Counties in the Cape Fear region are Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover and Pender.

In the Eastern Carolina Council of Governments region, through an agreement with Goldsboro, $65,000 will go to Community Technical Assistance Inc. to reuse city-owned property acquired through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program as an outdoor classroom for education and leadership training. The Eastern Carolina Council of Governments region includes Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Greene, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Pamlico and Wayne counties.

Roxboro, in the Kerr-Tar Council of Governments region, will use its $65,000 to coordinate a commercial and industrial building inventory, including analysis of climate hazard impacts and risk reduction improvements, for its member counties of Person, Granville, Franklin, Vance and Warren.

In the Lumber River Council of Governments region, $65,000 goes to Carolina Wetlands Association and its partners to develop a wetland restoration plan for 50 acres covering part of the Lumbee Cultural Center property and surrounding wetlands in Robeson County that routinely floods. The counties in this region are Bladen, Hoke, Richmond, Robeson and Scotland.

Cumberland County, in the Mid-Carolina Council of Governments region, has been awarded $27,650 to install stream gauges and sensors at six locations to help improve flood warning and forecasting in routinely flooded areas. This region includes Cumberland, Harnett and Sampson counties.

Two projects in the Mid-East Commission region have been awarded funding. Carolina Wetlands Association will use $65,000 for wetland and floodplain restoration along Parker Creek just north of Greenville and further downstream. The Association of Mexicans in North Carolina will use its $60,850 to relaunch NC Latino Disaster Recovery Alliance to share hazard response and preparedness information with Latino and Spanish-speaking community members, including farmworkers. This region includes Beaufort, Bertie, Hertford, Martin and Pitt counties.

Triangle J Council of Governments has been awarded $65,000 to plan and implement a Haw River warning system and evaluate backup power needs for emergency shelter facilities. This region includes Chatham, Johnston, Lee and Moore counties.

Nash County, in the Upper Coastal Plain Council of Governments, has been awarded $65,000 to create flood resiliency by developing a benefit-cost analysis and a study of routinely flooded access points that include access to an emergency communications tower and residential neighborhood. This region includes Edgecombe, Halifax, Nash, Northampton and Wilson counties.

“Resiliency to climate hazards begins at the local level,” Duke Energy’s North Carolina president Kendal Bowman said. “North Carolina communities have been hit hard in recent years by natural disasters and storms. These grants will help communities thrive amid changing climate conditions.”

The Regional Resilience Portfolio Program is a component of the larger Regions Innovating for Strong Economies & Environment, or RISE, program.

RISE, a partnership between the NCORR and N.C. Rural Center and in collaboration with the N.C. Councils of Governments, is funded by a $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, in addition to federal mitigation funds, and support from both NCORR and N.C. Rural Center. RISE is managed by NCORR, a division of the state Department of Public Safety.

Nearly $21 million in federal funds has been recommended for five climate change resilience projects in coastal North Carolina.

Vice President Kamala Harris announced Friday the $20.9 million from the administration’s Climate-Ready Coasts initiative funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

The Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, administers the initiative. The award recommendations must be reviewed within the agency before final approval and fund distribution.

“North Carolina’s recommended projects focus on protecting undeveloped shoreline, restoring oyster habitat, removing abandoned vessels and other debris from waterways, and deepening the relationship between people and their environment,” NOAA Administrator Dr. Rick Spinrad said in a statement. “NOAA is proud to recommend and support such projects, which represent multiple approaches toward building healthier, more resilient coasts and coastal communities.”

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, was recommended to receive $19.4 million for two projects, to complete the Pamlico Sound oyster sanctuary and remove storm-related debris, lost fishing gear and derelict vessels along the coast.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor was recommended for $536,000 to support habitat restoration and resilience.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission was recommended for $500,000 to conserve land along Bay River in Pamlico County.

The National Audubon Society was recommended for $499,000 to work with coastal communities to identify and propose nature-based solutions in Columbia and Tyrrell counties and two communities in South Carolina.

Coastal Federation Executive Director Todd Miller said in an interview Friday that the two funded projects would transform and accelerate the nonprofit organization’s capacity to restore fishery habitats vital to the coastal economy and environment.

“NOAA recognizes past successes of long-term partnerships that built the foundation to make these two projects solid investments,” Miller said. “The large magnitude of these projects is feasible because so many diverse interests are working together, including people who fish and shellfish, community groups, businesses, local governments, universities, the N.C. General Assembly, N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, and the N.C. Department of Commerce.”

Funded through Transformational Habitat Restoration and Coastal Resilience Grants, the $14.5 million project called “Completing the Pamlico Sound Oyster Sanctuary and Training the Next Generation of Restoration Professionals” is to restore nearly 120 acres of oyster habitat in Pamlico Sound, completing the 500-acre goal for the Sen. Jean Preston Memorial Oyster Sanctuary. The North Carolina General Assembly voted in 2015 to establish the network of oyster reefs named after longtime coastal legislator and retired teacher who died in 2013.

“Oyster restoration will provide direct benefits to key recreational and commercial species such as striped bass and wild oysters thereby supporting commercial and recreational fisheries and tourism businesses throughout the state’s coast,” NOAA officials said about the project.

As part of this project, the Coastal Federation will join with North Carolina State University’s Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, or CMAST, and North Carolina Central University to provide hands-on opportunities for under-represented graduate and undergraduate students studying marine sciences.

The $4.5 million “North Carolina Large-scale Marine Debris and Abandoned and Derelict Vessel Removal” project is funded by the Marine Debris Removal Competition. In addition to removing storm-related debris, lost fishing gear and derelict vessels throughout coastal North Carolina, the project aims to prevent marine debris from future storms through outreach and education.

The National Audubon Society’s $499,000 award through the Coastal Habitat Restoration and Resilience Grants for Underserved Communities is for its “Co-creating Inclusive Community Resilience with Nature-based Solutions in the Coastal Carolinas” project.

The National Audubon Society will work with coastal communities on nature-based solutions that increase resilience to extreme weather and climate change, officials said. The proposed projects will address the goals and challenges of and Columbia and Tyrrell counites, as well as Awendan and McClellanville, South Carolina. They will also hire community planners for the process and help coordinate future restoration.

“This funding will drive critical resources to ecologically important and historically underserved areas at the frontline of climate change in the Southeast. Just as importantly, it will support the co-identification of nature-based solutions that give as much weight and value to community members’ lived experiences as it does to the data–helping ensure those solutions are both equitable and sustainable,” Sherri Fields, Audubon South Carolina’s Director of Conservation, told Coastal Review.

The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor award through Coastal Habitat Restoration and Resilience Grants for Underserved Communities will go to “Capacity Expansion to Support Habitat Restoration and Resilience in the Gullah Geechee Corridor” project. These funds will support new positions with the goal to create a plan for restoration and resilience across the corridor that stretches from North Carolina through Florida.

The new positions will help build relationships between restoration organizations and Gullah Geechee communities, identify resilience priorities, and create local advisory committees to support future restoration efforts, officials said.

The Wildlife Resources Commission’s $500,000 through the Coastal Zone Management Habitat Protection and Restoration Grants, will go to “Bay River Coastal Land Conservation” project. These funds will help the Bay River Coastal Partnership purchase ecologically significant coastal property within the more than 400-acre Bay River Tract for sale in Pamlico County.

Conservation of this area will protect an undeveloped natural shoreline and rare coastal forest communities, minimize the loss of life and property by directing development out of a high risk area, and safeguard coastal water quality along the Bay River, officials said.

“I fought to pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act because I knew these transformational laws would create lasting progress in North Carolina and beyond,” Congresswoman Deborah Ross, D-North Carolina, said in the release. “North Carolinians are all too familiar with the burden of extreme weather, and this funding from the Climate-Ready Coasts Initiative will help our coastal communities better prepare for and respond to high-impact weather events.”

These projects are part of NOAA’s nearly $6 billion total investment under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law with additional funds leveraged from the Inflation Reduction Act.

More than a dozen coastal communities will receive grants for help with risk assessment and resilience planning through the Resilient Coastal Communities Program.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, which oversees the program, is to award a total of $1.1 million to Ahoskie, Atlantic Beach, Aulander, Burgaw Carteret County for Cedar Island, Creswell, Edenton, Elizabeth City, Holly Ridge, Kitty Hawk, Ocean Isle Beach, Pasquotank County for Newland Township, Plymouth, Washington County for Scuppernong River Basin, and Washington Park.

“These grant awards are an investment in the future of our coastal communities, to support their resilience planning and capacity,” Secretary Elizabeth S. Biser said in a statement. “We are pleased to work with our local partners to identify and prioritize projects to address flooding and other coastal hazards and help protect the public and economic health of their communities.”

The Resilient Coastal Communities Program is implemented over four phases. Phase one is community engagement, and risk and vulnerability assessment. Phase two is planning, project selection, and prioritization. Phase three is project engineering and design. Phase four is implementation.

The awards announced Friday are for the selected 15 communities to complete the first two phases of the program.

Community applications were scored across seven criteria, including their level of risk exposure to vulnerable population and critical assets, their economic status and need, and their internal capacity and momentum with related efforts.

Service providers selected by the division will support the development of the communities’ Resilience Strategies, working directly with local governments and the Community Action Teams created within each participating locality.

The division will contract with the following nine third-party service providers for direct technical assistance services to the localities: Dewberry Engineers Inc., Kleinfelder Inc., Mid-East Commission, Moffatt & Nichol Inc., Rummel, Klepper, and Kahl, LLP, Stewart Inc., SWCA Environmental Consulting, Weston & Sampson and WSP USA.

Service provider applications were scored across 10 different criteria that includes their experience in resilience planning, identifying and mapping critical assets and implementing nature-based solutions.

The program helps local governments to overcome barriers to coastal resilience and adaptation planning, boost local government capacity, and support a proactive, sustainable, and equitable approach to planning and project implementation.

The program receives funding through a combination of state and federal sources. For more information about the Resilient Coastal Communities program, visit the division website.

The deadline to apply for funding for phase 4 of the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program is 5 p.m. April 28.

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management staff oversees the four-phase program and estimates that $1 million total will be available. Awards will range from $50,000 to $250,000.

Many communities have received funding for the first three phases, which are community engagement and risk and vulnerability assessment; planning, project selection and prioritization; and project engineering and design.

Funding for phase 4 is to cover the implementation or construction of planned, prioritized and engineered resilience projects by county and municipal governments, or federal and state-recognized tribes within the 20 Coastal Area Management Act counties that have completed the first three phases of the program or equivalent. The proposed project must have been identified as priority project for the community.

Grant funds may be used for the construction or implementation of a project that improves the resilience the community’s critical assets, people, and property, to identified coastal hazards such as flooding, sea level rise and storm surge. The proposed project must have been identified as priority project for the community.

Projects should feature or include natural or nature-based components; examples include wetland and stream restoration, flood mitigation, living shoreline stabilization, and stormwater management.

Application information is on the program’s website. Questions about the Resilient Coastal Communities Program and completed applications may be sent to RCCP@ncdenr.gov.

The program is a state-local partnership designed to help overcome barriers in coastal resilience and adaptation planning, boost local government capacity, and support a proactive, sustainable, and equitable approach to coastal resilience planning and project implementation. The program is funded through a combination of state and federal sources, according to the division.

Article has been updated

State Department of Environmental Quality staff in charge of developing an online tool to help decision-makers address flooding in their communities took steps to include historically underrepresented and underserved voices in the planning processes, and a state advisory board is joining the effort to include more of those voices.

DEQ’s Division of Mitigation Services held during the Secretary’s Environmental Justice and Equity Advisory Board quarterly meeting Feb. 9 in Raleigh and online the first public meeting about the Flood Resiliency Blueprint, which is “a statewide initiative to develop an online-decision support tool and associated planning to address flooding for communities in North Carolina’s river basins.”

Project lead Elizabeth Christenson asked for direction on how to create the blueprint through an “environmental justice lens.” After hearing the full presentation, board members decided to appoint a four-member subcommittee that will be involved in an advisory capacity moving ahead.

The North Carolina General Assembly allotted the division that works to restore and protect wetlands and waterways $20 million in 2021 to develop the blueprint, which officials say is the first for the state and represents the largest statewide flood mitigation investment in North Carolina’s history.

Christenson emphasized to the board that division staff understand how critical it is to incorporate historically marginalized groups and to use an environmental justice lens throughout a process, “not just at the beginning, and not just at the end.”

The Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

Christenson said the blueprint is going to include strategies specific to the state’s 17 river basins that end users can consult to help prioritize resiliency strategies and track progress over time. The Neuse River basin is the first that will be studied. It was chosen because of the amount of already existing data and a study taking place.

“We want this tool to visualize flood risk,” she said, and help understand the impacts different mitigation strategies can have in each basin, including nature-based and structural solutions.

Christenson, who also is a policy adviser for DEQ, requested the board suggest representatives or groups to help guide the blueprint, because the division is “trying to get a diversity of thought.” Staff also asked for ideas on public engagement such as where to hold workshops and public meetings, and provide any additional feedback to ensure staff understand how to prioritize historically marginalized communities throughout the entire blueprint development process.

Hope Morgan, global information systems specialist and project manager with AECOM Technical Services of North Carolina Inc. based in Raleigh, the consulting firm the division brought on in December, reiterated the request that board members join in the stakeholder process to make sure there’s “a say from an environmental justice perspective” on every angle of the project.

Environmental Justice board members suggested the division engage with other environmental justice groups, contact short-term and long-term disaster recovery groups, volunteer organizations, riverkeepers, stakeholders in other similar engagement processes, community elders and local leaders in unincorporated areas, before Chair Dr. Jim Johnson suggested a subcommittee.

Johnson said the subcommittee would be available to assist the division in an advisory capacity. “This is such a rich and important issue we’re not going to solve it all today,” he said, adding they should put the “smartest minds around the table.”

Heading up the committee will be La’Meshia Whittington, who will be joined by Veronica Carter, who is a board member with the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, Naeema Muhammad and William Barber III.

Joseph Pitchford, Division of Mitigation Services and State Energy Office public information officer, explained in a follow-up email last week that the subcommittee will help advise DEQ staff in moving forward.

“We look forward to continued advice and input from the Board members over the course of the project,” he said. Adding, “Looking ahead, AECOM is in the process of finalizing its stakeholder engagement plan for DEQ approval. The plan will include various opportunities for stakeholder input, including public meetings.”

About the Blueprint

Pitchford said that the two major components of the project are an online decision-support tool and the blueprint process document.

“The online decision-support tool is intended to help users visualize flood risk for different conditions and choose from a suite of flood mitigations strategies. The process document is meant to detail methods of conducting resiliency planning at multiple scales, which can be applied anywhere in the state. This approach takes into account that North Carolina basins have different flood exposure, data and modeling needs,” he said.

Blueprint development is broken up into three phases.

The first phase began Dec. 28, when the division signed a contract with AECOM to design the stakeholder engagement process, create a draft blueprint, a mockup of the online decision-support tool, and the Neuse River Action Strategy, so they can test the tool using the pilot basin. Phase one is expected to be complete by Dec 1, 2023, he said.

Phase two, which will run parallel to phase one, is to see the online decision support tool be completed. Phase two is also expected to wrap up by December.

Phase three will see the online support tool be used for river basins statewide. This will include action strategies for certain targeted basins, which will also be used to test and validate the online support tool. This phase is expected to begin and end in 2024.

Why the Neuse River basin?

Two board members expressed their concern during the meeting about the Neuse River basin being selected as the pilot, because what may work in the Goldsboro area may not be applicable when developing other basin strategies, such as the one for the Cape Fear River basin.

Staff explained to the board that the Neuse River basin was selected because of the amount of already existing, accessible data, and there is currently a pilot natural infrastructure flood mitigation project. While each strategy will be basin specific, the process used to develop the Neuse River basin will help guide other river basin strategy development.

Pitchford expounded in the email that the focus on the Neuse River basin is because it is likely the most data-rich basin in the state and will likely serve as a best-case scenario for current decision support tool functionality. 

“While we are beginning in one basin, DEQ plans to learn from the Neuse Basin and validate the decision support tool in all the other basins in North Carolina in 2024, incorporating the unique needs of each basin along the way,” he said. “The Neuse River Basin serves as a pilot river basin to test assumptions, approaches, watershed models, scenario exploration tools, and other elements as the Flood Resiliency Blueprint is developed. The implementation of the draft Blueprint will result in the Neuse River Action Strategy in 2023 with state-wide basin-specific action strategies in 2024.”

AECOM’s role

The division signed a contract with AECOM in late December to begin work on the first of the three-phases of the blueprint, which includes creating a stakeholder engagement process and a mockup of the online flooding risk tool.

Pitchford said that AECOM, which was selected through the Department of Administration’s purchasing and contract process, is the principal vendor for the first phase of the blueprint project. The firm is expected to create the draft blueprint, the draft Neuse River Basin Action Strategy, and requirements needed to develop the online decision-support tool.

AECOM’s Morgan expressed to the board during the meeting that they are focusing on bringing to the conversation marginalized groups, experts and others and coordinating with federal, state and local governments, environmental groups, nonprofits and other organizations that have done work on flooding.

 “We want to talk to people that have been flooded and that understand what that flooding has done to their area and their ability to recover,” she said. They want to look at the historically marginalized communities that may not have been talked to in the past and include volunteer organizations that have spent time on the ground responding to these events. “We want to focus on the impacts from specific projects.”

Pitchford said the environmental justice board meeting provided “a great opportunity for input on the development of the stakeholder process.”

AECOM’s team for phase one includes ESP Associates, Inc. consulting firm with an office in Morrisville, Wildlands Engineering, Inc. water resources engineering firm based in Raleigh, Elite Disaster Consulting emergency management planners in Mint Hill, Geomatics Workshops continuing education provider based in Charlotte, Wilmington-based Insight Planning and Development LLC Inc. planning and grant management consultant services, Singhofen and Associates Inc. engineering firm in Florida, and Dr. Barbara Doll, a water protection and restoration specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant.

Early stakeholder input

The North Carolina Inclusive Disaster Recovery Network wrapped up the presentation to the environmental justice board by sharing ideas they hope DEQ would consider as well as explore opportunities to partner on the blueprint planning process, and advocate for more equitable community engagement as a best practice across government, Kathryn Gaasch, program director, told the board.

The network is a group of public, private, nonprofit and faith-based organizations “seeking avenues for community voice and equitable access to resources” in the disaster recovery system.

Carol Caldwell, founder of the Columbus County DREAM Center community organization and member of the network, explained to the board that they have been working on developing a framework and needs they want to be addressed.

“We know that disasters do discriminate,” she began, “Flooding does not impact all people equally because of public policies that affect lives of especially Black, Indigenous and Latino communities. One of the questions we will be asking is what practices will ensure that the people and communities most impacted by flooding have the power and resources to adapt to increasing climate and uncertainty?”

She continued that the second point is that racial and economic disparities are as obvious in outcome as they are in engagement and planning processes. The question is, “What support do government officials and community advocates each need to collaborate on this shared vision of more resilient communities?”

Time didn’t allow for the network to go over selected recommendations for state government, which was detailed in the slideshow. These recommendations are to build upon any related planning or work being done to address issues of flooding, engage stakeholders that reflect the diversity of the community, and exercise patience and find consensus on a shared vision for the project with planning participants.

“The NC Inclusive Disaster Recovery Network is one of the many stakeholders that DEQ continues to engage as part of the Flood Resiliency Blueprint,” Pitchford said. DEQ strives to be inclusive of interested stakeholders in the blueprint development process including federal, state, county, municipal, and tribal governments, nongovernmental organizations, commercial partners, as well as interested public parties across the state.

Following a slew of complaints over the still-lagging response to hurricanes Matthew and Florence, Richard J. Trumper has been named to join the North Carolina Department of Public Safety as senior adviser for disaster recovery.

Currently executive director of disaster recovery with the Office of State Budget and Management, Trumper begins his new role Wednesday, state officials announced.

As senior adviser, Trumper is to support initiatives to build long-term and stable recovery for North Carolinians following natural disasters.

As part of an expanded, comprehensive approach to recovery, Trumper is to work with department leaders, the state Office of Recovery and Resiliency, North Carolina Emergency Management and other partners to get disaster survivors back in their homes faster.

“Our state has made substantial progress recovering from hurricanes Matthew and Florence, but we still have a long way to go,” Department of Public Safety Secretary Eddie M. Buffaloe Jr. said in a statement. “Richard Trumper brings a wide range of experience and expertise that will support a core mission of rebuilding homes and communities as fast as possible after a disaster, while also making them more resilient in the future.”

Buffaloe and Rebuild NC chief Laura Hogshead told a legislative committee in December that they took responsibility for the slow pace of recovery in getting hurricane survivors back into homes.

Trumper is a North Carolina licensed general contractor who joins the department with more than 22 years of experience, including program management, construction management, disaster recovery, reconstruction and restoration, mitigation and disaster damage assessment.

“I look forward to joining the Department of Public Safety and establishing new partnerships that will speed up the recovery process and help families return home more quickly,” Trumper said. “My goal will be to build on the good things we’re already doing.”    

While with the Office of State Budget and Management, he developed and managed state-funded recovery, reconstruction and mitigation programs in 21 eastern North Carolina counties, according to the state. Recently, he has led state recovery efforts in western counties impacted by the 2020 earthquake and Tropical Storm Fred. 

Homeowners impacted by hurricanes Matthew and/or Florence may still apply for assistance through the Homeowner Recovery or Strategic Buyout programs. 

During the first installment of “Science on the Sound” for 2023 this week, Dr. Sid Narayan will highlight his research on the use of nature-based infrastructure and the role these play in protecting coastal communities from coastal hazards.

Narayan, assistant professor in the department of coastal studies at East Carolina University, will present “Forces of Nature: The Role Ecosystems Play in Protecting Coastlines and Communities,” at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus, 850 N.C. 345, Wanchese.

Science on the Sound is a monthly, in-person, lecture series that brings together different perspectives from all over the state and highlights coastal topics in northeastern North Carolina.

In this program, Narayan will explore the role that coastal ecosystems like tidal salt marshes, mangrove forests, and oyster and coral reefs play in protecting coastal communities, their homes and critical infrastructure during hurricanes and other extreme events.

The program is free and all are welcome to attend.  The program is also livestreamed and a recorded version made available on YouTube.

Applications to participate in phases 1 and 2 of the four-phase North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program grant cycle are due Feb. 3.

An informational webinar has been scheduled to help applicants with the process.

The Division of Coastal Management, which oversees the program that aims to equip communities with additional capability to increase their resilience to coastal hazards, is to hold the webinar from 2 to 4 p.m. Jan. 12. Join the webinar online.

County and municipal governments within the 20 Coastal Area Management Act counties, federal and state-recognized tribes, and any qualified owners’ association defined by the state can apply for the program. Community application materials are on the website.

Qualified service providers also can apply to provide technical assistance to selected localities. Eligible providers include private planning and engineering firms, councils of government, nongovernmental organizations, and academic institutions, both private and public. Service provider applications are on the website as well.

With funding from National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the North Carolina General Assembly, the division launched in November 2020 the Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which has four phases.

Phases 1 and 2 guide communities through a series of steps to assess risks and vulnerabilities specific to their location, engage representative stakeholders, and complete a community-involved process to prioritize projects and action items to improve the resiliency of their community and critical assets.

Once communities complete Phases 1 and 2, they become eligible to apply for phase 3, which is engineering and design, and phase 4, or Implementation, funding from the division, and will be better positioned to take advantage of implementation funding from various funders in the future.

The program planning handbook provides guidance for participants to complete phases 1 and 2. Existing data, tools and resources are incorporated throughout the handbook to assist with the process and to identify specific program requirements.

The Resilient Coastal Communities Program is a state-local partnership designed to help overcome barriers in coastal resilience and adaptation planning, boost local government capacity, and support a proactive, sustainable, and equitable approach to coastal resilience planning and project implementation.

The division first announced this grant availability in December.

Questions and completed applications may be sent to RCCP@ncdenr.gov.

The public can join in the virtual meeting of the state Citizen Advisory Committee set for 10 a.m.-noon Tuesday on proposed changes to the state’s action plan for use of federal mitigation funds.

For Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant-Mitigation funding, the committee is to advise the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency on the implementation of the Community Development Block Grant for Mitigation.

During this meeting, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency representatives are to provide an overview of the proposed Substantial Action Plan Amendment 4 to the Community Development Block Grant for Mitigation State Action Plan. The public can submit comments on the proposed mitigation action plan changes until 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23. 

Register to attend virtually.

More information on the public comment period and how to submit feedback is available on the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency website.

Committee members include representatives from areas of North Carolina defined by HUD as “Most Impacted and Distressed” by hurricanes Matthew and/or Florence, as well as those with relevant technical and industry experience.   

Registration opens in January for the first North Carolina Resilient Communities Funding Forum.

To be held Tuesday, Feb. 28, in Greenville Convention Center, this free, one-day forum is an opportunity for community leaders, policymakers and other stakeholders to learn about federal, state and nonprofit funding opportunities for resilience-related projects.

Registration information is to be announced in January. A virtual option to attend is being considered.

This forum will aim to remove common financial barriers to resilience project implementation and identify funding opportunities, organizers said.

Attendees will be able to engage with potential funders, who will be on hand to give presentations and answer project-specific questions during break-out sessions. A grant writing session is also planned.

This event is being cohosted by the Regions Innovating for Strong Economies and Environment, or RISE, which provides support and tools to regional partners, and Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which aims to facilitate a community-driven process for setting coastal resilience goals, and their respective divisions in the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency and the Division of Coastal Management. 

The event is open to all, though space is limited, and priority will be given to attendees representing the RISE and Resilient Coastal Communities Program communities.

Continuing education credits may be available.

The public comment period began Tuesday and ends Dec. 5 for the nine draft regional resilience portfolios that include five to 10 prioritized project descriptions.

The draft portfolios for nine councils of government regions are an initiative of the Regional Resilience Portfolio Program, a component of the larger Regions Innovating for Strong Economies & Environment, or RISE, Program. RISE is a partnership between the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the N.C. Councils of Governments.

The regional resilience portfolio is one of two final products created in partnership with each of the nine regional councils of governments to help those regions plan for the impacts of climate change. At the end of the program, each of the participating regions will have a final portfolio of priority projects based on the area’s specific needs, which can be used when seeking funding from federal and other sources.

The RISE program is asking residents to give feedback on the projects, including considerations to make the projects more effective and deliver the most value to the region. RISE is also seeking suggestions on potential partners for implementing the projects.

Residents can review the draft portfolio for their region and share feedback using the following links:

• Albemarle
• Cape Fear
• Eastern Carolina
• Kerr-Tar
• Lumber River
• Mid-Carolina
• Mid-East
• Triangle J
• Upper Coastal Plain

A list of counties for each region can be found on the RISE website.

RISE is funded by a $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, with support from both NCORR and N.C. Rural Center. The Duke Energy Foundation has committed $600,000 to offer accelerator grants to the regions for priority projects identified as an outcome of the program.

A workshop is set for residents in the Albemarle Council of Governments, which serves Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties, to share ideas and strategies on resilience during an in-person meeting in November.

The Albemarle Regional Resilience Portfolio Project In-Person Public Workshop is from 6-7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Albemarle Commission Office, 512 S. Church St., Hertford.

Five to 10 prioritized strategies or projects will be included in the final portfolio, which will identify specific ways to help communities prepare for and recover from natural disasters and climate hazards. Strategies can include natural or man-made infrastructure projects, housing, communications and outreach, planning/policy, analysis or assessments, or any other type of effort that supports the region’s ability to withstand floods, heat waves, and other climate hazards

An initiative of the Regional Resilience Portfolio Program, the portfolio currently in development is one of two final products being created in partnership with each of the nine regional councils of governments. The regions are, in addition to the Albemarle, Kerr-Tar, Upper Coastal Plain, Mid-Carolina, Mid-East, Lumber River, Cape Fear, Eastern Carolina and Triangle J, except for Wake, Durham and Orange counties.

The portfolio program is a component of Regions Innovating for Strong Economies & Environment, or RISE, Program, a partnership between the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the N.C. Councils of Governments.

RISE is funded by a $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, with support from both NCORR and N.C. Rural Center.

The Duke Energy Foundation has committed $600,000 to offer Accelerator Grants to the regions for priority projects identified as an outcome of the program. RISE is managed by NCORR, a division of the N.C. Department of Public Safety. To learn more about the program or what’s happening in each council of government region, visit the RISE website.

A second round of workshops for the public to provide ideas and suggestions for resilience in the Eastern Carolina Region have been scheduled for Oct. 18-19 in Kinston.

The input is for the Regional Resilience Portfolio Program, one of two final products created as part of the Regions Innovating for Strong Economies and Environment, or RISE, program.

RISE is a partnership between the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the state Councils of Governments. The first product is the vulnerability assessment.

Residents of Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Greene, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Pamlico and Wayne counties are encouraged to attend to offer insight to help develop strategies and projects that aim to build resilience and create a portfolio of proposed priority resilience projects that have regional benefit. 

The in-person workshops are to take place 6:30-8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 18, and 9:30-11 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, both in Lenoir Community College, Administration Building Room 125, 231 N.C. 58, Kinston. Both meetings will cover the same information.

The final portfolio, which will contain five to 10 prioritized strategies or projects, is to identify specific ways to help Eastern Carolina prepare for and recover from natural disasters and climate hazards.

The RISE project regions are defined by state council of governments geographies, and the Eastern Carolina Council of Governments is partnering with the state for this effort. Tetra Tech is providing technical assistance for RISE in Eastern Carolina.  

RISE is funded by a $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, with support from both NCORR and N.C. Rural Center.

The Duke Energy Foundation has committed $600,000 to offer Accelerator Grants to the regions for priority projects identified as an outcome of the program. RISE is managed by NCORR, a division of the N.C. Department of Public Safety. To learn more about the program or what’s happening in each council of government region, visit the RISE website.

Update Sept. 27: This workshop has been postponed because of expected weather associated with Hurricane Ian.

Residents of the Albemarle Council of Government region can weigh in on resilience strategies and projects during a meeting set for 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29.

A public workshop on the Albemarle Regional Resilience Portfolio Project is to take place at the Albemarle Commission Office, 512 S. Church St., Hertford.

Attendees can learn more about the Albemarle Regional Resilience Portfolio Project and give feedback on potential regional projects and strategies to build future community resilience in Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

An initiative of the Regional Resilience Portfolio Program, the final portfolio is to include five to 10 prioritized strategies or projects that identify specific ways to help communities prepare for and recover from natural disasters and climate hazards. 

The effort is part of the Regions Innovating for Strong Economies & Environment, or RISE, Program, a partnership of the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the N.C. Councils of Governments. RISE is managed by NCORR, a division of the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

RISE is funded by a $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, with support from both NCORR and N.C. Rural Center. The Duke Energy Foundation has committed $600,000 to offer grants to the regions for priority projects identified as an outcome of the program. 

State and regional officials want to hear from the public about priorities for making the Cape Fear region more resilient.

The Cape Fear Council of Governments, North Carolina Rural Center and North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency are hosting two in-person workshops Sept. 13 in Leland as part of NCORR’s Regions Innovating for Strong Economies and Environment, or RISE, program to develop a portfolio of priority projects that strengthen regional resilience.

The project is to identify ways to help communities in Columbus, Brunswick, New Hanover and Pender counties prepare for and recover from natural disasters and climate hazards. The multiphase effort includes a forward-looking vulnerability assessment, identifying five to 10 high-priority projects and creating a list of the actions needed to implement each proposed project.

An online draft of the Climate Change and Natural Hazards Vulnerability Assessment for the Cape Fear Region describes past problems and future risks associated with extreme weather events such as hurricanes, flooding, extreme temperatures, droughts and wildfires. The report outlines the impacts of these climate hazards on housing, the environment and the economy.

The project’s second phase is to develop the portfolio of projects that have regional benefits for resilience, such as construction projects, nature-based solutions, outreach and capacity-building activities or development of planning and policy.

Goals can include reducing downstream flooding, offering a resource to multiple local governments or crafting a pilot project that can be replicated elsewhere. Proposed projects could be selected for seed funding from the Duke Energy Foundation RISE Accelerator Grant Program.

The workshops are set for 10-11 a.m. and 6-7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, in the Cape Fear Conference Room at Leland Town Hall, 102 Town Hall Drive. Officials said both sessions will cover the same information.

Workshop attendees are expected to hear about the project and will be given opportunity to provide feedback on potential regional projects to build resilience.

Attendees are asked to register online by Sept. 9.

More information about the Cape Fear Regional Resilience Portfolio is available online.

The state has awarded a total of $1.14 million to five coastal counties and 17 municipalities to engineer and design projects to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

The funds announced last week are for the third of the four-phase North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, administered by the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, announced in November 2020.

The North Carolina General Assembly and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation fund the program that helps local governments identify, plan and implement strategies that reduce the risks from rising seas, stronger storms and increased rain intensity and volume. 

“The Division of Coastal Management is grateful to be able to provide funding and tools that support coastal communities with planning and actions that make them more resilient to increasingly intense natural hazards,” Mackenzie Todd, coastal resilience specialist with the division, told Coastal Review. “These funds will advance projects that the communities have identified as their priorities, and that work with our environment to defend against the impacts of severe weather.”

Projects were prioritized through community engagement and vulnerability assessments conducted in Phase 1 and project planning during Phase 2, according to a DEQ. Funding was announced in March 2021 for the two phases that ran concurrently under a single contract for each community.

Phase 3 funds engineering and design work of the prioritized project local and county governments selected in their resilience strategy or other existing plans that met criteria. There is also assistance available for some communities to develop or amend ordinances that improve their resilience to coastal hazards and manage stormwater and flooding. Phase 4, which has yet to be awarded, will support implementation of the work.

Beaufort, Bertie, Craven, Dare and Hyde counties received funding as well as the towns of Aurora, Beaufort, Belhaven, Cape Carteret, Duck, Hertford, Leland, Nags Head, New Bern, Pine Knoll Shores, Sunset Beach, Swansboro, Vandemere, Washington, and the Topsail Island towns of Surf City, Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach.

Washington’s resilience strategy

Located on the northern bank of Pamlico River in Beaufort County, the city of Washington has been part of the program from the start.

Jamie Heath, planner with the Mid-East Commission Council of Governments based in Washington, told Coastal Review that the city, which had a population of 9,555 in 2020, received $30,000 for Phases 1 and 2 and had contracted the commission and RK&K Civil Engineering of Raleigh to work on the program, a requirement to apply for Phase 3.

Using this money, the city formed a Community Action Team made up of public, private and nonprofit members that worked with the Mid-East Commission and engineers on the first two phases from fall 2021 until this past spring. There was public input throughout the process including a public survey, an in-person public open house, and a virtual public open house, Heath said.

The city’s resilience strategy was developed as a result of phases 1 and 2. Included in the strategy is a priority project portfolio of resilience projects for the city, with six total priority projects, pared down from 41 possible projects.

After successfully completing the first two phases, the city was eligible to apply for Phase 3, she said. The city received $61,480 for the planning and design phase of Jack’s Creek floodplain and greenway Improvements.

The Jack’s Creek watershed drains most of downtown Washington and discharges to the Tar-Pamlico River, she said. The Jack’s Creek streambed runs directly through central Washington and is visible as it passes through and between public parks, under bridges and near neighborhood streets, all of which have views of the stream, Heath said. There is currently a milelong greenway running along the portion of Jack’s Creek adjacent to downtown Washington.

“The purpose of the project is to improve Jack’s Creek floodplain and greenway to increase stormwater capacity and decrease overbank flooding. This could include intentional inundation, bioretention ponds, and/or an automated stormwater system while also restoring the recreational area around the creek,” Heath said. “The engineering and design work will determine the most appropriate flooding solutions and create a design for those identified solutions.”

Once Phase 3 is successfully completed, the city will be eligible to apply for Phase 4, — the implementation phase, she said.

The project complements current projects in the Jack’s Creek watershed, including drainage improvements in the northern section of the creek, a stormwater mapping project funded with a federal Clean Water Act Section 205(j) water quality grant, and the nine-element watershed restoration plan Jack’s Creek funded by a state Land and Water Management Fund grant and currently being developed by Sound Rivers in partnership with the city and other project partners.

Outer Banks projects

On the Outer Banks, funds were awarded to two Dare County communities to reduce vulnerability of community assets or populations, one of the program’s goals.

On Hatteras Island, the county plans stormwater improvements at two locations off N.C. 12, mostly within the state Department of Transportation right-of-way, according to county grants administrator Barton Grover. Although the details are still being worked on, Grover said that the county anticipates building bioretention areas and/or stormwater wetlands. The $45,000 grant for Phase 3 will be used to contract with an engineer, who would likely start the project sometime this fall, he said.

Similarly, Duck had prioritized flooding issues, for which it was awarded $45,000, with the town matching another $45,000, said Sandy Cross, Duck senior planner. The town plans to use the grant money to develop a neighborhood stormwater study, she said.

Central coast

In Carteret County, Beaufort has been awarded $75,000 through the program for Phase 3, Rachel Johnson, public information officer, said. The award will go to completing the engineering and design work for town ordinance updates for enhanced community resilience.

Beaufort Mayor Sharon Harker told Coastal Review that town officials were excited about the work. “The grant funding will help Beaufort work toward being more resilient and to make a positive impact for generations to come,” she said.

The waterfront town of Swansboro in Onslow County has also been engaged in the program since its inception.

Town Manager Paula Webb said the town, which received funding for Phases 1 and 2, had also applied for Phase 3 funding. The town was awarded $45,000 for rehabilitation of Water Street, a downtown street prone to flooding. Bioretention swales are to be designed for Broad Street between Elm and Water streets, which are also prone to flooding. Phase 4, if awarded, is to go toward implementation.

Farther south, the three towns on Topsail Island – Surf City, Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach – were awarded a total of $135,000 for the design of roadside infiltration basins to address identified areas within all three towns, Kyle Breuer, Surf City manager, explained.

Related: Surf City to use catch basins to address NC 50 flooding

“We’re thrilled to be able to continue moving both the Town and Topsail Island forward through these resilience efforts,” Breuer said in an email response. “Phase III of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program will address the engineering and design of the top priority project identified in our Resilience Portfolio, which is to establish roadside infiltration in areas that experience frequent flooding through storm events.”

Breuer said that the application process had been a joint effort between Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail Beach.

“We collectively worked together under the leadership and direction of the Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission and citizen appointments from all three towns, collectively known as the Citizen Advisory Team,” he explained. “This laid the groundwork for understanding the Island’s vulnerability as well as the ability to think holistically about what are projects that can be replicated in any of the three jurisdictions.”

Leland’s nature-based plan

Engineering Technician II Adrianna Weber for Leland explained in an email response that during Phases 1 and 2, the Brunswick County town’s critical assets and infrastructure were analyzed through a risk and vulnerability assessment. This led to a project portfolio identifying projects that would increase Leland’s resiliency.

For these phases, Division of Coastal Management contracted with Moffat & Nichol, an engineering firm based in Raleigh. The town did not receive direct funding in these phases.

Weber said that after Phases 1 and 2 were complete, Leland applied for Phase 3 and received $20,000. The funds will be used for surveying and design services for Mallory Creek Drive drainage improvements, a priority project identified in Phase 1 and 2 of the program.

“This funding will provide a drainage plan of a portion of Mallory Creek Drive that frequently floods,” she said. This drainage plan will provide a nature-based solution.

“These improvements are crucial to our area as Leland is susceptible to heavy precipitation events, erosion, and flooding. Mallory Creek Drive is a high-traffic route for many residents and visitors of Leland, as it connects several large neighborhoods with U.S. 17 and N.C. 133,” Weber said. “Therefore, this funding will help alleviate flooding, reduce health and safety risks, and enhance the environmental appeal of the community.”

The town hopes to apply for Phase 4 funding to implement the improvements.

“We are excited to continue our work with the Resilient Coastal Communities Program,” she said.

Where there were once sizable coastal woodlands flanking shorelines and estuaries, lifeless trees now dot the barren landscape.

Saltwater intrusion is killing the freshwater-dependent forests, leaving behind what looks like a desperate scene from a big-budget, post-apocalyptic summer blockbuster. But this is not a movie set. These are signs of climate change.

“A ghost forest is a stand of dead trees. It’s evidence of a mass mortality event,” said Dr. Emily Bernhardt, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor in the biology department at Duke University. “The phrase has been applied to other causes of mass forest mortality like drought and bark beetle infestations, but is most prominently used for the loss of coastal trees due to rising water levels and soil salinization.”

Bernhardt, an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist, was the guest speaker June 3 for the virtual Cary Science Conversation “Saltwater Intrusion, Sea Level Rise, and the Spread of Ghost Forests,” hosted by New York-based Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.

Bernhardt and her colleagues have been monitoring the transformation of North Carolina’s Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula for nearly 20 years. An area with large-scale agriculture, salt water intrusion from sea level rise has been made worse by irrigation infrastructure. Increasing salinity is transforming forested wetlands into salt marsh, reducing carbon storage and crop productivity, and degrading freshwater resources, according to a release from Cary Institute.

Speaking before a screening of the short film “The Seeds of Ghost Forests,” produced by Luke Groski of public radio’s Science Friday, Bernhardt said that ghost forests are becoming increasingly prevalent features in North America’s coastal plains.

“One of the most important points I like to make when I talk about climate change on the coastal plain is that it’s not something that we need to talk about happening in the future. We don’t have to wait. We are already facing really rapid climate change induced shifts in our ecosystems,” she said.

Living on the edge

While a lot of the focus on the coastal changes is on the wealthy fringe, where the people have big houses, Bernhardt said the National Science Foundation is funding a research coordination network to focus on the much poorer, less empowered communities living in rural landscapes.

The Saltwater Intrusion and Sea Level Rise Coordination Network, which is still in its early stages, is pulling together researchers to study the problem of rural coastal climate change by linking environmental and social sciences.

“We’re looking at forests – and it’s because we can see them from space – but the same places where we’re seeing forest loss, we’re seeing loss of agricultural productivity, wholescale loss of agricultural fields to salinization, threats to drinking water supplies,” she said.

With the new network, Bernhardt hopes to help amplify the voices and the stories of why it matters to “keep these kinds of communities of plants and animals and people existing and healthy.”

“A lot of the places which are really vulnerable to rapid climate change on the coast also happen to be places where the people who live there are already living on the edge, and so this is going to be something that’s a real threat,” she said. “There’s an enormous environmental justice component to this story as well, that is going to be an important part of our work moving forward.”

She said certain landscapes are more likely to be vulnerable to hurricane or drought and salination. These types of landscapes often overlap with populations that have higher poverty levels.

“I think part of what we need to do as scientists is make sure we expand that conversation to include the people whose voices really should be heard, instead of ours,” she said.

“Canary in the coal mine”

Ghost forests are a concern, Bernhardt told Coastal Review during a follow-up interview, because they are a “canary in the coal mine” for all sorts of other subtle environmental changes along the coast. Only a few plants, and only one kind of woody plant — mangroves — can survive in saltwater.

“The ghost forests are obvious even from space, but in the same areas, landowners are reporting the salinization and flooding of agricultural fields – conditions which make it impossible to sustain crop yields,” she said.

As sea levels have risen and fallen over geologic time, the bands of salt marshes, freshwater marshes and freshwater forested wetlands have gradually migrated inland and seaward, Bernhardt explained.

The issue now is that the rate of sea level rise and the magnitude of droughts and hurricanes that contribute to salinization are increasing, and there is no way for many of these forested wetlands to migrate to higher ground. That’s because higher ground is being used for agriculture and lawns.

“We are losing this really special kind of ecosystem, the cypress and gum swamps that are home to so much wildlife and which sequester so much carbon, more than two times that found in a salt marsh,” she said.

The entire East Coast and Gulf Coast are subjected to significant disturbances from storm events that can push saltwater inland. It takes more than a year for rain to rinse the salt pushed inland, she explained during the presentation.

Increasingly severe or long-duration droughts are adding to saltwater intrusion as well. Drought in a flat landscape is another way that saltwater can move upland, inland or landward.

“We had such a drought on the coast of North Carolina between 2007 and 2012, punctuated by Hurricane Irene,” she said. “Three years of drought with a hurricane in between, that’s a pretty tough time to live as a tree.”

Bernhardt explained that many who live on the coastal plain in North Carolina don’t want to talk about climate change, but they are perfectly happy to talk to researchers about field flooding and salinization of their fields.

“It’s a big problem. It’s widely acknowledged. Everybody either has it happening on their land or know someone who is,” she said.

In some areas, farmers are starting to grow more salt-tolerant crops, a form of adaptation.

“In the coastal plain of North Carolina, we’re seeing less of that,” she said, attributing that to the high number of the farms owned by multinational companies and rented to individual farmers who operate in small areas.

“I think that’s an interesting difference regionally, but you’ve got sort of different farming communities facing this problem and the amount of economic or socioeconomic power they have to make change for protected fields really varies and that’s one thing we’re going to be spending a lot of time thinking about with our new research-coordinating network,” she said.

Wetlands provide important protections for coastal residents, their homes and their livelihoods from storm surges and saltwater intrusion. But this buffer is vulnerable.

“I think if we don’t do anything intelligent here, we just keep letting this happen, we’re going to lose our coastal wetlands. We’re going to salinize huge areas of agricultural land so that they are no longer viable for that livelihood,” she said.

The salts will deplete nutrients in farm fields and cause massive problems for coastal fisheries and water quality.

Bernhardt and her team worked on a restoration project to convert farmland to forested wetland just east of Columbia in Tyrrell County. The land, at least 3 miles from the nearest coastline, was drained when it was used for agriculture.

As part of the restoration project, the drainage pump station was removed, and “we started to see during these periods of drought, brackish water entering this restoration wetland. A lot of trees that were planted as part of this restoration project died as a result of the drought and salinization,” Bernhardt said.

Part of what makes the coastal plain of North Carolina, and many other flat landscapes, vulnerable to saltwater intrusion is all the connected ditches and canals. “As people — either because of restoration or because of farm abandonment — stop actively maintaining this drainage, it becomes a route for salts to move upland,” Bernhardt said.

State and regional officials are asking for public input to help develop a set of projects to better prepare the coast for climate hazards such as beaches and wetlands erosion, flood, heavy rainfall, saltwater intrusion, severe storms and wind, water quality issues, and invasive species.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency and its Regions Innovating for Strong Economies and Environment, or RISE, Program are working with the North Carolina Rural Center and North Carolina Councils of Government to develop a portfolio of priority projects that strengthen regional resilience.

Officials said diverse stakeholder partnership is needed to ensure that the scope of work reflects local priorities. To that end, individual surveys are posted for residents in each coastal region. The surveys take about 15 minutes to complete and responses are needed by Friday, June 17.

• For the Albemarle Region, which includes Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties, complete the survey at https://form.jotform.com/221145063944149.
• For the Cape Fear Region, which includes Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover and Pender counties, complete the form at https://form.jotform.com/220953059023148.
• For the Mid-East Region, which includes Beaufort, Bertie, Hertford, Martin and Pitt counties, complete the form at https://form.jotform.com/221174495473157.
• For the Eastern Carolina Region, which includes Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Greene, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Pamlico and Wayne counties, complete the form at https://form.jotform.com/220953977183164.

Stakeholders and the public were previously engaged to identify the most concerning hazards impacting the region to identify the climate hazards that will serve as the basis for the vulnerability assessment, according to the survey.

Clean energy, hog farm buyouts, forest preservation and management, and expansion of climate resiliency programs are among the key environmental features in Gov. Roy Cooper’s proposed 2022-23 budget.

Cooper’s $29.3 billion plan released last week allocates more than $140 million for clean energy and environmental initiatives including: $92 million for natural and working lands; $22 million for clean transportation projects; $15 million for environmental justice matters; $11 million for the expansion of clean energy access and adoption; and $1.9 million in energy efficiency enhancements.

Port infrastructure

Cooper’s budget calls for a nonrecurring $20 million reserve for infrastructure at the North Carolina State Ports Authority’s Radio Island property in Morehead City. The funding would be administered by the ports authority and the departments of Commerce and Transportation for “investments that best attract business tenants to the island.”

The Southeastern Wind Coalition applauded the move and, citing a recent offshore wind supply chain study commissioned by the Commerce Department, said that the improvements would help position North Carolina as a national leader in the offshore wind industry because Radio Island is well suited to support staging and manufacturing of offshore turbine components.

“This port positions North Carolina to service the offshore wind industry up and down the coast, creating jobs and economic growth for years to come,” Coalition President Katharine Kollins said in a statement Tuesday.

Conservation easements in the 100-year floodplain

A program designed to reduce the risk of water quality from potential pollution from hog farms within the 100-year floodplain would get $18 million under the governor’s proposed plan.

That funding would be funneled to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, or DACS, to buy permanent conservation easements on hog farms within the 100-year floodplain.

If approved, the funding could potentially pay for upward of 18 to 20 easements, said David Williams, deputy director of the state Division of Soil and Water Conservation.

“It’s very substantial,” he said. “It’s working out to be about $1 million per farm.”

Buyout costs cover the animal operations owner’s certification to operate a feedlot, removing the contents of hog lagoons and subsequent closure of those lagoons.

The volunteer-only swine floodplain buyout was created in November 1999 following hurricanes Floyd, Dennis and Irene, which caused catastrophic flooding that breached hog lagoons and drowned hundreds of livestock.

To date, 43 farms have been selected to participate in the program. Most of those occurred in the early to mid-2000s, Williams said.

They include more than 1,200 acres in conservation easements and the closure of more than 100 animal waste lagoons in the floodplain.

Applicants are selected for the program based on various criteria, including the elevation of lagoon dikes and production houses relative to the floodplain elevation, history of flooding on the property, and distance to a waterway classified as water supply or high-quality waters.

Farmers may use their land once it becomes part of a conservation easement for low-density agriculture, such as growing row crops or for pasture-based beef production.

Easements may not be used as spray fields for swine waste or nonagricultural development and require a soil and water conservation plan.

Williams said it’s hard to say exactly how many hog farms continue to operate within the 100-year floodplain, “but I would say there’s probably in the neighborhood of 40 or 50.”

Most of those are in the southeastern portion of the state.

Water quality, forests and resiliency

The budget would provide $6.8 million in recurring funds and a one-time, $20 million handout to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, or DNCR, to cover North Carolina Land and Water Fund grants for the protection and restoration of the state’s land and water resources.

Grants would pay for the restoration of degraded streams, development and improving stormwater treatment, and preserving military buffers.

Another $10 million in nonrecurring funds is designated to the purchase and restoration of peatland and pocosins to reduce wildfire risks, cut down carbon emissions, boost flood resilience and improve water quality.

Potential acquisition sites will be determined based on the results of DNCR’s Natural Heritage Program, which will inventory wetlands in the coastal plains.

The state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services would receive a one-time $2 million sum to assist North Carolina landowners through cost-share ways to improve forest management on private lands.

The governor’s plan would beef up the state’s climate resiliency efforts, providing $10 million to expand the Resilient Communities Grant Program and provide grants aimed at helping local governments reduce flood risks and promote long-term resilience.

A total of $762,825 in recurring funds would also go to the program and resiliency staff.

Other provisions

Other budget recommendations include $3.7 million recurring and $20 million nonrecurring to the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund for state parks projects, development and renovation of local parks, and beach access.

Also included are $720,526 recurring and $122,500 nonrecurring funds for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to create a Coastal Habitat Assessment Program to map, evaluate vegetation and observe wetland changes in coastal habitats.

Cooper’s plan also includes a 5% pay raise for the state’s teachers and employees, $50 million in aid for first-time homeowners including public school teachers, emergency medical services personnel, career firefighters, and law enforcement, and the addition of 600,000 uninsured North Carolinians eligible for Medicaid.

Workshops scheduled for later this month will allow residents of two eastern North Carolina regions to discuss with officials regional response and recovery strengths and weaknesses. 

Called “Public Workshop #1: Understanding Vulnerability from the Local Perspective,” the workshops are part of the state-managed Regional Resilience Portfolio Program that supports nine regional partnerships based on Council of Government boundaries in eastern North Carolina.

The Regional Resilience Portfolio Program is a component of the Regions Innovating for Strong Economies and Environment, or RISE, Program and is a partnership between the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the North Carolina Councils of Governments. RISE aims to support resilience in the storm-impacted regions of the state.

The Eastern Carolina Regional Resilience Portfolio Project is for the Eastern Carolina Council of Governments counties, which are Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Greene, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Pamlico and Wayne counties. Workshops for this region are scheduled for 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. April 12 and again at 10 a.m. April 23. Register to attend one of the workshops by April 8

The Mid-East Commission Regional Resilience Portfolio Project is for Mid-East Commission counties, which include Beaufort, Bertie, Hertford, Martin and Pitt counties. Workshops for this region are scheduled for 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. April 14, both virtual, and again 1:30 p.m. April 23, a hybrid virtual and in-person meeting. Register to attend one of these meetings by April 8. 

Participants will have a chance to share personal experiences with disaster preparedness and recovery, and engage in small group discussions regarding urban, coastal and inland natural hazards during the workshops.

Afterwards, stakeholders will be invited to provide input on issues in their region via an interactive mapping platform and a survey, which will be available on this webpage after the workshops.

The state is funding the development over the next three years of five community floodprint reports to guide initiatives in areas of eastern North Carolina hit hard by hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, has committed funding to the N.C. State University Coastal Dynamics Design Lab to create the floodprint, “a valuable tool for building future community resilience,” the state announced Friday.

The floodprint is a landscape planning approach developed by Coastal Dynamics Design Lab, or CDDL, to address land and water relationships. The planning process will incorporate issues such as flooding, recovery and equity. 

Coastal Dynamics Design Lab will work with five focus communities to develop a community master plan/floodprint and design proposals that can then be used to apply for grant funding.

Communities interested in participating can reach out to buyout@rebuild.nc.gov.

“Our partnership with CDDL will result in community-based plans that address resiliency and development challenges,” NCORR Director Laura Hogshead said in a statement. “We have already seen positive outcomes from the development of floodprints and refer to them when determining local needs for disaster recovery and community resilience.”

NCORR launched the collaboration in January using U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, Community Development Block Grant-Mitigation funds.

Potential candidate communities for the floodprint process must be within the Most Impacted and Distressed, or MID, areas, as identified by HUD or the state. Other considerations include community interest and flood-vulnerable properties.

“Community floodprints are co-created with local input through public meetings and discussions, so the recommended strategies fit the needs of the people who live there,” said Andy Fox, co-director of Coastal Dynamics Design Lab.

“The new collaboration with NCORR is critical to scaling up our work to better serve people and places across eastern North Carolina,” Fox added. “The partnership builds on past successes working with NCORR staff and represents a significant opportunity to provide communities with the technical assistance required to expedite ongoing recovery efforts and attract the resources needed for long-term resiliency and full community health.”

The first of the five new floodprints will focus on Whiteville in Columbus County. Town leaders were contacted and offered the floodprint opportunity as a good fit for their community.

Floodprints have been useful for NCORR’s ReBuild NC Strategic Buyout Program, which buys eligible properties in areas at high risk of future flooding. The properties are purchased from owners who voluntarily decide to sell their property and relocate to a safer place.

To date, CDDL has designed four floodprint reports for North Carolina communities, including Lumberton phases one and two, Princeville and Pollocksville.

The completed floodprints have established the groundwork for actionable plans and have resulted in millions of dollars of additional grant-funded investments to implement the activities outlined in the reports, officials said.

“The partnership with CDDL will provide valuable tools as the Strategic Buyout Program expands in eastern North Carolina,” said Maggie Battaglin, NCORR’s buyout program manager. “The floodprint report for Pollocksville has already been useful as we begin to offer buyout options for flood-damaged properties in that community.” 

More information about the floodprint initiative is on the CDDL website. Learn more about NCORR and the Strategic Buyout Program at ReBuild.NC.Gov.

Online workshops are set for the second week of April for residents of the Albemarle and Cape Fear regions to discuss and identify areas subject to damage or loss due to climate hazards such as hurricanes, flooding and high winds.

The workshops are an initiative of the state-managed Regional Resilience Portfolio Program, which supports nine regional partnerships based on Council of Government boundaries in eastern North Carolina.

The Regional Resilience Portfolio Program is a component of the Regions Innovating for Strong Economies and Environment, or RISE, Program and is a partnership between the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the North Carolina Councils of Governments. RISE aims to support resilience in the storm-impacted regions of North Carolina.

The Cape Fear Council of Governments, which includes Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover and Pender counties, is partnering with RISE for the RISE Cape Fear workshops at 10 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 7. Register by April 6 at https://form.jotform.com/220743857526159 to attend one of the virtual sessions.

The Albemarle Commission, which includes Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, Tyrrell and Washington counties, is partnering with RISE for RISE Albemarle workshops at 5:30-6:30 p.m. April 7, 1:30-2:30 p.m. April 8 and 10-11 a.m. April 9. Register by April 6 at https://form.jotform.com/220744585126154.

Workshop attendees can share personal experiences with disaster preparedness and recovery as well as provide direct input on the development of a regional vulnerability assessment. The assessment is to be released for comment before it’s finalized and used to create a portfolio of priority community resiliency projects, officials said.

Workshops for the Eastern Carolina Council of Governments region, which include coastal counties of Carteret, Craven, Onslow and Pamlico, as well as Duplin, Greene, Jones, Lenoir and Wayne counties, are to be posted on the RISE website.

Managed by NCORR, a division of the state Department of Public Safety, RISE is funded by a $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, with support from both NCORR and N.C. Rural Center. The Duke Energy Foundation has committed $600,000 to offer Accelerator Grants to the regions for priority projects identified as an outcome of the program.

In addition to the Albemarle, Cape Fear and Eastern Carolina council of government regions, the Regional Resilience Portfolio Program serves Kerr-Tar, Upper Coastal Plain, Mid-Carolina, Mid-East, Lumber River, and Triangle J, except for Wake, Durham and Orange counties. A list of counties for each region are on the RISE website, along with a program kickoff announcement.

Chris Baillie has been adjusting over the last few weeks to his new role as resilience and climate adaptation coordinator for Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape, a term that describes areas where natural and working lands are suited to protect military installations from incompatible land uses.

Based at North Carolina Coastal Federation’s headquarters in Carteret County, Baillie, who has a doctorate in ecology, evolution and marine biology, was selected to lead a three-year pilot program to determine if the Sentinel Landscapes Partnership would benefit from a second coordinator focused solely on resilience and climate adaptation projects.

The Sentinel Landscapes Partnership, developed in 2013 by the U.S. departments of Agriculture, Defense and the Interior, is made up of federal agencies, state and local governments, and nongovernmental organizations that work with landowners to create and implement sustainable land management practices around military installations and ranges.

Baillie will be working with the coordinator of the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape, recognized in 2016 and is one of 10 landscapes currently listed on the partnership’s website. Eastern North Carolina’s landscape includes 11 million acres across a 33-county region in the coastal plain and sandhills. Military instillations Fort Bragg, Dare County Range, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, Marine Corps Air Station New River and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base are within this area.

In addition to the eastern North Carolina site, there are Sentinel Landscapes in central Florida, Texas, Minnesota, Arizona, Georgia, Washington, Maryland, northwest Florida and southern Indiana, according to the website.

The Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape, or ENCSL, was chosen for the pilot program because it faces most of or all of the resilience and climate adaptation challenges affecting the 10 Sentinel Landscape sites, and has a track record of effective initiatives, broad partnerships and significant momentum, according to officials. The Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration, or REPI, Program, Sentinel Landscapes Federal Coordinating Committee, Department of the Interior and USDA are funding the pilot program.

Baillie, who grew up in Durham, earned his doctorate from Northeastern University in 2017 and his bachelor’s in biology and marine sciences from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2010. His research has focused on complex food chains, connectivity of marine ecosystems and populations, and how humans impact coastal habitats and ecosystems services. He also served as a co-lead for the General Assembly-funded North Carolina Shellfish Mariculture Advisory Committee, headed up by the federation, was a postdoctoral researcher at East Carolina University and UNC-IMS and consulted with The Pew Charitable Trust.

Baillie told Coastal Review last week that since starting the position March 15, he feels like he’s getting his bearings and has been able to hold meetings with a number of key players in the partnership that he said have been incredibly helpful.  

“Admittedly, coming into a well-established partnership to coordinate something as multifaceted as resilience and climate adaptation across a large geographic area was somewhat daunting,” he said. “However, that feeling has quickly faded and been replaced exclusively by excitement for all the opportunities to coordinate among partners already heavily engaged in conservation and resilience efforts and to facilitate the planning and implementation of projects that address shared or complementary objectives across natural and working lands, conservation, and resilience plans at local, state, regional, and national levels.”

He explained that natural and working lands contribute around $100 billion to the North Carolina’s economy each year, through provisioning of agricultural food and raw materials, supporting commercial fisheries, providing recreational opportunities, and their value to tourism.

“Additionally, these lands sequester vast quantities of carbon, mitigate flooding and recharge stormwater into groundwater aquifers, enhance surface water quality, serve as critical habitats to economically and ecologically important species, are essential training areas for our military, and hold spiritual and cultural significance to diverse stakeholder groups,” he said. “The continued provisioning of these services is essential to national security and the physical and mental well-being of our populace. However, our natural and working lands face growing threats from the proliferation of development and the impacts of climate change, including floods, droughts, fires, disease, and invasive species.”

Fortunately, he continued, data and insights from scientific studies and traditional knowledge offer opportunities to enhance the resilience of natural and working lands, including natural and nature-based solutions, agricultural and forestry practices that enhance both sustainability and profitability, and community practices that are compatible with and augment environmental quality.

“Through planning that is transparent and inclusive and implementation that gives agency to stakeholders, there is the opportunity to safeguard the ecosystem services provided by our natural and working lands and, indeed, the potential to reclaim services that have been forfeited to incompatible land uses and activities in the past,” he said.

Baillie said that over the next six months to a year, he plans to work with partners to identify, pursue funding for and implement resilience and climate adaptation projects that will further the current Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape Implementation Plan.

Baillie added that in the past two weeks he had only begun to scratch the surface of partners he hopes to work with to develop the resilience and climate adaptation plan, which he has been charged with as part of his role as coordinator. He said he is learning how different stakeholders view the concepts and their priorities.

“The great thing about building resilience and advancing climate adaptation using natural and nature-based solutions is that there are so many opportunities for shared wins,” Baillie said.

For example, as a function of geography, some stakeholders may find encroachment, forest fires and droughts to be more of a concern, while flooding and water quality may be of greater concern to others. “Here, implementing forestry practices that reduce the likelihood of wildfires, increase the productivity of forested lands, and augment groundwater recharge can also reduce the volume and velocity of stormwater impacting the lower reaches of the watershed,” Baillie said. “There is just so much inherent interconnectivity in the system that projects without shared benefits are likely to be the exception.”

At the end of the project, Baillie is to create a final report detailing monitoring, measures and study results, recommendations, and input on applying lessons learned to the broader Sentinel Landscapes program and to other Sentinel Landscapes.

“Through efforts in land conservation, nature-based solutions, supporting profitable and sustainable agricultural and forestry practices, I hope we can provide further evidence countering the all-too-common misconception that there are inherent tradeoffs between positive conservation and socio-economic outcomes,” he said.

Federation Executive Director Todd Miller told Coastal Review that the nonprofit will build upon the good work already accomplished and underway by the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape through this initiative.

“This project draws upon the resources and participation by numerous federal, state and local government agencies to engage with landowners and businesses to identify significant land and water conservation projects that will make our communities more resilient to extreme weather events and environmental degradation going forward,” he said. “The Department of Defense supports this project because its operations depend on having access to an enlisted and civilian workforce that reside in stable, safe and healthy communities.”

Kristin Thomasgard, program director for REPI Program, said in an interview that the REPI office and Sentinel Landscapes Federal Coordinating Committee — DoD, USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service, U.S. Forest Service, Farm Service Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Bureau of Land Management representatives — decided that a pilot project would have the most impact at a Sentinel Landscape facing multiple resilience and climate adaptation challenges, and had a track record of effectively executing new initiatives and building broad partnerships.

“The Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape is a Sentinel Landscape that satisfies those criteria and in discussions with the North Carolina Coastal Federation it was clear there was a local entity with both strong interest and exceptional experience to host the co-coordinator position,” she said.

The REPI program helps to address encroachment pressures, including climate change impacts, that could impair the department’s capacity to test, train and operate, Thomasgard said.

“Through the REPI program, the military services enter into cost-sharing agreements with state and local governments and private conservation organizations to remove or avoid land-use conflicts near installations and ranges, address regulatory restrictions that inhibit military activities, and maintain or improve military installation resilience to climate change and extreme weather events,” she said.

REPI invests in climate change resilience by supporting the development of off-base natural infrastructure solutions and partnerships. Thomasgard said that these natural infrastructure solutions may include, but are not limited to, conducting prescribed burns and removing hazardous fuels to reduce wildfire risk, building retention berms to reduce impacts of thawing permafrost, and rehabilitating soil to reduce land degradation and desertification.

“Creating, restoring, or enhancing natural systems is one of the most cost-effective, sustainable ways to make military installations more resilient to climate change,” she said.

One example of a successful REPI resilience project within the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape is at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

“Through the 2020 REPI Challenge, the REPI program allocated $1 million to MCAS Cherry Point and the North Carolina Sentinel Landscape Partnership to construct 2,100 linear feet of living shoreline along the eroding Neuse River,” she said. “This living shoreline will promote ecosystem health, provide water quality benefits to the public, and enhance installation resilience at MCAS Cherry Point.”

She explained that the REPI program represents the Department of Defense in the Sentinel Landscapes Partnership, which “was founded on the notion of shared interests between conservation, working lands, and national defense and how various encroachment outcomes can negatively affect each, things like urban sprawl and competing land use demands.”

The partnership recognizes that challenges related to resilience and climate adaptation also have a significant impact on the partnership’s shared objectives of conservation, working lands preservation and national defense. Extreme weather events, sea level rise, flooding, excessive heat and wildfire all impact these shared goals.

“Finding nature-based solutions to address these climate-based challenges requires a different skill set and experience base, distinct from the more typical land conservation experience of the current Sentinel Landscapes coordinators,” Thomasgard said. “Sentinel Landscapes provide a unique and valuable opportunity to initiate and demonstrate resilience and climate adaptation efforts at a landscape scale. However, the need for planning capacity and project design to address resilience and climate adaptation is critical to successful resilience outcomes within Sentinel Landscapes.”

The initial seven designated Sentinel Landscapes mainly focused on land management practices advancing compatible land use beside and near each Sentinel Landscapes’ anchor installation to address encroachment, and the Sentinel Landscape coordinators at each of these landscapes have largely possessed skills and experience related to land conservation. But, given the current workload of the coordinators, the Federal Coordinating Committee felt it was unreasonable to ask them to perform their current responsibilities as well as deliver adequate planning and coordination support for resilience and climate adaptation efforts.

“The Sentinel Landscapes Federal Coordinating Committee felt it would be useful to explore whether there would be significant advantage in providing certain Sentinel Landscapes with co-coordinators in order to more effectively address challenges requiring a broader set of skills and experience,” she said, adding that the co-coordinators would focus on helping key Sentinel Landscapes dealing with resilience and climate related vulnerabilities in addition to land management challenges.

“Simply put, the goal of the pilot project is to test the principle that certain Sentinel Landscapes would significantly benefit from a second coordinator to focus on projects and partnerships to address resilience and climate adaptation within those landscapes,” she said.

Thomasgard explained that the REPI office and the federal coordinating committee expect that the pilot effort will demonstrate an approach to building landscape scale resilience and climate adaptation capacity that will be transferrable to other Sentinel Landscapes across the country. 

Specifically, she continued, the expectation is that the Eastern North Carolina Sentinel Landscape Partnership Team and the new resilience and climate adaptation coordinator will identify specific recommendations and lessons learned, that can support and inform resilience and climate adaptation coordinators at other Sentinel Landscapes. 

“Further, it is our hope that this approach helps the REPI office and the Sentinel Landscapes Partnership tackle the challenge of resilience and climate adaptation in a holistic and outcome-based manner that will support national security, conservation, and working lands into the future,” she said.

Climate change is an issue for the Department of Defense because climate change impacts and extreme weather events threaten our nation’s security and have tangible impacts on military readiness.

“For example, in Eastern North Carolina, Hurricane Florence caused nearly $3.6 billion in damages at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in 2018. This Category 4 Hurricane significantly damaged critical facilities and required the Marine Corps to replace 31 buildings,” she said. These extreme weather events create added costs for Department of Defense and can delay critical testing and training operations.

“To ensure DoD can operate under changing climate conditions, the Department published a Climate Adaptation Plan in September 2021 with key actions DoD will take to enhance resilience to climate change threats,” she said.

The plan includes five efforts the department will implement to preserve operational capabilities, enhance natural systems, and sustain critical missions. The plan identifies REPI Program and Sentinel Landscapes Partnership as two valuable tools the department will use to advance two points in the plan: contributing to the expansion of resilient built and natural infrastructure and enhancing adaptation and resilience through collaboration.

Applications are being accepted until June 3 from coastal municipal and county governments to fund the engineering and design phase of a climate resiliency project that features a nature-based component such as a living shoreline or wetlands restoration.

The funding is through the Resilient Coastal Communities Program created to help local governments in the 20 Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, counties build capacity for resiliency, provide technical assistance and fund planning and implementation of strategic resilience projects. The state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management facilitates the project announced by the state in October 2020.

The program is broken down into four phases: phase 1 is community engagement and risk/vulnerability assessment; phase 2 is planning, project identification and prioritization; phase 3 is engineering and design; and phase 4 is project implementation.

In March 2021, the division awarded 25 communities for technical assistance in risk assessment and resilience planning work, which are phases 1 and 2 of the program.

Applications are now being accepted for phase 3 funding. The request for application is available online.

The division said it will host an informational webinar 2-3:30 p.m. Monday, April 25, to answer questions regarding the application. Register online for the webinar.

To be funded through phase 3, the project must be prioritized in the applicant’s Resilient Coastal Communities Program Resilience Strategy created during phase 1 and 2, or other existing plans that meet phases 1 and 2 planning criteria. Proposals for development of ordinances or policies to further resiliency in the community are also welcome.

Applications from communities in Beaufort, Bertie, Brunswick, Dare, Carteret, Craven, Hyde, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pender, and Tyrrell, the 12 Hurricane Florence-declared counties, must feature a nature-based component. Communities in the other eight counties are also encouraged to submit a project that includes a nature-based component.

Funding is to be prioritized for projects that create engineering and design plans toward a shovel-ready project that includes a nature-based component or create an ordinance or policy to further resilience goals.

The program is a component of the statewide North Carolina Resilient Communities Program, called for in the 2020 North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan.

The division received funding from the state legislature and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to develop and implement the program in coordination with the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, The Nature Conservancy and North Carolina Sea Grant.

Additional information about the program can be found on the program website.

State officials recently announced that $1.3 million in federal funding is available for watershed restoration projects.

Local governments, agencies, nonprofits, educational institutions and communities in areas with a state-approved watershed restoration plan have a little more than a month to get their application together for the grant to help improve and protect water quality.

The funding is provided for in Section 319(h) of the federal Clean Water Act, a provision typically called the 319 Grant Program. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funds projects designed to reduce nonpoint source pollution, such as stormwater, and the Division of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources selects the qualifying applicants that have an approved restoration plan for a water body listed by as impaired.

“The 319 Grant Program allows governments and organizations to actively engage in protecting North Carolina’s water resources,” said Richard W. Gannon, supervisor of the division’s Nonpoint Source Planning Branch, in a statement. “Projects that incorporate climate change adaptation or benefit historically underserved communities are encouraged to apply for this funding.” 

Nonpoint source pollution usually comes from land runoff, rain and snow, from the atmosphere, drainage, seepage or hydrologic modification, according to the EPA. When rainfall or snowmelt moves over and through the ground it collects and carries away natural and human-made pollutants, eventually depositing the pollutants into lakes, rivers, wetlands, coastal waters and ground water.

The application deadline is midnight May 4. An interagency workgroup is to review the proposals and schedule interviews for eligible candidates in June. Awards are to be announced this summer.

About 10 projects have been awarded each year since the program began in 2005. The nonprofit North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review, has worked on 17 projects funded through the 319 program, federation Deputy Director Lauren Kolodij said.

Kolodij explained that intense rainstorms cause flooding and water quality degradation as the runoff funnels pollutants to coastal waters. “It is the greatest polluter of our creeks, rivers and sounds,” she said, adding that “increased flooding from the greater frequency, intensity and duration of heavy rain events is plaguing the coast and the state. Altered hydrology from land use is contributing to the severity and impact of storms.”  

The EPA section 319 grant is a source of funding that communities across the state depend on to develop, design and construct restoration projects in jurisdictions with an approved watershed restoration plan, she said, adding that the funding is invaluable for communities that want to use hydrologic restoration at a watershed scale to become more flood-resilient.

The federation works with communities, researchers, local governments and state agencies to address flooding and water quality problems and priorities. Recent projects include the Bradley and Hewletts Creek watershed restoration plans in Wilmington, a watershed restoration plan in Pine Knoll Shores, a project to reduce stormwater runoff at the Swansboro Municipal Complex, and work to reduce stormwater volume on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus, as well as in Beaufort and Swansboro.

“The plans developed by the federation and partners all share a strategy for watershed restoration that is based on maintaining or mimicking the natural hydrology of the landscape and a key component of stakeholder involvement,” Kolodij said. “The plans have resulted in the use of cost-effective nature-based stormwater strategies to mimic the natural capacity of the landscape to manage billions of gallons of water, built community buy-in for a watershed approach, and provided a foundation for securing federal, state and local funding for plan implementation.”

She said that science demonstrates that there are fewer flooding incidents and better water quality in watersheds where natural hydrology is protected, restored or mimicked.

The Coastal Federation has “embraced a watershed restoration framework built on the key benefits of hydrologic matching and has been implementing the framework across the coast,” she added.

Dr. Bill Hunt, a William Neal Reynolds distinguished university professor and extension specialist in North Carolina State University’s Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, told Coastal Review that he had worked on five or six 319 projects, mostly in Wilmington focusing on Bradley, Hewletts, and Burnt Mill creeks.

Nonpoint source pollution impacts many things that people who live, or visit, the coast care about such as swimming. “When we devise potentially inexpensive ways to keep pathogens out of our creeks, we open up the opportunity for currently restricted water-based activities to be enjoyed again by lots of people,” he said.

He said he most recently worked on a now-complete 319 project in Jacksonville, and about 18 years ago, he worked on a project focusing on the White Oak watershed, leading to projects in both Carteret and Onslow counties.

“Much of what we have examined has been to trial practices that we know will work, but maybe not know exactly how well — and then monitor them as part of the project. The monitoring helps us determine the exact benefit these treatments can have,” Hunt said.

One recent accomplishment was evaluating how well shallow media depth, shallow water table bioretention cells worked, both in Jacksonville and Wilmington.

A bioretention cell, one of many nature-based, stormwater management strategies, is an area that has been dug out and then filled with media, or specific soils, plants or grass, and is designed to temporarily hold and filter stormwater. Current state standards require no less than 2 feet of soil or plants, depending on the plant, and the lowest point of the bioretention cell must be a minimum of 2 feet above the seasonal high water table.

Hunt said that while the type of bioretention cell they used does not currently meet current state standards, the “style” of coastal-specific bioretention did well removing residual water treatment, or WTR, pollutants of both pathogens and nutrients.

 The success of this bioretention cell is leading N.C. State to recommend to the Department of Environmental Quality to consider the new design for the coast, he added.

There are benefits from putting these best management practices in the ground, Hunt said. “People can see and touch their tax dollars at work. Beautifying a parking lot or creating simple infiltration zones can lead others to want to copy. That’s what we are hoping for.”

One of the best parts of working in coastal North Carolina are the town staff and officials. N.C. State cannot do these projects alone, and by working with staff at the city of Jacksonville or Wilmington, lots of improvement is possible, he said.

Applications must include an approved watershed restoration plan for a water body named on the 303(d) Impaired Water list as described in the Clean Water Act, division officials said. Instructions to create a plan and case studies are available on the DEQ website. 

The Nonpoint Source Planning Branch approves the watershed plans required to apply for a 319 grant, after review by appropriate Division of Water Resources staff and any needed revisions to meet EPA’s nine elements to develop a watershed plan.

The division can wholly fund, partially fund or not fund any proposal or any component of any Section 319 grant proposal. Availability of grant funds, amounts and award schedules are conditioned on Congressional Approval of the EPA budget and subsequent allocation to the state of Section 319 funds.

The public can swing by Pine Knoll Shores town hall between 4 and 6 p.m. March 24 to chat with staff and officials about proposed options to improve the town’s resilience to coastal hazards.

The town hall is at 100 Municipal Circle.

Folks can learn about potential resilience projects, ask questions and provide feedback on current risks and the needs to be addressed.

The meeting is being held as part of the state’s Resilient Coastal Communities Program, which is managed by the state Division of Coastal Management. The town received a grant to develop a list of projects that would address critical infrastructure needs, with a focus on increasing resilience to coastal risks.

The Resilient Coastal Communities Program is broken down into four phases: community engagement and risk assessment, planning, design and then implementation.

Public input is a key part of the process to determine what facility improvements are most important to the community, town officials said.

Those not able to attend the meeting can participate in an online survey, which can be accessed online. Comments should be submitted by April 7.

The three Topsail Island communities are hosting an open house March 16 that will focus on climate resiliency planning, sea level rise and flooding.

The in-person open house is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. in Surf City Town Hall, 214 W. Florence Way, Hampstead.

During the open house, organizers will present initial findings on the climate-related risks present on the island, plus there will be displays and proposed projects will be demonstrated.

This is a chance for the public to provide input, comments and more ideas while helping shape the future resiliency of the community.

The towns of Surf City, Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach, all on Topsail Island, are among the about two dozen local and county governments awarded a grant through the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program, administered by the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management.

The program is a community-driven process for setting coastal resilience goals, assessing existing and needed local capacity, and identifying and prioritizing projects to enhance community resilience to coastal hazards. The four phases of the program are community engagement and risk and vulnerability assessment; planning, project selection and prioritization; engineering and design; and implementation.

The program is currently in the risk and vulnerability assessment phase.

For more information, contact Michael Hicks at 919-604-2736.

Craven County is hosting a virtual public meeting to present information and gather feedback on proposed options to improve the county’s resilience to coastal hazards, such as flooding and storm-related damage.

The meeting is set for 5:30-6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10. It is expected to begin with a brief presentation followed by a chance for participants to ask questions and provide input to project representatives on the current risks and needs to be addressed.

To register contact Planning Department Assistant Director Chad Strawn at cstrawn@cravencountync.gov, Senior Planner Jason Frederick at jfrederick@cravencountync.gov. or call 252-636-6618.

This meeting is a part of the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program. Craven County, along with about two dozen other local governments in the 20 Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, counties, were awarded the grants in March 2021 through the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, which manages the program.

The program was created to help local governments develop projects that would increase resilience to coastal risks and address critical infrastructure needs. Public input is a key part of the process to determine what improvements are most important to the community.

Those unable to attend the virtual public meeting can participate by answering by March 24 an online survey at https://arcg.is/0fiDrL.

Like many local governments on the coast, Beaufort faces hazards related to flooding, storm surge and sea level rise.

The town is holding its second meeting on a state-funded initiative its calling Resilient Beaufort at 5:30 p.m. March 3 via Zoom to work on a strategy to address these risks. The link for the meeting is available online. The first meeting was held online Jan. 27 for the town to provide updates on the progress of the long-term effort.

Beaufort, along with about two dozen other communities in the 20 Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, counties were awarded grants last year through the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program. Led by the state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management, the program provides funding for local governments to help overcome barriers in coastal resilience and adaptation planning, boost local government capacity, and support a proactive, sustainable, and equitable approach to coastal resilience planning and project implementation, according to the website.

The initiative is broken up into four phases: Phase 1 is community engagement and risk and vulnerability assessment; Phase 2 is planning, project identification and prioritization; Phase 3 is engineering and design; and Phase 4 is implementation.

Funding for the first two phases was announced in March 2021. Once the first two phases are complete, the local governments will be able to apply for grant funding to complete Phases 3 and 4.

To learn more about the Resilient Beaufort initiative, including materials and a recording of the first public meeting on risk assessment, visit the program webpage. 

The state legislature and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation fund the resilience program.

Swansboro is encouraging the public to get involved in improving the town’s resilience to coastal hazards.

Folks can drop in any time between 4 and 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 23, for a public information meeting at the town hall, 601 W. Corbett Ave. Those unable to attend can participate in survey that can be accessed online.

Town officials seek to develop a list of projects that would address critical town infrastructure needs with a focus on increasing resilience to coastal perils.

The meeting is to cover potential resilience projects with opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback to project representatives on current risks and the needs to be addressed. It’s part of the state’s Resilient Coastal Communities Program.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced the awards March 17, 2021. A total of $675,000 was awarded to 25 communities for technical assistance in risk assessment and resilience planning work.

Hyde County officials are asking Ocracoke residents, property owners and other stakeholders to complete a short questionnaire on ways for the community to be better prepared to withstand, respond to, and recover from weather or other disruptions.

A public meeting about the Resilient Coastal Communities Program is set for 6 p.m. Jan. 27 in the Ocracoke Community Center or attend virtually via zoom.

The questionnaire can be completed online or participants can download and print the form and return it.

The county, on behalf of the unincorporated Ocracoke Village, is one of the 25 local governments selected for the Resilient Coastal Communities Program administered by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management. The grants are for technical assistance in risk assessment and resilience planning work.

The program helps local governments on the coast set resilience goals, look at the community’s needs, and identify projects to boost community resilience to coastal hazards. The four phases of the program include: Phase 1, community engagement and risk & vulnerability assessment; Phase 2, planning, project selection and prioritization; Phase 3: engineering and design; and Phase 4: implementation.

This first award through the program was announced in March 2021. The 25 local governments can receive up to $675,000 total complete the first two phases.

Beaufort is in the process of developing a resiliency strategy using funding through the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s Resilient Coastal Communities Program.

Town staff will hold a Zoom meeting 5:30 p.m. Jan. 27 to update residents on the town’s progress on the long-term effort being called Resilient Beaufort.

The program was created to serve as a framework for local governments in the 20 Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, counties to develop strategies for dealing with coastal and climate hazards. The program is broken up into four phases: Phase 1 is community engagement and risk and vulnerability assessment; Phase 2 is planning, project identification and prioritization; Phase 3 is engineering and design; and Phase 4 is implementation.

The state announced in March 2021 the 25 communities selected for funding for phases 1 and 2. Beaufort has been awarded funding to complete phases 1 and 2. Once those are complete, the town will be eligible to apply for grant funding to complete Phases 3 and 4.

During the virtual meeting, staff are expected to share details on the risk and vulnerability assessment and collect feedback. The risk and vulnerability assessment explores the impacts of sea level rise, flooding, storm surge and erosion to the town’s critical assets, vulnerable populations and natural infrastructure.

The Resilient Coastal Communities Program was created through the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment & Resilience Plan and developed by the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resilience, the Nature Conservancy and North Carolina Sea Grant.

To learn more about the Resilient Beaufort initiative, visit the webpage or email Town Planner Sam Burdick at s.burdick@beaufortnc.org.

WILMINGTON – Next week, the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners is expected to consider a regulatory text amendment that would clear the way for a development group to move forward with a proposal to build riverfront luxury, high-rise condominiums that a coalition of environmental and historic preservation groups argue would destroy river habitat, burden county infrastructure and threaten areas of historic and cultural significance.

The board’s decision during its Monday meeting could be a projection of how one coastal county measures the development market amidst the changing climate, one where sea level rise is increasingly impacting the Cape Fear River through downtown Wilmington.

That was evident Wednesday when the coalition held a press conference on the deck of the Battleship North Carolina, which is just south of Point Peter, the plot of land at the confluence of the Cape Fear and Northeast Cape Fear rivers where developers envision building a complex of three high-rises called the Villages at Battleship Point.

Around noon, an hour or so after the press conference ended, attendees had to wade through floodwaters that had risen with the tide to get from the front doors of the battleship visitor’s center to their cars. In some areas of the lot, the water was nearly knee-high.

Floodwaters overwashed much of the road leading from the parking lot to U.S. 421. The water was so deep along a short stretch of the road that drivers could not see the yellow dividing line.

The Battleship North Carolina is currently undertaking “Living With Water,” a project to make the grounds around the national historic site more flood resilient.

The roughly 8-acre site being eyed for the project proposed by KFJ Development Group, LLC, was the backdrop for the press conference, where members of the coalition verbally checked off a list of concerns they have about the development in an ongoing push urging the county to oppose the developer’s requests.

“Point Peter is at the mercy of the water that surrounds it,” said Kemp Burdette, Cape Fear Riverkeeper with Cape Fear River Watch. “All of that water is rising in one way or another. To allow this kind of development on Point Peter or anywhere along the western bank of the river is sheer folly.”

He noted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, sea level rise projections of 1 to 3 feet in Wilmington by 2060.

“Point Peter would be unrecognizable and completely under water,” Burdette said.

He questioned where stormwater runoff from the proposed development would be directed.

Regarding NOAA’s projections, prospective condominium buyers would just barely have paid off their mortgages by then, he said.

The New Hanover County Planning Board in early December declined in a 5-1 vote the developer’s request to add a new zoning district called Riverfront Urban Mixed-Use Zoning district to the county’s Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO.

The planning board’s decision essentially quashed another request by the developer to rezone the property.

In New Hanover County, the board of commissioners make the final decision on UDO amendment requests.

The coalition on Wednesday argued that the proposed zoning district conflicts with New Hanover’s UDO, which addresses minimizing losses to the public and private sectors in flood-prone areas.

Point Peter is in a Federal Emergency Management Agency-designated floodplain, an area, members of the coalition point out, is vulnerable to floods, storm surge and sea level rise.

The coalition includes the Brunswick County Chapter of the NAACP, Cape Fear Group of the Sierra Club, Cape Fear River Assembly, Cape Fear River Watch, Coastal Plain Conservation Group, Historic Wilmington Foundation, Lower Cape Fear League of Women Voters, New Hanover County Chapter of the NAACP, and the North Carolina Coastal Federation.

Representatives of those groups stressed the environmental, cultural and historical importance of the area currently zoned industrial.

Burdette said the part of the river on both sides of the property is a primary nursery area, or PNA, a designation determined by the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission. The commission designates PNAs to protect habitat, particularly along bottom areas, including sand, mud, sea grasses and oyster rocks.

Brayton Willis, a member of the Brunswick County Branch of the NAACP’s environmental and climate justice committee, pointed out that the property is included in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a national heritage corridor established by Congress to recognize the culture of the Gullah Geechee.

Gullah Geechee are descendants of Africans enslaved on rice, indigo and sea island cotton plantations of the lower Atlantic Coast.

“Not many people know about this area, this vast, beautiful viewshed, but it sits within the Gullah Geechee heritage corridor,” Willis said. “That’s a national heritage corridor and what they are proposing with the Battleship Point project is the destruction of that important resource. It’s a scarce resource and it requires protection.”

He referred to the 2020 North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan and the Lower Cape Fear Blueprint as guidance for how to address future development in the face of the changing climate.

“There’s some good answers out there, things that we can do better,” he said. “And, I think that we need to make sure that our planning folks take full advantage of what we in the state and all across the country dealing with climate change can do to minimize this.”

Willis said climate-adaptive, low-impact development would be a suitable option for the property.

“Rather than building large megastructures, we can do things out here that will preserve and protect not only the floodplain ecosystems, history and culture, but also give our gift to our kids and our grandkids. They’re the ones that are going to wind up playing the bill,” he said.

Historic Wilmington Foundation Executive Director Travis Gilbert said rezoning the land would have a detrimental effect on the region’s cultural resources, specifically the USS North Carolina, one of two national historic landmarks in the county.

“We would like to see this parcel be rezoned with prescriptive zoning measures that protect the viewsheds of this memorial and national historic site. Measures could include height restrictions and setbacks that preserve the viewsheds of the USS North Carolina,” he said. “We cherish this site. It would be extremely disappointing in the Wilmington Historic Foundation’s opinion to have a 240-foot wall impede the views of this memorial.”

The parcel at issue also includes an archeological resource recorded by the North Carolina Office of State Archeology in April 1979. That resource includes cultural remains on land and under water “that help illuminate the industrial history of New Hanover County,” Gilbert said.

Commissioners are accepting public comments about the proposed project through noon Jan. 9. Comments may be submitted online at planning.nhcgov.com/public-comment-form.

Just look around.

Rising sea level, increased tidal flooding, more frequent, beach-eroding storms – those who live and work on Topsail Island see it.

With the help of a new state program, the three towns on the barrier island are tackling where and how to prepare for what’s to come in the face of the changing climate.

“Topsail Island is no stranger to resilience,” said Surf City Mayor Doug Medlin. “We’ve had to go through this many, many times, but maybe we’re going to learn some new things to make us more resilient. Some people don’t believe when you say ‘climate change,’ but climate change is here and if you don’t believe it just look around at everything. We’re going to have to be more resilient to all of this stuff, especially the water that’s rising. We know it’s going to rise. We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got to be prepared for.”

Medlin’s comments set the stage Wednesday night in Surf City Town Hall during the first public meeting about Topsail Island’s island-wide resiliency project.

North Topsail Beach, Surf City and Topsail Beach are among 26 coastal communities — eight counties and 18 municipalities — in the state to receive grants on behalf of the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management’s N.C. Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or NC-RCCP.

This is the first year of this program, one that aims to boost resilience efforts in the state’s 20 coastal counties and encourages those who live and work along the coast to participate in finding solutions and prioritizing projects designed to help their communities bounce back from flooding and storms.

NC-RCCP is a product of the state’s 2020 Climate Risk Assessment & Resilience Plan, which was the result of Executive Order 80 signed by Gov. Roy Cooper in October 2018.

The program is funded by the North Carolina General Assembly and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Mackenzie Todd, a coastal resilience specialist with the Division of Coastal Management, explained Wednesday that the 2020 Resilience Plan directs the state to establish a formal planning process to get projects in coastal communities to shovel-ready status.

The Topsail Island towns were among about 30 coastal communities that applied for the program.

The division has contracted directly with and paired consultants with the municipalities and counties selected earlier this year.

Kleinfelder Inc., a San Diego-based architectural, engineering and scientific consulting firm, is overseeing Topsail Island’s resiliency plan.

Coastal communities that are part of the NC-RCCP are undergoing the same, four-phase process.

One of the initial steps of the process include the establishment of community action teams that consist of representatives, including local government officials, residents and business owners, from within those counties and municipalities.

The Topsail Island Community Action Team, or CAT, includes about 20 members and kicked off its first meeting in mid-October.

Michael Hicks, project manager with Kleinfelder, said the team has held three workshops during which the group developed a vision, established a set of goals, and identified natural infrastructure, critical assets, vulnerable populations and hazards.

The team’s goals include finding ways to minimize damage from flooding and storms, improve reliability of built infrastructure and road access, identify and prioritize specific resiliency projects and investments, and conserve and adapt natural infrastructure.

Natural infrastructure the team has identified include New River Inlet, wetlands, public beaches, marshes, North Topsail Beach’s maritime forest, Surf City’s maritime forest, New River Inlet’s bird nesting islands, Lea and Hutaff islands, and Holly Shelter Game Land.

Critical assets include businesses, powerlines, water and sewer infrastructure, main roads, emergency access roads, churches and religious meeting places, and tourist destinations.

The team’s list of vulnerable populations includes the elderly, those with limited financial resources, and property owners whose property is located within a Coastal Barrier Resources Act, or CBRA, zone and do not qualify for federal flood insurance or any type of federal post-storm aid.

Hicks clicked through a series of a maps displayed on a large screen in a meeting room of Surf City’s town hall that depict projected sea level rise over the next 50 years.

The maps were created primarily with data produced from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to show sea level rise projections consistent with North Carolina’s Climate Science Report. That report projects sea rise at a rate of about 3 feet.

Suggestions from those who attended the meeting Wednesday included adding properties in inlet hazard areas, fishermen and oystermen to the vulnerability assessment and areas on the mainland where development is being planned under natural infrastructure.

North Topsail Beach Planning Director Deb Hill urged that the towns work together to identify a project that will benefit all three towns.

The second phase of the project is to develop a portfolio of potential solutions, including nature-based solutions.

Todd said the hope is that more coastal communities will be included in the program.

An open house is planned for next week for the public to share their concerns, feedback and ideas on climate change and resiliency planning for the three Topsail Island communities as part of the Island-wide Coastal Resiliency Project.

Surf City, Topsail Beach and North Topsail Beach are among the 25 coastal communities announced in March to be selected for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Division of Coastal Management’s NC Resilient Coastal Communities Program, or NC-RCCP, launched last year. The three towns are listed together as Topsail Island by the division.

The open house will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 15, at Surf City Town Hall, 214 W. Florence Way, Hampstead. The public can also attend the meeting virtually.

The program was created to facilitate a community-driven process for setting coastal resilience goals, assessing existing and needed local capacity, and identifying and prioritizing projects to enhance community resilience to coastal hazards, according to NCDEQ. Selected communities are receiving technical assistance to complete the program, which is broken up into the following four phases:

• Phase 1: Community engagement and risk and vulnerability assessment.
• Phase 2: Planning, project selection and prioritization.
• Phase 3: Engineering and design.
• Phase 4: Implementation.

The Topsail Island project is in the first phase. During the open house, the team will present their initial findings on the climate-related risks present within the island, according to Kleinfelder Inc., a California-based engineering consultation company with an office in Raleigh that has been contracted to lead the community risk/vulnerability assessment.

Kleinfelder representatives and the Topsail Island NC-RCCP Community Action Team, which has been meeting since October, are to use the input to help guide the risk and vulnerability assessment and project planning portfolio with the Topsail Island NC-RCCP Program.

Contact Project Manager Michael Hicks with any questions mhicks@kleinfelder.com.

The program has been funded through NCDEQ under the Hurricane Florence Disaster Recovery Fund and a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

A new state program is working to boost resilience in regions of eastern North Carolina that were impacted by the September 2018 Hurricane Florence.

The Regional Resilience Portfolio Program “aims to build the foundation for a more resilient North Carolina by proactively engaging with community leaders to determine and plan for climate hazards,” North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, announced Friday.

“Collaboration between local leaders and government agencies is key to assessing needs and planning for future resilience,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement. “The Regional Resilience Portfolio Program is going to help North Carolina communities build back smarter and stronger than ever.”

The program is supported in part by a grant from the Duke Energy Foundation and will serve these council of governments regions: Kerr-Tar, Upper Coastal Plain, Albemarle, Mid-Carolina, Mid-East, Lumber River, Cape Fear, Eastern Carolina and Triangle J, except for Wake, Durham and Orange counties. A list of counties for each region can be found on the RISE website.

The portfolio program is under the umbrella of the Regions Innovating for Strong Economies & Environment Program, or RISE, which is managed by the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, a division of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. RISE is in partnership with the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency and N.C. Rural Center, in collaboration with the N.C. Councils of Governments.

“We are building local-level resilience leadership,” state Chief Resilience Officer Dr. Amanda Martin said. Martin oversees NCORR’s resilience team and the RISE program.

“This partnership with counties, local governments and leaders from a variety of sectors provides each region with the resources to align projects with new funding opportunities from the recent federal infrastructure package and other sources. The goal is to break down barriers for communities wanting to invest in future growth and stability,” she continued.

A $1.1 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant funds the program with support from both NCORR and N.C. Rural Center. The Duke Energy Foundation committed $600,000 to offer accelerator grants to the regions for priority projects identified as an outcome of the program.

“Local community involvement is key to identifying projects that will successfully support future vitality. Community leaders and residents know which roads flood, for example, and how such events expose the community to danger when they occur. When we meet with communities, we begin with that local knowledge and then evaluate those community climate hazards and plan next steps or projects to reduce or erase them,” Martin added.

Residents, nonprofit organizations, businesses and community leaders can sign up to participate in the development of their region’s climate vulnerability assessment and projects portfolio by subscribing to RISE Program updates. 

Updated Monday with comments from Division of Coastal Management

Three projects in North Carolina will receive a portion of the $39.5 million in new National Coastal Resilience Fund grants.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the grants Thursday. The grant program supports coastal resilience projects in 28 states and U.S. territories. The 49 awards are expected to generate more than $58.3 million in matching contributions for a total conservation impact of nearly $97.8 million, according to the foundation.

While the grant program prioritizes direct restoration projects to increase natural infrastructure function, the projects supported by the 49 grants announced span activities from community engagement in planning and prioritization to building capacity for coastal engineering and design development to help communities understand their best options.

The resilience fund supports projects that restore or enhance natural infrastructure in ways that benefit both wildlife populations and coastal communities. Investing in nature-based solutions to increasing environmental stressors increases the resilience of both human and wildlife communities to coastal flooding events, according to the grantors.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality received $545,860 to expand its Resilient Coastal Communities Program. Matching funds were $616,000 for a total of about $1.16 million.

The NCDEQ project is to expand and build local capacity with North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program through risk and vulnerability assessments, community engagement, project identification and prioritization, and the inclusion of 13 more communities within the state’s coastal zone into the program. The project “will build a resilience strategy for each community, including a vision, map of critical assets and natural infrastructure, risk and vulnerability assessment, and portfolio of prioritized projects,” according to the

The NCDEQ project is to expand and build local capacity with North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program through risk and vulnerability assessments, community engagement, project identification and prioritization, and the inclusion of 13 more communities within the state’s coastal zone into the program. The project “will build a resilience strategy for each community, including a vision, map of critical assets and natural infrastructure, risk and vulnerability assessment, and portfolio of prioritized projects,” according to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

“The Division of Coastal Management is continuing to make progress in supporting coastal communities with infrastructure planning and projects that address the impacts of coastal storms and flooding,” said Division Director Braxton Davis in a statement. “Continued investments in this program will assist local governments in advancing to shovel-ready projects and leveraging additional federal and state funding opportunities.”

Navassa in Brunswick County was selected to receive $110,480 to design a protection plan for the Rowel Branch watershed. Matching funds are $263,300 and the total project amount is $373,780.

The Navassa project is to use nature-based solutions to reduce flood-risk and improve resiliency for community residents while restoring, enhancing, and conserving ecologically significant streams and wetlands in the Rowel Branch Watershed. “Project will incorporate both traditional stream channel restoration methods for flood-risk reduction and innovative bioretention and stormwater wetland management designs in specific segments obstructed by historical fill and recent storm debris,” the foundation said.

The National Audubon Society is to receive $210,267 to complete design plans to improve natural infrastructure in Currituck Sound. Matching funds are $211,635 and total project amount is $421,902.

The funds are to complete the final engineering design and secure permits for four
nature-based marsh restoration pilot projects in Currituck Sound, to mitigate marsh habitat loss and enhance community resilience to storm surge and flooding. The project will preserve the integrity of two marsh complexes totaling 3,481 acres of bird habitat that also provide protection for at least seven critical infrastructure sites and 1,658 residential properties in Currituck and Dare counties, according to the foundation.

A complete list of the 2021 grants is available online.

The foundation and NOAA, joined initially by Shell and TransRe, launched the fund in 2018 to support projects that engage communities and reduce their vulnerability to growing risks from coastal storms, sea level rise, flooding, erosion and extreme weather through strengthening natural ecosystems that also benefit fish and wildlife. 

Currituck County has been approved for a $1 million grant to elevate seven homes with a history of flooding caused by hurricanes and other storms.

The state and Federal Emergency Management Agency approved the hazard mitigation project grant of $1,040,864 to improve disaster resilience in the coastal county, FEMA announced Thursday.

The seven homes are in Corolla, Barco, Moyock, Grandy and Currituck. Funding through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program became available as the result of a federal disaster declaration following Hurricane Florence in 2018.  

“Currituck County is pleased to accept Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds on behalf of these deserving families,” said Donald I. McRee Jr., interim county manager, in a statement. “The mitigation of repetitive loss properties is a priority of both the Outer Banks Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan and State of NC Hazard Mitigation Plan, and we are grateful for the opportunity to enhance our community resilience to coastal hazards.”

By elevating the homes in a Special Flood Hazard Area to the base flood elevation and local freeboard requirements, the costly repetitive cycle of flood damage and repairs will be interrupted. The elevated structures will be placed on a range of possible foundations, specified by a licensed professional engineer during a feasibility study and may include piles, columns, curtain walls with footings or concrete masonry units.

“The State appreciates continued partnership in assisting all homeowners across the State, especially those impacted so hard by Hurricane Florence. Supporting the elevation of these homes allows us to assist both the homeowners and the county simultaneously,” said Steve McGugan, state hazard mitigation officer. “The next step is for the state and local governments to procure a contractor, which may take several months. Once a contractor is selected, the property owners will be advised of the project timeline.”

FEMA’s cost share for this project is $780,648, or 75%, and the state share is $260,216, or 25%. The federal share is reimbursed to the state which disburses the funds to local governments. 

FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program funds go to projects intended to create long-term solutions to reduce risks from repetitive hazards. A recent study by the National Institute of Building Sciences found that for every dollar spent on federal mitigation taxpayers save $6, according to the state.

For more information on North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Florence, visit NC DPS: Hurricane Florence 2018 and FEMA.gov/Disaster/4393.

Roadway flooding can happen year-round, but increasingly extreme weather most scientists attribute to climate change has made the vulnerability of coastal roads a clearer and more pressing problem.

Tim Hass, communications officer for the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Division 1, which covers the northeastern part of the state and the Outer Banks, recently told Coastal Review that there are two types of flooding events along the coast: rainwater flooding and tidal flooding, or overwash.

“For rainwater flooding, picture a kitchen sink that holds 4 gallons of water. If you have a bucket that holds 8 gallons of water and you dump it into the sink all at once, there will be spillage. That’s what happens when we get a large amount of rain in a very short period of time, like some locations experienced earlier in June,” Hass explained earlier this summer.

“Of course, drainage also plays a part in that equation, and NCDOT is always working to make sure that the drainage ditches along the side of state-maintained roads are maintained and unobstructed. That certainly helps, but as in the sink metaphor, if the rain comes fast enough, some flooding will occur, no matter how well the area drains,” he added.

Hass said that overwash happens when storm systems such as hurricanes, tropical storms or nor’easters combine with tidal conditions that push ocean or sound water onto land.

“N.C. 12 experiences that in several places, most notably the ‘S-Curves’ north of Rodanthe and the northern side of Ocracoke Island,” Hass said.

NCDOT is currently building the Rodanthe “Jug Handle” Bridge to bypass the S-curves, which he said should be open by late this year or early next.

The 2.4-mile-long bridge going around the S-curves, which are vulnerable to storm breaches, will connect the southern end of the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge over the Pamlico Sound to northern Rodanthe.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused severe beach erosion in the area. In March 2013, federal emergency funding was approved for a beach nourishment project that would place 1.6 million cubic yards of sand dredged from two ocean sandbars, work that was completed in fall 2014, according to NCDOT.

The Rodanthe bridge, along with another on N.C​. 12 near the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, is part of Phase II of the Herbert C. Bonner B​ Bridge Replacement Project. The Bonner bridge was replaced in 2019 with the 2.8-mile Marc Basnight Bridge.

“Other areas in Division 1 that sometimes experience soundside flooding are downtown Manteo and Colington Road in Kill Devil Hills. NCDOT will begin a project this fall on Colington Road that includes raising vulnerable parts of the road to mitigate some of those events,” he said. This project is expected to be awarded later in the month.

There is a third type of flooding, but it doesn’t occur much in his division, Hass explained.

“It happens when a rain event happens upstream on a river and flooding occurs as creeks or rivers rise downstream. A good example of this is when Hurricane Matthew dumped 14 inches of rain on Edgecombe County, which caused the Tar River to flood downstream,” he said.

In general, minor, or short-term flooding is usually just a cleanup effort when it comes to roadways, but hurricanes, including Dorian, Matthew and Irene, can undermine roadways and damage or destroy pavement, he said.

The central and southern coast also encounter flooding and, like most areas, the location of flooding depends on the duration and intensity of the extreme rain event, such as if it’s a hurricane or severe storm, Lauren Haviland, communications officer for Divisions 2 and 3 with NCDOT, explained in an email.

Division 3 Maintenance Engineer Robert Vause and Assistant State Hydraulics Design Engineer Matt Lauffer assisted Haviland with the responses to an email from Coastal Review. Counties in Division 2 are Pender, Onslow, Carteret, Craven and Beaufort. Division 3 covers Brunswick, New Hanover, Onslow and Pender counties.

“We also have some coastal routes that are impacted during excessive tidal events. Those are primarily in coastal areas and along the Cape Fear River,” the email said.

NCDOT designs the roads to stand up to storm frequency, according to department officials. For example, a 10-year event has a 10% chance of occurring in any given year and a two-year event has a 50% chance of occurring in any given year. Secondary roads are designed to withstand a 25-year storm, which has a 4% chance of occurring in a given year. Primary roads are designed to the 50-year standard, which has a 2% chance of occurring, and in some cases for a 100-year storm that is half as likely again of occurring.

“Flooding events above the design storm event can put additional stresses on the roadway network that can cause damage. NCDOT designs roadways to limit damages above the design storm,” they said, meanwhile “Droughts have less of an impact on the roadway network unless there are large-scale settlement issues in a region. NCDOT designs to limit these impacts.”

If a roadway is in an area affected by tides, then tide effects are considered in the design. “Drought conditions from a hydraulics perspective would lessen the impact of a rainfall event when compared with an event that occurs when there are wet conditions,” the email said.

NCDOT is developing tools to better predict and document roads that are impacted during extreme high tides. Resilience is a consideration in the design and operation of transportation systems and the department is working with the State Climate Office to research how to better respond to floods.

Jared Bowden, senior research scholar with N.C. State’s Department of Applied Ecology, said that the collaboration between NCDOT’s engineers and the climate scientists at North Carolina State University is geared toward better understanding how precipitation may evolve in North Carolina as the climate continues to warm and then using those findings to inform future design standards.

The project has two main objectives, Bowden said. One is to learn how the kind of recently experienced devastating hurricanes with extreme rainfall may change in the future and two, to compare methods for updating future precipitation intensity duration frequency curves, which are used to engineer things like culverts and highway drainage systems.

NCDOT is looking statewide with its resiliency efforts. Earlier this year, the agency released the NCDOT Resilience Strategy Report, a “roadmap” for policy, best practices and investment decisions. The strategy is in response to Gov. Roy Cooper’s Executive Order 80: North Carolina’s Commitment to Address Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy, which calls for an annual report to communicate progress and accomplishments toward cabinet agency resilience goals and objectives. 

Bowden, with NC State, told Coastal Review that there’s a connection between their research and Executive Order 80. He explained that he has been talking about this line of research for several years with NCDOT, after 2016’s Hurricane Matthew but before Florence in 2018. 

“However, after Florence this research came to the forefront for NCDOT with major highways underwater again for a week or more,” he said. “The NC executive order 80 was the real push to better understand this problem (changing rainfall patterns and future flooding), which was also the driving mechanism of the report.”

This is the first iteration of the resiliency strategy, which aims to establish resilience terms and hazard types, and to standardize terminology, the document states. The report details existing efforts and future short-, medium- and long-term steps to advance and deepen agency-wide resilience practice and capability, as well as addresses several concerns relevant to the coast, particularly hurricanes and storm surges.

For example, the strategy states that the N.C. 12 bridge connecting Oregon inlet to Pea Island included design elements to adapt to changing oceanic and sound tidal conditions, “Specifically, four channel spans allow wave action and natural channel flow beneath the structure to migrate while simultaneously maintaining adequate access for vessels. Further south in Rodanthe the ‘jughandle’ bridge (B-2500B) has been built on the backside of the island to provide redundant and accessible travel access if N.C. 12 is overtopped or washed out in a major event.”

The March report also mentions the North Carolina Future Precipitation for Resilient Design, which is in response to the expected increase in the frequency and intensity of both floods and droughts due to climate change, but significant uncertainties remain regarding regional changes, especially for extreme rainfall.

Design has traditionally been based on long-term historical data, working under the assumption that future conditions would mirror past. Since that’s no longer the case, a three-year study is underway to use Global Climate Models, or GCMs, to predict future climate conditions. The study is to help NCDOT with climate adaptation and resilience planning and be better prepared for future flood risk.

Other studies noted in the strategy that are in progress include a rainfall data study to update precipitation frequency estimates, which have not been since 2004, and predicting roadway washout locations during extreme events. This study, expected to be complete in 2023, is to develop models and test approaches for predicting crossing washouts based on forecasted rainfall. The model predictions will be used to develop a network of “safe” routes for each watershed.

If even half of the funding and policy changes in the pursuit of resiliency, flood mitigation and land conservation make it through the budget process, it would be far and away the biggest effort in the state’s history to meet the challenge of a changing climate.

This year, there is broad consensus across party lines and between the legislature and the executive branch to make bold moves in these areas, spending as much as $1 billion in state money and putting plans in place to draw billions more in federal support.

But the consensus on flooding and resiliency could prove to be more exception than rule as lawmakers grapple with other strategies and policies that in one way or another address the impacts and causes of climate change.

Although with each year and with each new set of disasters, the risk of doing nothing becomes clearer, the job of putting together policies in an atmosphere in which even the phrase “climate change” is still viewed by many with suspicion remains one of the heavier lifts on Jones Street.

Mark Fleming, president and CEO of the Conservatives for Clean Energy, said polling indicates that while attitudes are shifting about clean energy, “climate change” is still a loaded term for some.

“I would say we are getting there as a state, we really are,” he said. “The problem is if you try to inject the phrase ‘climate change,’ everyone goes to their corners because of the politics of that phrase. It’s not even the policy as much as the phrase. But if you’re talking about sustainability, if you’re talking about lowering emissions, conservatives are there on that.”

There’s no doubt attitudes are changing in the legislature as well, Fleming said. “Ten years ago, this was all viewed as a partisan issue. Today it’s really not.”

A decade ago, clean energy was only backed by a couple of Republican members, Fleming said, compared to 10 to 15 members today, a number that’s likely to grow with each new class of legislators.

“We’ve come a long way,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be done on these issues, but we see a growing number of conservatives that are championing these issues. I think you’ll continue to see that and a lot of it is generational.”

Fleming said this year’s resilience and flooding legislation is a good sign that bipartisan consensus is possible. He still expects to see policy battles on how to approach solutions going forward, but the legislature appears more and more willing to take action.

“The need to do something is the driving thing,” he said. “I think we’ll see more and more consensus on that, bipartisan consensus.”

Rep. John Ager, D-Buncombe, said that consensus can’t happen soon enough. Ager, a farmer and small farm proponent, has been trying to pass a bill that would encourage no-till techniques, better use of cover crops and other practices that improve carbon sequestration in soils. It’s the kind of bill that’s passed in other states but he can’t get traction among his GOP colleagues in Raleigh.

“It’s been frustrating,” he said. “We had to be careful to use the right words because it felt like if they heard the wrong words they’d just turn their minds off and I don’t know what the right words are to turn them back on.”

Sen. Natalie Murdock, D-Durham, said she has reason hope that the legislature is moving in the right direction despite language barriers.

“I think a lot of people don’t want to call it climate change, they don’t want to talk about global warming, but they may focus more on ‘we need more renewables’ or ‘we need more diversity in our energy portfolio.’ They may call it something different, but I definitely think that we can achieve that goal even if they don’t have my belief that climate change is real,” she said. “I focus on what we agree on and kind of work from there.”

Murdock said ultimately the legislature’s hand will be forced by circumstances. The recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and natural disasters have made it clear that the state has to get serious about taking action.

“I think we’ll be forced to,” Murdock said. “I don’t think you can deny the science.”

Heated hearings

Although legislative leaders and Gov. Roy Cooper have found common ground on flooding and resilience, sharp differences remain around greenhouse gas reductions.

Cooper’s call early in his first term for the state to set carbon-reduction targets and to sign on to the Paris Agreement received a cool reception in the North Carolina General Assembly.

This session, opposition to the governor’s carbon-reduction goals heated up during confirmation hearings in the Senate Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee for Cooper’s two choices to lead the Department of Environmental Quality, former secretary Dionne Delli-Gatti, who the Senate rejected, and DEQ Secretary Elizabeth Biser, who was confirmed last month.

At both sets of hearings, Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabbarus, and former president of Duke Energy North Carolina, took aim at Cooper’s carbon reduction strategy, making the case that reductions by North Carolina would be costly and ultimately futile given increases in emission in places like China and India.

“Would you agree with me that if North Carolina is the only one that reduces carbon, and everybody else around the world is increasing carbon, North Carolina’s contribution to improving the climate is actually zero?” Newton asked Biser Aug. 17 during her confirmation hearing.

Biser, a former legislative liaison, agreed, but said the state won’t be going it alone. 

“If we were the only ones doing it, I think we would get lost in that bucket,” she replied. “Fortunately, we’re joined by a lot of other folks. It’s not everyone, as you point out, but I think this is top of mind for a lot of leaders worldwide.”

Legislators have also recently criticized a move by the Environmental Management Commission in July to accept a petition calling for the commission to begin a process for drafting carbon-reduction rules.

Last week, the House added an amendment to a comprehensive energy reform bill that would prevent the administration from joining a regional greenhouse gas compact without explicit legislative approval.

In a response to Coastal Review on Monday, Cooper spokesperson Jordan Monaghan said the governor would continue to push for emission reductions and that the state would reap the benefits of a clean-energy strategy.

“Climate change poses an existential threat and we must do our part to reduce carbon emissions, but just as important is the economic boost and high paying jobs that North Carolina gets if we lead the way on the inevitable move to renewable energy,” Monaghan said.

Although it’s not spelled out entirely, a major reduction in the state’s overall carbon output is built into major energy legislation now in the hands of the Senate.

The legislation, House Bill 951, Modernize Energy Generation, would accelerate the decommissioning of Duke Energy’s fleet of coal-fired units, streamline solar rules and revamp the state’s energy infrastructure. Hammered out in closed-door negotiations earlier this session, the 47-page bill passed the House 57-49 in mid-July but only after sponsors acknowledged its imperfections and assured their colleagues it would likely undergo substantial changes during the back and forth between the two chambers.

Rep. John Szoka, a Cumberland County Republican and one of the bill’s three main sponsors, said it’s unclear what direction the legislation will take.

He said Senate leaders and the governor have an interest in moving the bill forward. “I don’t know what they’re going to do, they could throw the whole thing away and start from scratch, they could take pieces of it,” he said. The most beneficial thing about House Bill 951 wasn’t the end product. It was the discussions that were raised.”

He said policymakers are trying to strike a balance between increasing renewable energy production, achieving carbon reductions and keeping costs down. 

“It’s one of those things where everyone has to give up something,” he said.

Monaghan said Cooper wants to see ideas on renewable energy, ratepayer protection and clean-energy jobs from Executive Order 80, the governor’s 2018 clean energy initiative, incorporated into the bill.

Szoka said that while he’s not sure where the Senate is going on the legislation, he expects that it will likely include fewer mandates and rely more heavily on the state Utilities Commission than the House version.

“I think there’s a path ahead,” he said, “but it’s a process and energy issues are incredibly complex.”

Murdock, who serves on the Senate’s Agriculture Energy and Environment Committee, said she doesn’t support the House version of the energy bill and expects the Senate to make considerable changes, like putting the Utilities Commission back in the driver’s seat on some of the decisions.

The result for the legislation may not be exactly the kind of sweeping change initially promised, she said, but there’s a real chance at progress.

“I know that it still has a long way to go,” she said. “But I think that we’re moving in the right direction. I couldn’t support the initial version of it, but the fact that we’re having serious talks about more coal plant retirements is definitely a step in the right direction.”

Like Fleming, Szoka, who has been in the legislature since 2012, says despite the disagreements over details, attitudes are changing in both chambers and policy is likely to follow.

He said it’s true that the legislature has been generally slower to accept carbon reduction than Congress and other states, but he recalled a similar skepticism about renewable energy.

“When I first got here the view was that it wouldn’t exist without tax credits. Now, it’s a generally more acceptable form of energy by people in both parties,” he said. “Sometimes ideas evolve over time and it takes a period of time to get to where an idea really gets some legs under it.”

Two coastal research funding opportunities are now available for graduate students and undergrads.

Applications for the 2022 Graduate Fellowship in Estuarine Research, a partnership between Sea Grant and the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, will be accepted until 5 p.m. Oct. 29.

The fellowship, which is up to $10,000, is for graduate students who propose research on one or more of the following broad focus areas: estuary spatial planning, submerged aquatic vegetation, coastal water quality, ecological flows and wetlands. The applied research must be within the North Carolina portion of the APNEP management area, which includes most of the northeastern region of the state.

Sea Grant is also accepting applications until 5 p.m. Oct. 29 for its inaugural Coastal Resilience Team Competition. The program will provide up to $20,000 for teams to conduct two-year projects that will lead to more resilient habitats and communities on the North Carolina coastal plain.

2022 Fellowship

Graduate students must propose hypothesis-based research within the North Carolina portion of the APNEP management area. Proposed work should relate to the APNEP Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan and to North Carolina Sea Grant’s Strategic Plan, as well as demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion aligned with the visions of Sea Grant and APNEP.

Applicants should demonstrate how their work and related outreach will benefit underserved and underrepresented communities.

“We are excited to continue partnering with Sea Grant on this graduate fellowship opportunity, which helps support research that informs the conservation and management of the nation’s second largest estuarine system,” said Tim Ellis, APNEP’s quantitative ecologist, in a statement.

John Fear, Sea Grant deputy director, said the fellowship helps train the next generation of scientists.

“Providing opportunities for students of all backgrounds is an overarching aim of this fellowship,” Fear said. “We strongly encourage proposals from graduate students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and from Minority Serving Institutions, as well as from graduate students from traditionally underserved and underrepresented communities.”

Complete instructions, including more information on focus areas for proposals for the 2022 graduate fellowship, are available online. For more information, contact Fear at jmfear@ncsu.edu or Ellis at tim.ellis@apnep.org.

Coastal Resilience Team Competition

Each team will include two to four members, including at least one graduate student, who will serve as the project lead, and at least one undergraduate, who will assist.

“This fellowship opportunity builds off the previous great work of graduate students who have focused on the impacts of sea level rise in North Carolina,” said Sarah Spiegler, North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal resilience specialist. “It’s vital that we continue research that addresses how to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, and I look forward to a student-led team taking on this challenge.”

Officials encourage proposals from teams that include students at historically Black colleges and universities and at minority-serving institutions, and/or students from traditionally underserved and underrepresented communities.

Each team will conduct research that addresses one or more of these focus areas:

• The impacts of higher groundwater levels on forest, agriculture and community infrastructure.
• How changing precipitation patterns impact salinity levels in estuarine systems.
• The impact of higher temperatures on submerged aquatic vegetation communities in North Carolina.
• How coastal communities can engage underserved populations to better prepare them for future disasters.
• How aquaculture practices can buffer the industry against disasters.
• The economic impact of climate change on North Carolina coastal communities, including the effects on different sectors and populations.
• Additional research topics that address how coastal North Carolina can become more resilient to the impacts of climate change.

Proposals should explain how the proposed teams’ research and related outreach will benefit underserved and underrepresented communities. Access the full request for proposals online.

The winning team will present their work to North Carolina Sea Grant’s advisory board. Sea Grant’s science communicators also will work with the winners to publicize the team’s research through an array of products and media, as appropriate.

House budget committees rolled out their spending and policy plans Thursday, including large increases in funding for conservation, flood prevention and stormwater infrastructure.

But details in the plan, including an abundance of earmarks for local projects and a controversial provision to drop protections for hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands, have drawn questions — even as the bill is on track for a final vote as early as next week.

Conservation, flood prevention

The House budget includes large increases for the state’s Land and Water Fund, Parks and Recreation Trust Fund and other conservation efforts, and appropriates close to $2 billion toward flood prevention, resiliency and stormwater and wastewater infrastructure.

Much of that would come from a $1.58 billion transfer from the State Fiscal Recovery Fund to the Department of Environmental Quality for four department-run programs.

The newly created Viable Utility Reserve would receive $500 million for grants to financially distressed water and sewer utilities. The state Drinking Water/Wastewater Reserve would receive $900,000 to use for infrastructure grants. Another $80 million would go to local systems for assistance with inventories, merger studies and training. And $100 million in grants would be available for local stormwater infrastructure projects.

Legislators already have carved out a considerable number of earmarks, with more than 100 county and municipal grants specified in the bill.

Conservation funds in the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources would see the same scale of increases envisioned in the proposed Senate budget, although some differences remain between the two chambers.

The House is proposing $80 million in the current fiscal year for the Land and Water and $70 million for the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund.

A state disaster relief fund would provide $20 million for Land and Water Fund grants for floodplains and wetland areas, and $10 million from the parks fund would be dedicated to grants for local governments for persons with disabilities. 

A new, separate fund for trails throughout the state is also in the plan. The Complete the Trails Fund would start up with a $29 million appropriation to distribute $25 million for trail construction, planning and design projects.

Worries over wetlands

The jump in resiliency and conservation spending in this year’s session has drawn praise from environmental advocates, but several budget provisions are raising concerns, especially a wetland provision in one section that appears to conflict with flood prevention strategies elsewhere in the budget.

The provision would strip away existing state protections for isolated wetlands, which until recently were protected under federal rules.

Under the new Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, rule, those wetlands are no longer under federal protection. That protection required permits for development or other impacts to go through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The wetlands are still under state protection, but there was no regulatory system for them until a recent set of temporary rules were put in place by the state’s Environmental Management Commission, or EMC. The commission is working on permanent rules.

The budget provision would strip that protection for any isolated wetland not classified as a bog or a basin.

During a hearing Thursday on the budget plan by the House Agriculture and Natural and Economic Resources appropriations committee, Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, questioned the intent of the provision and whether it was meant to preempt the new EMC rules.

Joy Hicks, senior director for governmental affairs and policy at DEQ, told the committee that the department wanted to review the change. She said the EMC rules are needed to provide a permitting system for some types of wetlands.  

“When the new Waters of the U.S. came out, it left what we are considering orphaned pieces of wetland that the Clean Water Act no longer covers under the federal rule,” Hicks said. State rules say that all wetlands are protected but there’s no permitting mechanism for those wetlands.

“This would go in and exempt those from having to be permitted.” Hicks said, adding that the provision represents a change in policy that so far hasn’t been vetted by a legislative committee.

Mary Maclean Asbill, attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the attempt to remove protections on wetlands goes against resilience and flood mitigation strategies elsewhere in the budget that call for increases in wetlands and restoration projects to reduce downstream flooding.

“This would be terrible for North Carolina’s wetlands and for North Carolina communities. State leaders should be doing all that they can to protect North Carolina citizens and communities from extreme flooding, yet this does the opposite,” Asbill said Thursday afternoon.

The law center has estimated that there are about 900,000 acres in the Cape Fear and Neuse river basins that are potentially no longer protected by federal rules as a result of the 2020 change.

Harrison also objected to provisions in the budget that would preempt local ordinances on stormwater, wetlands and riparian buffers. Under the new provisions, those ordinances can only be used to meet state or federal laws, preventing local governments from adopting stronger standards.

While there was a lot of “good stuff” in the budget, Harrison said she opted not to vote for it. Instead, she plans to seek amendments to the relevant sections either during next week’s full appropriations committee hearing or when the bill gets to the House floor.

“I appreciate that extra funding for resiliency and conservation, but I’m super troubled by the provisions in there relating to wetlands and stormwater and buffers,” Harrison said.

The subcommittee approved its section of the budget on a voice vote.

Running behind

The House budget is more than six weeks behind schedule. The Senate, which started the budget process, was also behind schedule this year, approving its plan on June 25, five days before the end of the state’s fiscal year.

Since the beginning of the new fiscal year, state agencies have been operating under automatic funding legislation, which maintains prior-year spending levels.

Updated 3:30 p.m. to include comment from Gov. Roy Cooper.

Prospects for major federal infrastructure legislation that would send billions to North Carolina for resiliency, transportation, ports and clean water projects improved dramatically this week with the announcement of a new framework agreement calling for $1.2 trillion in spending over the next eight years.

The final draft of the legislation has yet to be introduced, but a procedural vote in the Senate Wednesday evening drew 17 Republican supporters, seven more than needed to overcome a filibuster, including North Carolina Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr. All 50 Senate Democrats voted for the measure.

Tillis joined a bipartisan group of 20 senators hailing the agreement.

“We appreciate our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and the administration, working with us to get this done and we look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support among our Senate colleagues for this historic legislation,” the statement read in part.

If it were to become law — a big if, but far more likely today than Tuesday — the legislation would be the largest public infrastructure investment since the creation of the Interstate Highway System in the mid-1950s.

“I support the bipartisan infrastructure package advanced by the Senate as it will help North Carolina emerge from this pandemic stronger than ever,” Gov Roy Cooper said Friday in a response provided by staff. “Funding for roads, bridges, public transit, rail, high speed internet access and more will help our communities recover and become more resilient to natural disasters.” 

How the funds would be prioritized and distributed and any appropriations for specific projects or initiatives are to be spelled out in the days ahead as the Senate debates amendments on the bill, but a spending breakdown in a fact sheet distributed by the White House after the deal was announced offers a first look at the initial $579 billion in spending.

It includes the largest federal burst of resiliency funding with $47 billion designated for both infrastructure and projects in natural and working lands. 

The largest portion of the framework is $312 billion for transportation with $109 billion for roads, bridges and other major projects, $49 billion for public transit, $66 billion for passenger and freight rail upgrades, $25 billion for airports, and $16 billion for ports and waterways, which includes $2.5 billion designated for ferry systems.

The prospect of a major boost in federal funding comes as high growth and aging infrastructure is driving discussions about how to increase transportation spending. A recent state report calls for an increase of $20 billion in transportation investments over the next decade.

Broadband infrastructure aimed at rural and underserved communities would receive $65 billion in funding. Water infrastructure, including a plan to eliminate the use of lead pipes in all public water systems, is budgeted at $55 billion.

Another $71 billion would be used to upgrade the nation’s power grid. Accelerated Superfund site cleanup and other environmental remediation would be funded at $21 billion.

Although at this point the exact impact in North Carolina is hard to discern, the size of the framework agreement portends an unprecedented surge of funds should the bill become law. And it could be just the start.

Democrats intend to link the legislation with a larger $3.5 trillion bill aimed at housing, schools, caregiving assistance and research innovations. That legislation would move through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only a simple majority to pass.

It also includes large-scale investments in green energy and climate resiliency, including flood mitigation and solutions focused on the use of natural and working lands, areas that dovetail with state efforts proposed in this year’s North Carolina General Assembly session.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that resiliency is a key part of the plan.

“Americans will strengthen our infrastructure, like our levees, in the face of extreme weather like superstorms, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and heat waves,” Biden said in a statement.

The White House fact sheet also touts the framework agreement as “the largest investment in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history” 

It notes that road and bridge improvements will be focused on “climate change mitigation, resilience, equity, and safety for all users, including cyclists and pedestrians.”

In interviews following the announcement of the Senate framework, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said climate mitigation and resiliency will be an important part of the overall transportation strategy and part of the requirements for any projects seeking funding. 

Forward progress

U.S. Senate leaders intend to move forward on both the infrastructure deal and the reconciliation package in the coming weeks. The legislation would then move to the House.

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House would only take up the bills in tandem.

U.S. Rep. David Price, a Democrat who represents the state’s 4th district that includes the Triangle, chairs a key House appropriations subcommittee, called the Senate infrastructure deal an important step forward in investing in communities in North Carolina.

“While narrower than I would prefer, this compromise plan includes vital investments in roads, bridges, ports, and water infrastructure that would benefit all North Carolinians,” Price said Thursday. “I’m pleased to see it also includes plans to mitigate future natural disasters, like hurricanes and threats from rising sea levels, by funding climate resilience for infrastructure construction and upgrades.”

Price, who chairs the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee, stressed that the larger reconciliation plan remains necessary as well.

“While this package represents progress, we cannot lose sight of America’s pressing need for a broader package that makes simultaneous investments in affordable housing, climate resiliency, and our care infrastructure,” he said.

The White House fact sheet on the Senate framework includes the following funding levels:

*New spending + baseline (over 5 years) = $973B

*New spending + baseline (over 8 years) = $1,209B

Reprinted from Island Free Press

Hatteras Island residents are invited to a community meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday to learn more about a statewide project that seeks to collect data to help communities prepare for and recover from future storms.

The meeting, which will be held in the Hatteras Community Building, will feature representatives from Dynamics of Extreme Events, People, and Places group, or DEEPP, a University of North Carolina Chapel Hill based-group working to better understand the short-term and long-term impacts of flooding events and how households and communities recover from them.

DEEPP is an interdisciplinary team of scientists interested in the environmental, economic, social and psychological impacts of storms and floods in coastal Carolina communities.

The organization combines survey data with satellite imaging, flood mapping, and storm surge mapping in order to provide community planners and policymakers with information they can use for future disasters.

In order to better understand these impacts, as well as local recovery efforts, DEEPP focuses on both scientific approaches, as well as more personal means of data collection by conducting a random survey of households in several communities affected by Hurricanes Matthew, Florence, and Dorian.

The Wednesday meeting in Hatteras will explain the project, and will allow residents to share their own experiences with storms over the past few years, providing a clearer picture for DEEPP researchers.

“Most often, storm damage is assessed by property damage. That leaves out those who are not property owners and marginalized groups, and all voices are important,” said meeting organizer Karla Jarvis. “Some have already gotten letters about the research, and might be wondering (about the project), so we invited (DEEPP) to come and talk to folks about it directly.”

DEEPP is a collaborative effort of multiple departments at UNC Chapel Hill, including the Carolina Population Center, Institute of Marine Sciences, Institute for the Environment, Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, and Coastal Resilience Center.

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

North Carolina Emergency Management Chief of Staff William Ray was recently appointed director of the division, replacing Director Mike Sprayberry, who is retiring at the end of the month.

Department of Public Safety Secretary Erik A. Hooks announced the appointment last week. Ray takes over as director effective Aug. 1 and will lead the state’s preparedness and recovery efforts. Ray also will serve as the state’s deputy homeland security adviser.

“I am extremely grateful Will has accepted this important leadership role for North Carolina,” said Hooks in a statement. “Will has been exceptional in his role as Assistant Director and more recently as the Chief of Staff under Director Mike Sprayberry. He has earned the trust of local, state and federal partners to ensure Emergency Management remains a national leader in emergency management services.”

Sprayberry, who also served as director of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, was appointed in February 2013 and served as the division’s seventh director and has more than 42 years of service with the state.

“We’re pleased that Will has been selected and agreed to lead North Carolina Emergency Management,” said Sprayberry. “He’s proven that he’s the right person for the job and he’s earned the respect of the Emergency Management staff both at our agency and, just as importantly, with our county partners.”

As the chief of staff, Ray has been the principal deputy coordinating and supervising the work of Emergency Management and the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency. This includes management of complex programs, senior government interagency coordination, and development and implementation of strategic priorities, initiatives and plans.

“It is a privilege to serve alongside the entire Division of Emergency Management team, and I am honored to continue serving the people of North Carolina in this new role,” said Ray in a statement. “I am humbled by this opportunity and thankful for the confidence and support of Governor Cooper and Secretary Hooks. The Division will continue to focus on safeguarding all North Carolinians, leveraging the whole-of-government and whole-of-community approach for effective preparedness, response and recovery.”

Ray previously was assistant director or section chief for the Plans and Homeland Security section at Emergency Management.

“We are fortunate to have the strongest Emergency Management team in the country and Will Ray has been an instrumental leader in making sure North Carolina is ready for whatever crisis comes our way,” said Gov. Roy Cooper. “I thank Will for this critical service to our state and am confident he will continue to innovate and improve our preparedness and response operations in North Carolina.”

Ray previously served in emergency response roles at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and in local government and the private sector.

Ray holds a bachelor’s in international studies from the Virginia Military Institute and a master’s in public health from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He and his family reside in Durham.

Hurricane season ceased to be theoretical in eastern North Carolina coast early last week, with rip tide warnings issued for northern beaches as Tropical Storm Bill formed far offshore and then veered away to the northwest.

That storm had a minor impact, but as Tropical Storm Claudette bears down on the region from the west, there’s no let up of worry. For a coastal economy already flagging from a year of shuttered restaurants and canceled bookings, any storm-related downtime would be doubly harsh.

There is a similar and powerful worry inland, away from the beach houses and rough surf where the television crews set up. Recent major storms showed that it is in the low-lying lands along the networks of coastal plain creeks and rivers where water does the most damage.

The river towns, especially along the Neuse, Lumber and Tar-Pamlico systems, are still reeling from the last decade’s cascade of catastrophes.

The named storms are just part of the flooding threat in these towns. As the state’s warmer, wetter climate drives more frequent heavy rains, deluges are doing repetitive damage in vulnerable areas across the state, including places like Kinston, where this past winter’s rains inundated areas also submerged during Hurricane Matthew. 

With broad agreement between the legislature and the governor’s office to address the problem and a potential surge in federal funding to scale up the response, scientists, planners and policymakers are trying to create a blueprint for flooding mitigation and resilience that they can take statewide. To do that, they first have to figure out what works.

Understanding Stoney Creek

There are no silver linings to hurricanes, but there are a lot of lessons to learn. In the hardest of ways, North Carolina has gotten especially good at predicting where floodwaters will rise by tracking in real time innovative flooding models during storms and relaying that information to emergency responders.

As powerful a tool as those predictive maps have been during emergencies, they are also emerging as an important source between storms, driving long-term policy to build more resilient communities.

Among an array of projects and studies funded in recently introduced legislation to develop a statewide plan on flooding is a large-scale trial of strategies developed to mitigate a persistent critical threat when Stoney Creek in Goldsboro jumps its banks.

It would be difficult to find a threat from flooding easier to grasp than when roads to a hospital become impassable. That’s what happens when the waters of Stoney Creek start to rise alongside Goldsboro’s cluster of health care facilities between N.C. 13 and the U.S. 70 bypass. They include Wayne UNC Health Care, the county’s main hospital.

The creek, which is part of a roughly 30-square-mile watershed, starts in northern Wayne County farmlands near Eureka and wends through the heart of Goldsboro, passing near the medical centers and then through a light industrial and commercial zone before flowing into the Neuse River near Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. 

Barbara Doll, a North Carolina State University engineering professor and one of the state’s leading researchers in resilience strategies, said the Stoney Creek project is an attempt to understand the actual impact of resilience strategies like restoring wetlands, reforesting farmland and improving road crossings. Her team built detailed models of soils, land use and other data points throughout the entire watershed and each sub-basin within it. 

“We did a lot of ground-truthing and refining,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot of work where people just come and they overlay soils and land use and some other layers and they say, ‘here’s where you want to restore a wetland,’ and they have no numbers for how much flow reduction there is to that,” Doll said in an interview with Coastal Review earlier this year. “So, we said, ‘let’s look where actually it really would work to do these things and how would you have to design them and what would this water storage on farms look like.’”

They picked farmland sites in the upper watershed where there was actual potential for conversion, lands that were less productive or already out of use due to flooding. Then they mapped how much water could be held back under different types of storms and strategies and what those combinations meant downstream.

The revelations of what Doll calls “getting into the nuts and bolts” of resilience and mitigation were both promising and sobering.

For the larger storms, the 500-year storms like Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence, the capacity of the water storage system is overwhelmed. But for the large deluges and even the 100-year storms, the plan would shave between 1 and 2 feet off the height of the floodwaters, with the biggest impact near crossings closest to the hospitals. Throughout the watershed dozens of structures, homes and businesses, would remain above the waterline.  

There are three basic solutions to dealing with the floods damaging home and businesses and washing out roads in places like Goldsboro, Doll said. You can engineer your way out of by raising roads and improving culverts, you hold back the water, or you can move people and structures out of the way.

Many places in eastern North Carolina are faced with a losing battle, she said, where the only reasonable long-term solution is to get people and structures out of harm’s way.

One goal of the Stoney Creek project is to give communities a more realistic set of tools to understand the costs and benefits of mitigation and resilience.

Both the state House and Senate are looking at major flood legislation this year, including roughly $30 million for a handful of projects in priority watersheds. Stoney Creek is among those and is considered the pilot project for the state’s natural and working lands effort. House Bill 500 earmarks about $5 million for land acquisition to kickstart the Stoney Creek plan.

Will McDow, Resilient Landscapes director for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the Stoney Creek studies are important in developing an accurate tool for planning.

“I think this study provides a kind of a clear example of how the state can use and build upon its existing science and data and models to help communities understand what are their options to reduce the flood impacts that they’re feeling,” he said. “Before this study, the community clearly knew that when it rained a 100-year event, their hospital was getting cut off, but they didn’t know how much water needed to be held back. Once you know how much water needs to be held back, then you can really begin to have the different conversations about how you might do that.”

Resilient Routes, Water Farming

One part of Doll’s resiliency work has been to assess the effectiveness of rebuilding roads and overpasses.

It makes sense, Doll said, for the state to put the funds into raising a road like I-95, but in many cases “engineering the way out” of the problem is fiscally unlikely. “It gets expensive, and it takes time,” she said.

What the Stoney Creek project showed, she said, was that in some cases a natural and working lands solution can be cheaper and more effective.

By holding back water upstream through a combination of reforestation of farmland and allowing some specified fields to flood, Doll’s team determined that three of the seven key creek crossings around Goldsboro’s hospital area would be prevented from washing out in a major storm.

That work has helped sharpen the focus around so-called “resilient routes,” critical roads for evacuations, supplies and emergency response.

“We can’t do every road. We can’t size them all to the 100-year storm and so we create these resilient routes and really work to protect them,” she said.

Doll said using natural and working lands solutions will mean different things in different places. The Stoney Creek project benefits from a sizable amount of farmland upstream of Goldsboro where the slope of fields is only 1% or less. With a little engineering, including constructing a berm, the 1% fields can hold a considerable amount of water, she said. “These low-lying lands provide a lot of opportunity.”

Since they’re often the same fields that tend to flood or that farmers can’t get to because of high water, Doll said that working out a way for farmers to be compensated for allowing their fields to hold back water makes sense.

“Why not store some water on these lands and have that farmer compensated so they know they’re going to get their investment back,” she said. “We call it water farming. They’re being paid to farm water for certain events. I think that could be a great assurance to them.”

North Carolina Farm Bureau Natural Resources Director Keith Larick, who has been working with Doll and others to develop the plan, said farmers he’s talked to are open to the ideas, especially considering the amount of damage they seen both from major storms and more frequent flash flooding.

“People don’t really know what the program is going to look like yet,” he said. “There are a lot of ideas out there as far as how are you going to fund something, who decides what gets built, is it a state program or more of a local program.”

The idea of water farming might be new, but farmers are used to incentive programs like those for conservation practices. Whatever is developed has to be flexible, he said.

“Some of these practices that we’re talking about may not take land out of production permanently,” he said.

You could have a case where a field only needs to be used occasionally to hold floodwaters, Larick said. In that case the farmer would get the payment for water farming, but during other years could keep working the land.

“We’re trying to be creative and flexible when we talk about these kinds of things to come up with something that works for landowners but also accomplishes the goal of helping with flood issues.”

The state is looking for feedback on a proposed amendment to the state’s action plan on spending a new allocation of $34.6 million for Hurricane Florence-related mitigation.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency hearing is hosting the hearing at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 22, on the funds through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant–Mitigation.

Join the public hearing via WebEx videoconference and use access code N45MbTKP7Qs. Call 415-655-0002 and use access code 172 198 7961 to join by phone.

The draft amendment, which is online for review, details how the state proposes to use the federal mitigation funds to offer property buyout and incentives to homeowners in areas identified as having a high risk of future storm impacts.

The mitigation action plan public comment period ends 5 p.m. June 27. Submit comments by email to publiccomments@rebuild.nc.gov or by mail to NCORR Public Comments, P.O. Box 110465, Durham, N.C. 27709.

In total, more than $202.6 million in of the funds are available to the state to fund property buyout and buyout incentives, develop mitigation plans and other activities as detailed in the state’s action plan.

Gov. Roy Cooper established the Office of Recovery and Resiliency after Hurricane Florence to streamline disaster recovery programs statewide and help communities rebuild smarter and stronger. Learn more about NCORR’s programs at the ReBuild NC website.

This post has been updated.

A three-day program set for later this month was designed to help rural leaders understand the importance of resiliency and a regional focus on long-term solutions.

Homegrown Leaders, offered through the North Carolina Rural Center, is a regional leadership and community economic development training program that organizers say will help leaders build skills to plan for and lead in addressing long-term and sustainable economic advancement in their community and region.

The next training is July 20-22 in New Bern and is for those who work Beaufort, Bertie, Carteret, Craven, Greene, Lenoir, Pamlico and Pitt counties. Complete and submit the online application by Friday.

Organizers told Coastal Review that the resiliency module is a new component of the Homegrown Leaders regional training and will be led by the state Office of Recovery and Resiliency.

Participants also will examine the building blocks of community economic development, learn collaborative leadership skills and look at the economic impact of racial inequity.

The program is for leaders in healthcare, education, government, nonprofit, faith-based, small business and entrepreneurs, economic development professionals, and other community-minded people.

The North Carolina Rural Center serves the state’s 80 rural counties, with a special focus on individuals with low to moderate incomes and communities with limited resources.

Updated at 2 p.m. Thursday: After an hourlong debate early Thursday afternoon, the state Senate voted 26-20 to reject the nomination of Dionne Delli-Gatti as secretary of the Department of Environmental Quality.

Original report follows below.

RALEIGH — After a surprise move by Senate leaders to pull the plug on Dionne Delli-Gatti’s nomination to lead the state Department of Environmental Quality, Gov. Roy Cooper accused Republican legislators of using the confirmation process to strong-arm state energy policy and said the decision had nothing to do with qualifications.

“First, Secretary Dione Delli-Gatti is well qualified to serve as DEQ secretary. She is a scientist, she is a veteran, and she has years of experience in environmental and energy policy. I would hope that the Senate would not vote on this tomorrow, she is well qualified to handle this job and to do the job,” Cooper said at a press conference Wednesday. “And I’ll say this to anybody who’s listening, any lobbyist or whoever, nothing is going to stop this administration from working toward a clean energy future for North Carolina, and protecting our air and water.”

Following a short, tense discussion Wednesday morning, the Senate’s Agriculture, Energy and Environment Committee voted not to confirm Delli-Gatti, who has served as DEQ secretary since February.

Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus, Delli-Gatti’s sharpest Senate critic, accused her of not having developed a sufficient strategy on natural gas and moved to have her confirmation voted down.

Before the vote, Democrats on the committee demanded Delli-Gatti be allowed to answer Newton’s accusations. When committee chairman Sen. Chuck Edwards, R-Henderson, refused, they called the proceeding a sham and walked out.  

In a subsequent press conference, Senate leader Phill Berger, R-Rockingham, said the Senate is likely to vote down Delli-Gatti’s confirmation as early as Thursday.

Berger said he informed Cooper of the decision Tuesday after a GOP caucus discussion on the matter. 

Under the 2016 law that requires Senate confirmation of a governor’s cabinet picks, Delli-Gatti would lose her position.

Berger said his understanding of the law means she could not be reappointed.

At the press conference, both Berger and Newton said they were disappointed by Delli-Gatti’s responses on natural gas infrastructure during her one appearance before the committee five weeks ago.

“Experts recently told the Senate that North Carolina’s reliance on a single natural gas pipeline is the state’s — quote – ‘number one vulnerability,’” Berger said. “Based on our confirmation testimony, Ms. Delli-Gatti has only a cursory understanding at best of the most urgent energy problem facing North Carolina, that is disqualifying.”

Delli-Gatti, a former Environmental Protection Agency governmental liaison and director of Southeast Climate and Energy for the Environmental Defense Fund, testified at the April 27 hearing for about two hours on topics ranging from wastewater infrastructure to fishery policies.

The committee held a separate meeting May 18, after the Colonial Pipeline cybersecurity hack during which Newton and others continued to make the case for more natural gas and petroleum pipelines, saying the state is at risk having only one major pipeline for each.

Newton, former president of Duke Energy North Carolina, said with so much of the state’s electricity and heating needs shifting to natural gas, the lack of pipelines is a top vulnerability.

Berger noted that the recent gas shortage had sharpened public awareness of the need for more pipelines and the possibility of interruptions.

As one of the chief negotiators in the southeast for energy policy at EDF, Delli-Gatti is on record as supporting Cooper’s clean energy initiatives and she’s advocated that power producers, including Duke Energy, not rely too heavily on natural gas in the transition away from coal.

Wednesday afternoon Duke Energy issued a statement of support for Delli-Gatti’s nomination.

“We are committed to a clean, reliable energy transition for North Carolina. While the communities we serve are seeing the benefits of this transition already, we understand there are many opportunities left to further this good progress,” the statement from the company said. “Based on our many years of experience working with DEQ Secretary Delli-Gatti, we fully support her confirmation to lead the Department of Environmental Quality. Secretary Delli-Gatti previously served on our North Carolina president’s advisory council, and we have appreciated her willingness to collaborate on key energy issues and the perspective she brings as the state works together to chart a path forward.”

“Based on our many years of experience working with DEQ Secretary Delli-Gatti, we fully support her confirmation to lead the Department of Environmental Quality. ” pic.twitter.com/Vu6JLVma3G

— Kirk Ross (@ludkmr) June 2, 2021

The Senate’s plans drew a sharp reaction from environmental groups, who called the move partisan politics.

“Dionne Delli-Gatti has significant education and experience to lead DEQ, a job she has done well for over a month. The refusal of committee members from the majority party to accept her in this role isn’t founded on any question about her qualifications,” Cassie Gavin, senior director of government affairs with the North Carolina Sierra Club, said in a statement. “This action does a disservice to North Carolinians who want qualified leaders like Delli-Gatti to run our state agencies professionally and competently.”

If the Senate moves forward and votes not to confirm her, Delli-Gatti would be the first cabinet nominee to be rejected since confirmations were required in 2017.

David Kelly, director of North Carolina political affairs at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement that Wednesday “should have been notable because our state was poised to advance the confirmation of the first woman to serve as North Carolina’s Secretary of Environmental Quality — not because it was the first time a cabinet-level nominee was blocked since the process was created in 2016.”

Calling Delli-Gatti “a thoughtful, capable and eminently qualified leader,” said her professional qualifications and accomplishments speak for themselves. “She is a committed public servant, a veteran, a successful working mom who’s dedicated her career to bettering the lives of people and families in the communities she serves. We hope the Senate will think better of today’s vote and move forward with Secretary Delli-Gatti’s confirmation.”

In the hearing Wednesday, Democrats warned against heavy-handed use of the relatively new confirmation process. They said there was no reason not to give Delli-Gatti time to respond. 

Sen. Natalie Murdock, D-Mecklenburg, said she was disheartened that the process had so quickly become politicized and the state would lose a well-qualified leader as a result.

“The secretary is here with us today. We have the opportunity to extend the process to continue to engage to continue to have conversations. That is the right of this body to do that,” she said. “I think it’s unfortunate that we’re not doing that.

The state is asking for feedback on a proposal to spend a new allocation of $34.6 million in mitigation funds related to Hurricane Florence.

The North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency will accept comment until June 27 on the substantial action plan amendment 2 of North Carolina’s U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant-Mitigation Action Plan. The draft amendment is available for review.

The proposed amendment details how to use the funds to offer property buyout and incentives to applicants in areas that the state and communities have determined are at high risk of future storm impacts. the new allocation brings the total to more than $202.6 million available to the state to fund property buyout and buyout incentives, develop plans and other activities as described in the action plan.

The public is encouraged to submit comments by email to publiccomments@rebuild.nc.gov. Comments may also be submitted by mail to NCORR Public Comments, P.O. Box 110465, Durham, N.C. 27709.

Gov. Roy Cooper established the state Office of Recovery and Resiliency after the September 2018 Hurricane Florence to streamline disaster recovery programs statewide and help communities rebuild smarter and stronger.

The office administers programs that support homeowner recovery, affordable housing, mitigation, strategic buyout, local government grants and loans, and pandemic-related rent and utility assistance. To date, North Carolina has invested more than $3.6 billion in state and federal funding to support recovery from hurricanes Matthew, Florence, Dorian and Isaias. 

RALEIGH — House budget committees are due to start up Wednesday after an abrupt shift in plans were announced late last week ahead of the legislature’s Memorial Day break.  

North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, told members last week that with the Senate running late on its budget plan, the House would move forward on its own version.

House and Senate negotiators so far have failed to settled on an overall spending target. Senate leaders began a rollout of tax breaks last week as part of their proposal, but have yet to release details of a spending plan.

Under the North Carolina General Assembly’s rules, the Senate was charged with producing its plan first. Gov. Roy Cooper issued his budget proposal in early April.

The impasse raises the prospect that the legislature could resort to the strategy it adopted in 2019 when it failed to reach an agreement with Cooper on a final plan.

Much of the government was funded either through a series of so-called minibudgets or continued at the previous year’s levels via an automatic stopgap provision in state law that kicks in if a new budget isn’t in place by the beginning of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Flood resilience, mitigation

In addition to budget committee hearings, the House is due to review major flood resilience and mitigation legislation in a hearing scheduled for 3 p.m. Tuesday by the House Environment Committee. Video and audio for the hearing is available on the website.

House Bill 500, the Disaster Relief and Mitigation Act of 2021, includes $219 million in additional state funds for disaster relief and flood resilience and mitigation. The proposal includes $98 million to develop a statewide flood resilience blueprint and flood mitigation on the Neuse and Lumber rivers; $30 million for the state’s Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Fund for living shorelines, oyster reefs and marsh restoration; and funding for floodplain and wetland restoration, and coastal planning grants.

The bill also makes the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, created in the wake of Hurricane Florence in 2018, a permanent part of state government under the Department of Public Safety.

This is the fifth installment in a continuing series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

Twenty-five coastal communities will have money from the state to better prepare for natural hazards.

The funding is geared to drive better-informed decision making at the local level and initiatives that reduce risk and vulnerability to flooding, storms and other effects of climate change.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management announced March 17 a total of $675,000 would be granted through the new Resilient Coastal Communities Program, launched in the fall to provide technical and financial help to governments in the state’s 20 coastal counties to develop resilience efforts. The application deadline was Jan. 15.

“We wish we had the funding to have accepted all interested communities into the program, but we hope to secure additional funding to offer another round of Phase 1 and 2 funding in the future,” Sam Burdick, coastal resilience coordinator with the Division of Coastal Management, recently told Coastal Review. The division received 30 applications representing 32 coastal communities  — one application was submitted by three communities — for the first two phases of grant funding.

“Building resilience to natural hazards is vital for communities to help maintain quality of life, healthy growth, durable systems, and conservation of resources for present and future generations,” Burdick explained. “However, a number of barriers to developing resilience to coastal risks exist, including economic and capacity constraints that have been exacerbated in recent times. Building more resilient communities requires careful, thorough planning efforts using sound, locally relevant data.”

Burdick is from Duck on the Outer Banks and has a background in coastal science, policy, ecology, local and regional planning, and community outreach. Before joining the division, Burdick was the community planner and disaster recovery coordinator for the Eastern Carolina Council of Governments. She has been the coastal resilience coordinator with the division in Morehead City since February 2020 and is tasked with leading the development and implementation of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program.

The program is rolling out in four phases: community engagement and risk and vulnerability assessment; planning, project selection and prioritization; project engineering and design; and implementation. The initial funds are to be used for the first two phases.

Community applications were scored across seven criteria, including the level of risk exposure to vulnerable populations and critical assets, economic status and need, and internal capacity and momentum with related efforts, according to the state.

The towns of Aurora, Beaufort, Belhaven, Cape Carteret, Hertford, Leland, Navassa, Sunset Beach, Surf City, Topsail Beach, North Topsail Beach, Vandemere, Washington and Windsor are to receive technical assistance to complete Phases 1 and 2.

Barnes Sutton, town planner in Navassa in Brunswick County, explained Tuesday that urban planning and design were once guided by the natural forces in a given area, such as navigable waters or the direction of prevailing winds, allowing cities to optimize those natural resources and by extension protect those resources.

“This created unique places that balanced city centers and residential areas with communal space and fields for agriculture,” Sutton said. He added that at some point, urban planning moved away from these principles and began to emphasize consumption over conservation.

“Being selected to participate in the Resilient Coastal Communities Program underlines the importance of natural resources and how to grow with sustainability and recyclability in the forefront, which in time, can undo the damages over-consumption has done,” Sutton said. “Navassa is poised to support exponential growth in residential, commercial and recreational sectors over the next five years, all of which will need healthy and efficient waterways to support it and will only be magnified by the restoration and protection of them.”

Beaufort in Carteret County also received a grant. Town Planner Kate Allen told Coastal Review Tuesday that storm surge and the heavy rainstorms and higher tides of recent years pose acute risks to life and property, particularly during hurricane season.

“In 2018, Hurricane Florence wreaked havoc on the town and surrounding areas. Heavy rains coupled with high tide results in frequent flooding of Front Street. Shoreline erosion, primarily caused by rising water levels and storms, increases the town’s flooding risk. These stressors individually pose risk, but are most impactful when they occur together, and often they do,” she said. “As a small community, town staff lack the time necessary to conduct thorough vulnerability and risk assessments. This grant will allow the town to place more emphasis on the risk and vulnerability assessment included in the ongoing CAMA/Comprehensive Land Use Plan update.”

The division also selected the counties of Beaufort, Craven, Currituck, Dare for Hatteras Island, Hertford, Hyde and Pamlico for the program.

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten said Tuesday that the county received a $30,000 grant through the program to study all risks and vulnerabilities on Hatteras Island. These include economic vulnerabilities, storm vulnerabilities, transportation vulnerabilities and any others that the consultant determines exist.

“Completion of this study would make Dare County eligible for additional grants to determine remedies to resolve or mitigate the vulnerabilities found,” Outten said. “Once the remedies are determined, Dare County would be eligible for yet another grant to begin implementing those remedies.”

Duck, Nags Head, Swansboro and Pine Knoll Shores have shown significant momentum in resilience planning and have been selected to complete the remaining requirements of the first two phases, the division said in the March 17 announcement.

Burdick said big barriers for communities when it comes to planning is the lack of a dedicated resilience budget, an overall reduced budget related to the economic effects of the pandemic, and a lack of capacity to plan.

A more proactive, sustainable and equitable approach to risk planning focuses on mitigating or reducing vulnerability, rather than responding after storms or flooding, she said.

The resilience program is a priority in the state’s Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan and reflects Gov. Roy Cooper’s commitment to building climate change resiliency statewide while promoting economic growth and stability. It’s the product of a series of resilience efforts and events the division led in recent years to address intensifying natural hazards on the coast, Burdick said.

The division worked with five local governments from 2017 to 2018 using a process called Resilience Evaluation Needs Assessment, or RENA, to map critical assets and assess risk and vulnerability to coastal hazards.

After Hurricane Florence in 2018, Cooper signed Executive Order No. 80, calling for the development of the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. The state held several workshops in 2019, including in Elizabeth City and Wilmington, to ensure the plan was based on local knowledge and needs, she said.

The 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan called for the development of the Resilient Communities Program, which was designed to boost resilience building at the local level with a three-pronged approach: local government funding, training and capacity building and an online resilience portal. The Resilient Coastal Communities Program falls under the larger umbrella of the statewide North Carolina Resilient Communities Program, Burdick explained.

The division received about $830,000 in funding from the North Carolina General Assembly and $1.1 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation this year to begin developing and implementing the resilience framework for local governments.

Partnering with the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, North Carolina Sea Grant and The Nature Conservancy, the division tailored a number of resilience plans from other states to needs specific to coastal North Carolina communities.

Division Director Braxton Davis said division partners and coastal communities have been working on various aspects of coastal resilience for a long time, but lacked a clear framework to help organize efforts.

“This new program will help all of us become more efficient and strategic in our investments, ensure that we are identifying and prioritizing the most important projects, and provide more targeted technical assistance that builds on previous planning efforts,” Davis said. “DCM is proud to lead this effort on behalf of our coastal communities and appreciates the ongoing partnerships we have with the N.C. Office of Recovery and Resiliency, The Nature Conservancy, and N.C. Sea Grant.”

The resilience team held two interactive webinars in August 2020 to introduce the Resilient Coastal Communities Program and the funding opportunities targeted to local governments, consultants, academia and nongovernmental organizations. A total of 225 attendees participated in these webinars, including representation from 18 county governments and 39 municipal governments.

A virtual discussion with more than 50 contractors interested in providing services to communities through this program was held in September 2020. There were 24 contractor applications for Phases 1 and 2.

“Understanding the importance of inclusivity and equity in planning processes, participating local governments and contractors will develop a Community Action Team, or steering committee, and a community engagement strategy to involve community members and local leaders throughout the process,” Burdick said. “Local knowledge and feedback are key and will help inform the process and drive the development of sound, feasible projects and action items to enhance resilience.”

Next in the series: Natural and working lands

A new research network funded by the National Science Foundation wants to hear from coastal residents and stakeholders to better understand their long-term priorities and to explore the ways that short-term decision making can support or undermine these priorities.

The Collaboratory for Coastal Adaptation over Space and Time, or C-CoAST, has scheduled virtual listening sessions to hear about the priorities and concerns that are part of decision-making in coastal communities. The input is to be used to inform collaborative efforts to assist North Carolina’s coastal communities in meeting future challenges.

The listening sessions follow discussions during the Regional Resilience Workshops held in northeastern and southeastern North Carolina and a summit organized by the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and the North Carolina Coastal Federation in 2019. You don’t need to have participated in the earlier discussions to join the conversation.

The listening sessions will be held online via Zoom, include small breakout groups, and last 90 minutes. Participants will be asked to complete a short pre-workshop survey taking about 10-15 minutes to help kick off the conversation.

The sessions are set for the following dates:

• 6:30-8 p.m. Feb. 9 — Register.
• 9-10:30 am Feb. 24 — Register.
• An additional session may be offered in early March.

Contact C-CoAST Project Manager Katherine Anarde for more information at kanarde@unc.edu.

The idea for a waterfront park in downtown Wilmington on a former industrial site came about a decade ago.

After years of planning, officials say work on the nearly 7-acre North Waterfront Park is on pace for completion by June 2021.

The North Waterfront Park, billed as Wilmington’s signature urban park, is the only public area downtown where a person can interact more closely with the river, without a seawall or boardwalk separating the park user from the river, Amy Beatty, Wilmington’s community services director, told Coastal Review Online.

The site on the northeast Cape Fear River between Cowan and Nutt streets is in a mixed-use district and has a newly-constructed section of the Riverwalk, a pump station and several sites available for high-density urban development.

The park will include a large concert venue and festival space, greenspace, lawns, shade trees, a playground and splash pad, a large plaza, trails, a riverwalk, gardens and natural areas.

“Staying on the theme of water, the park will feature a large-scale water feature that will serve as both an art piece and a place where kids can cool off in the summer,” she explained.

The landscape will feature outdoor “rooms,” or grassed areas separated by vegetative berms that back up to the performance venue lawn, where exercise classes and other group activities can take place. “There will be a children’s play area next to manicured gardens and a more natural coastal garden with paths, closer to the river,” Beatty said.

New York-based Hargreaves Jones headed up the design and engineering team for the project and worked with the city, promoter and venue operator Live Nation and Clancy & Theys Construction Co. to design the waterfront park and event venue on the historic brownfield site, property that has been abandoned or underused because of environmental contamination or concern it exists on the site.

Almont Shipping Facility was located on the site from about 1850 to 2005. During that time, the site has been documented to be used for storage and distribution of potash, zircon sand, granite, limestone, canola meal, calcium nitrate, ammonium nitrate, iron ore pellets, pelletized urea, chromium ore, salt and salt cake. A portion of the Almont Shipping Facility also included the bulk storage of petroleum products, according to the city.

Riverfront Holdings II, LLC. entered into a Brownsfield Agreement in 2008 with the state for a 23.37 acre site, which includes the North Waterfront Park site. As a condition of the city’s offer to buy the park, the property was capped with 2 vertical feet of clean fill.

The park plan was recognized earlier this month by the Waterfront Alliance of New York for “reaching the highest standard in resilient waterfront design in the country.” The plan has been verified through the alliance’s Waterfront Edge Design Guidelines, or WEDG, program, a rating system and guidelines for resilient, ecological and accessible waterfronts. The Wilmington park is the 10^th WEDG-verified project and the first outside of the New York City region.

For those interested in learning more about the park and the WEDG verification, a virtual, interactive discussion and presentation from the design team is set for noon Monday. Register online to participate.

WEDG Senior Program Manager Sarah Dougherty explained in an interview that WEDG is similar to the LEED rating system for green buildings and communities.

“We help create better outcomes for waterfront projects through project review, professional education, and community engagement,” she said.

Beatty, Wilmington’s community services director, said that the momentum for the park began in 2009 when the city entered into a development agreement for the northern downtown district with Riverfront Holdings. At the time, Wilmington was to receive about a half-acre for a park at Harnett and Nutt streets valued at $436,000, but the agreement was later amended and the city negotiated for a larger park.

“On Nov. 19, 2013, the Wilmington City Council voted unanimously to purchase 6.63 acres of property now known as North Waterfront Park. The $4.1 million park was purchased through a combination of general fund dollars and capital project balances,” Beatty said. “The urban park fulfilled a long-held goal to provide sizable open space for residents, employees and visitors to downtown Wilmington, a goal identified in the City’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Master Plan and in Vision 2020, A Waterfront Downtown plan.”

To begin the park’s master plan process, the city established common objectives, with the primary goal of “delivering a safe, clean, comfortable park for citizens and visitors, maximizing opportunities to engage with the Cape Fear River, providing a versatile performance space and making sure the park is accessible to all,” Beatty said.

“And, of course, providing much-needed lawns, gardens and trees,” she added.

She said Wilmington’s existing Riverfront Park is a great meeting space and a perfect spot for river views, but it has limitations, especially for landscaping. During the planning process, time was invested in researching successful urban parks.

“We took a year to develop the master plan and more than six months on the community engagement process. We wanted this park to be the result of what our citizens told us was important to them. We put a great deal of thought into how this park will serve Wilmington’s families, downtown residents and workers, retirees, visitors and tourists,” she said. “‘Vibrant’ is the word I keep coming back to. Essentially, to me that means the park should be clean, safe, enjoyable and beautiful no matter what day of the week it is, time of day or whether you are there for a programmed event or for a casual visit.”

The construction contract of $29.17 million for the final plan, which underwent several revisions and a re-bid to reduce construction expenses, was approved in November 2019. The park was initially estimated to cost around $20 million, per the city’s website. The increase in cost was tied to infrastructure, improvements in and around the site, and construction cost inflation that has become more pronounced since Hurricane Florence in 2018. The park will be partially funded by the voter-approved 2016 Parks Bond.

A major component of the park is the performance venue that will be managed by California-based Live Nation. The partnership with Live Nation evolved through Beatty’s work managing the Hugh Morton Amphitheater at Greenfield Lake.

“The success of (Hugh Morton Amphitheater) since its renovation in 2008 took a lot of us by surprise and should be completely attributable to people working in Wilmington’s music scene,” said Beatty.

She said that the popularity of the venue and consistent high attendance encouraged her to research and reach out to industry executives to determine if there was a missing market in Wilmington for a higher-capacity performance venue that could have long-term success.

“The research said yes. Once the city made the decision to include a performance venue in the park, a request for proposals for a venue manager was publicly advertised. After a competitive evaluation process, Live Nation was selected as the manager,” she said.

Beatty explained that the city learned about the Waterfront Alliance’s WEDG program through the design consultant, Hargraves Jones.

“Waterfront design is complex in the best of circumstances,” and comes with challenges such as protecting existing aquatic habitat, maintaining or improving the shoreline to protect its function and striving to ensure public access, she said. “On top of those challenges, the park sits on a brownfield site.”

Designing to WEDG principles seemed like a natural fit for Wilmington and aligned with council priorities, she said.

“All that said, we had no idea Wilmington would receive the first WEDG certification outside of New York. It’s a great achievement for our city and all credit should go to the citizens who voted for the parks bond that funded the park and Wilmington’s City Council who took a chance on the site,” she said.

Dougherty said that the Waterfront Alliance had collaborated with Hargreaves Jones in 2018 after a new, nationally applicable version of the WEDG standard was released, to do a preliminary review of the project.

“The Hargreaves Jones team solicited North Waterfront Park as an ideal project for review, given the site’s innovative design and balancing of needs for resilience, ecology, and access,” she said, adding that the Waterfront Alliance offered feedback on preliminary designs in late 2018, and undertook a final review of the updated plan earlier this year.

“The project goes above and beyond in protecting and restoring coastal habitat, given the size of the site and primary function as a performance and public programming venue,” Doughtery said. “So many waterfront projects overlook opportunities to reimagine connections to the water and design better, more natural shoreline edges. North Waterfront Park preserves existing, protected wetlands on site, and draws new coastal plantings inland to create a more naturalized edge.”

Natalie Carmen, project engineer with Stewart, an engineering consultant in Raleigh, said in a statement that North Waterfront Park uses a suite of stormwater control measures to detain the water quality stormwater onsite and provide protection for the Cape Fear River.

“The site’s natural ability to infiltrate water was prioritized during the site design to promote infiltration through the use of permeable pavement systems, infiltration gallery in the great lawn, and belowground infiltration systems,” she said. “Planned programmatic elements were married with the stormwater design approach to maximize the public’s use of the site, and go beyond minimum regulatory requirements, to incorporate many passive stormwater treatment elements that support the overall narrative of the park serving the broader community.”

The riverwalk’s design allows visitors to interact with the water and their environment more directly as well.

“Countless studies show that this type of enhanced connection can improve human health and wellbeing, as well as foster a sense of stewardship for the environment. Enhanced access also allows for educational and recreational programming at the water’s edge, which has many other benefits for coastal habitats as well as the community,” Dougherty said.

The park offers equitable community engagement and diverse waterfront programming opportunities, which are the core to WEDG. Public feedback was used to develop the park concept and design from the start and well into the design phase, where additional input through public meetings and surveys was used to modify the project.

“WEDG places a heavy emphasis on equitable community engagement, meaning that the needs of underserved residents are prioritized in the planning and design of the project,” Dougherty said. “The project team worked extensively with adjacent communities to the park, who have long been cut off from their waterfront and its benefits.”

She added that lastly, “through the park’s innovative and naturalized shoreline design, as well as its grading and high elevation along the Cape Fear River, it serves as a real-life example of resilient design, which is urgently needed in coastal cities to address the increasing impacts of climate change.”

Private planning and engineering firms, councils of government, nongovernmental organizations and academic institutions can apply to help coastal governments meet the requirements of a new state resilience program.

The qualified organizations can reach out to the Division of Coastal Management to request an application. Submission deadline is Jan. 29, 2021.

The phases of the Resilient Coastal Communities Program include Phase 1: Community Engagement and Risk/Vulnerability Assessment; Phase 2: Planning, Project Identification, and Prioritization; Phase 3: Engineering and Design; and Phase 4: Project Implementation.

The contractors will assist municipal and county governments in the 20 coastal counties complete Phases 1 and 2 of the North Carolina Resilient Coastal Communities Program using the newly released Program Planning Handbook. The handbook is another tool to assist program participants complete Phases 1 and 2 of the program. Existing data, tools, and resources are incorporated throughout the handbook to help with the process, and specific program requirements are identified.

Once communities complete Phases 1 and 2, they become eligible for Phase 3 funding for project engineering and design, and Phase 4 implementation funding.

Questions about the new Resilient Coastal Communities Program and completed applications may be sent to RCCP@ncdenr.gov

This is the eighth installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

Now that the state’s 2020 resiliency plan has been submitted, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency will begin working with other state offices to address vulnerabilities caused by climate change.

“Going forward, our team looks forward to supporting other agencies with guidance and with working across the state on some of these big cross-cutting resilience challenges as part of the North Carolina Resilience Strategy,” Chief Resilience Officer Jessica Whitehead told Coastal Review Online.

The North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan was submitted Tuesday to Gov. Roy Cooper by the state Department of Environmental Quality. The plan looks at climate stressors that include flooding, drought and extreme heat events as well as nonclimate stressors such as population growth, aging infrastructure, public health threats and increased development as well as strategies to move forward.

NCORR worked with NCDEQ to create the resiliency plan, one of the directives in Executive Order 80, North Carolina’s Commitment to Address Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy, that Cooper signed Oct. 29, 2018.

“We have a responsibility to mitigate the damage caused by these storms and the shifting weather pattern and to make all of our communities more resilient. We have to rebuild stronger and smarter and ensure that we can withstand the impacts of climate change that we will be seeing in the foreseeable future,” which is why Cooper asked that a statewide risk and resiliency plan be developed as part of Executive Order 80, NCDEQ Secretary Michael S. Regan told the Wilmington Rotary Club during an address earlier this year.

NCORR resilience team had leadership roles writing the “Climate & Environmental Justice” and “The Path Forward for a Climate Resilient North Carolina” chapters for the 2020 Resiliency Plan. The agency will continue working to address climate change by being part of the North Carolina Resilience Strategy, which includes four elements: North Carolina Climate Science Report, State Agency Resilience Strategies, Statewide Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Strategies, and the North Carolina Enhanced Hazard Mitigation Plan.

A division of the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, NCORR was established after Hurricane Florence in October 2018 to streamline recovery programming and assistance and administer programs for homeowner recovery, affordable housing, mitigation, buyout and local government grants and loans.

So far, the state has spent more than $3.5 billion in state and federal funding in recovery for hurricanes Matthew and Florence.

In anticipation of the release of the resiliency plan, NCORR put out at the end of April a 16-page online document, Natural Hazards Resilience: A Quick Start Guide for North Carolina Communities to help local governments be better prepared to take their own action when the resiliency plan gets published, Whitehead said.

“As we looked at the literature, there’s a lot out there on how to do a risk assessment, but not a whole lot about how to set yourself up for success in building resilience,” she said, adding some rural communities really need help with the coordination and time for data gathering that you need to even start assessing risks, much less deciding what to do.

The team at NCORR synthesized ideas in the Colorado Resiliency Playbook for state agencies with Whitehead’s experience with working with leaders at the local level to create North Carolina’s Natural Hazards Resilience Quick Start Guide, she said.

“Any local government or community group can take these principles and start building teams to be ready to divide up the work and support each other in integrating resilience thinking every day,” she said. “Now that the state published the 2020 Resilience Plan, we can build out the support the state is offering and have more communities ready to take it and run with getting to local action. It’s very much intended as a first step.”

Whitehead explained that the Quick Start Guide was put under extensive review by the resilience practitioner community, local governments, the state Department of Public Safety, other state agencies, the governor’s office and volunteers.

“The feedback we got was constructive, but universally positive – our reviewers thought it was very well done. The guide doesn’t read like a typical government document, and that’s a good thing,’ she said. “I’m so proud of my team because it was a big challenge to produce something easy to read that would also provide expert level guidance on a very bottom-up, local process.”

Though she wasn’t with the state at the time, Whitehead said she understood that plans were in motion for Executive Order 80 before Hurricane Florence hit in 2018.

“Now that the state published the 2020 Resilience Plan, we can build out the support the state is offering and have more communities ready to take it and run with getting to local action. It’s very much intended as a first step.”

Jessica Whitehead, Chief Resilience Officer, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency

“I would say Florence was less of a catalyst and more of a reinforcement that this work needed to proceed in earnest,” she said. “Another critical way Florence changed the conversation was in helping people to better understand the potential magnitude of what we are dealing with statewide.”

For example, she said, North Carolina Sea Grant, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina Coastal Federation and the state Division of Coastal Management facilitated Swansboro’s Vulnerability, Consequences and Adaptation Planning Scenarios, or VCAPS, meeting about three weeks before Florence happened. VCAPS is a planning tool to help decision makers look at the effects of climate change and develop strategies.

“When we walked through those exercises with town decision-makers and asked them to think about absolute worst-case scenario rainfall events, it stretched their imaginations to think of 10-15 inches of rain in a single storm. Three weeks and 34 inches of rain later, it wasn’t such a stretch to think about what the impacts could be. It really changed the conversation across the board,” she said.

Before Florence, she said the VCAPS partners would have had to spend time convincing some audiences that this was a discussion worth having.

“Now we almost have the opposite problem – people accept it but want to skip the part where we plan and jump straight to what to do. There’s a danger in that – when we act quickly without planning to make sure that we are doing the most amount of good we can for the broadest variety of people, we run the risk that our action may leave some of our most vulnerable people behind,” she said. “We also run the risk of investing time in actions that make us feel safe without knowing that we are really making the best choices to actually reduce risk.”

Whitehead, who took her role at NCORR after serving as North Carolina Sea Grant’s coastal hazards adaptation specialist from 2013 to 2019, explained that the team’s definition of a resilient North Carolina “is a state where our communities, economies and ecosystems are better able to rebound, positively adapt to, and thrive amid changing conditions and challenges, including disasters and climate change; to maintain and improve quality of life, healthy growth, and durable systems; and to conserve resources for present and future generations.”

She said that there’s a lot of ideas about resilience such as building sea walls and fortifying structures that “overlap with hazard mitigation and imply that we will engineer our way out of disasters. That is not the one-size-fits-all vision we have for North Carolina.”

While those solutions may work and may be the only viable option in some situations, “so are options like figuring out how to live with water, using green infrastructure and in some places where flooding has been too repetitive, offering programs to buy out homeowners at risk and reconstruct affordable housing in lower risk areas so people have somewhere to go,” Whitehead said. “We will continue to build out how we implement that vision, but it will be across all hazards — not just flooding — and include building resilience from the mountains to the coast. be seeing in the foreseeable future.”

Funding challenges

Another challenge with resiliency and climate change is how to fund action, Whitehead explained.

“When we have so many challenging issues in affordable housing, education and health care, it’s just as easy today as it was in 2010 to budget for the next year and put off those long-term issues like disaster planning or climate change for later,” she said. “I think we have a better understanding though that everyone faces that funding challenge – worldwide, not just in North Carolina. Today, we are better equipped than we were a decade ago to network and stay in touch around the nation and the world to learn lessons about innovative or best practices to meet some of those funding challenges.”

Regan explained to the group in Wilmington how the lack of funding affects both the environment and economy.

Since 2010, the portion of DEQ staff responsible for protecting the state’s water quality has been cut by 40% by the North Carolina General Assembly, he said. “And so one could say that in 2010, 11 and 12, the rationale for cutting the enforcement arm — the scientists, the engineers — was because the economy was slow, and there was some that did not want the DEQ to get to reform and quote-unquote overregulate.”

From 2012 on, Regan continued, the state economy has been doing well and with the reduction of staff, his office has not only been unable to protect water quality for the 10 million residents the way they’d like to but the state has had an influx of businesses who are waiting up to two years just to get a permit from the state to operate.

“So, I would argue that prior to my arrival, we were on that downward slope of getting the resources that we need,” Regan said. Since being appointed secretary, he said he’s attempted in a very bipartisan fashion to approach the General Assembly and make the argument that protecting water quality is just as good for the environment, and public health, as it is for the economy.

“As you all know, our robust coastal economy depends on the protection of our beaches and our sounds and the marine life. And we stood with mayors and county leaders along the coast, who oppose offshore drilling and seismic testing,” Regan continued. “Our coastal communities, already have enough to deal with. The science tells us that if we do nothing, climate change means more intense storms. But we’re not just worried about the hurricanes. Climate experts working on North Carolina’s climate science report say rainfall events will be heavier and sea level rise will impact our beach communities.”

“Our coastal communities, already have enough to deal with. The science tells us that if we do nothing, climate change means more intense storms. But we’re not just worried about the hurricanes. Climate experts working on North Carolina’s climate science report say rainfall events will be heavier and sea level rise will impact our beach communities.”

Michael Regan, Secretary, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality

Whitehead explained that what we know about how climate adaptation happens in 2020, or how risk is communicated, is very different.

“We understand better that defining overall trends is just a first step – to get that information to a decision, like how big a pipe should be to convey enough stormwater in 2050, is a lot more complex. You have to translate those projected precipitation scenarios into the intensities, durations and frequencies of rainfall events to be able to successfully design a stormwater pipe,” she said, adding you also need to consider other factors that go into that decision, like how expensive it is to create larger scale stormwater projects today and what is affordable.

“And then you need to prioritize – if you only have so much funding, do you put your efforts into improving stormwater infrastructure in a downstream location, or do you get more bang for your buck investing in a project upstream first? Science doesn’t have a good answer for this anywhere yet – but in North Carolina we are again asking these questions and outlining plans for how to get to answers we can implement, which puts us right back on the cutting edge of climate response,” she said.

Whitehead said that there’s “still no one-size-fits-all solution to climate change, but we know a lot better about how to engage and tailor scientific information. That said, there’s still a lot we have to learn about how to know which solutions are best in each place – or even what a viable solution is in some cases, like long-term land loss due to sea level rise, or how to make sure the rapidly urbanizing Piedmont has enough drinking water in 2050.”

She added that it’s been hard to tell how COVID-19 will impact the way people respond to climate change issues.

“COVID-19 has exposed so many of the ways our social and economic systems are vulnerable to shocks and stressors. A pandemic is definitely a shock, while climate change is a long-term stressor punctuated by shocks. I think we are still in response mode on COVID-19, and it remains to be seen in the long term how we change the ways we understand how widespread or deeply challenging something like a pandemic or climate change can be,” she said.

“I think it will shift how we process risk as a society. Importantly, as we begin to think of pandemic recovery, many of the things we do to improve social and economic resilience – the ways we care for our most vulnerable people, the ways we diversify our economies and think differently about resilience in supply chains or infrastructure so that it’s more able to handle major disruptions – are the things that will also reduce the harms and increase our abilities to adapt to climate change.”

This is an installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

North Carolina in the last decade has gone from the state that passed a bill in 2012 restricting the use of sea level rise data for regulatory purposes, which drew criticism for “outlawing science,” to introducing this week what the state calls its most comprehensive effort to address climate change.

Submitted to Gov. Roy Cooper by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, the North Carolina Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan is to serve as a framework to guide state action, engage policymakers and stakeholders and facilitate collaboration across the state, officials said Tuesday. The plan is also intended to focus the state’s attention on climate resilience actions and address underlying stressors such as the changing climate, aging infrastructure, socioeconomic disparities and competing development priorities.

“Climate change impacts the health, safety, and financial stability of North Carolinians, and we must take it head on. A resilient North Carolina is a stronger and more competitive North Carolina,” said Cooper.

One of the many charges the governor gave cabinet agencies when he signed on Oct. 29, 2018, Executive Order 80, North Carolina’s Commitment to Address Climate Change and Transition to a Clean Energy Economy, the plan “is the state’s most comprehensive effort to date, based on science and stakeholder input, to address North Carolina’s vulnerability to climate change,” said DEQ officials.

DEQ submitted the 372-page document on behalf of the Climate Change Interagency Council, which prepared the resilience plan under the direction of the executive order.

In addition to the resilience plan, Executive Order 80 established several goals for the state to accomplish by 2025 that include a reduction of statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2005 levels, increase the number of zero-emission vehicles to a minimum of 80,000 and reduce energy consumption per square foot in state-owned buildings by at least 40% from fiscal year 2002-2003 levels. The Climate Change Interagency Council was formed to help the cabinet agencies work together to achieve those goals, according to his office.

The plan is an 11-month collaborative effort with the state, federal partners, state universities, local governments, community planners, nongovernmental organizations including The Natural Resources Defense Council, NC Conservation Network, North Carolina Coastal Federation, The Nature Conservancy, NC Councils of Government, The Pew Charitable Trusts, Environmental Defense Fund, climate justice leaders, stakeholders interested in nature-based solutions and other partners.

“As we begin another hurricane season with even greater challenges facing North Carolina this year, the administration’s leadership has better positioned our state to prepare our most vulnerable communities,” said DEQ Secretary Michael S. Regan, chair of the Climate Change Interagency Council. “The Risk and Resilience Plan takes the experience and knowledge of the experts and leaders from across the state to ensure a comprehensive approach to address the risks to our infrastructure and economy.”

The 2020 Resilience Plan puts in place next steps for implementing and updating resilience initiatives and establishes the North Carolina Resilience Strategy. The four elements of the strategy include the North Carolina Climate Science Report, State Agency Resilience Strategies, Statewide Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Strategies, and the North Carolina Enhanced Hazard Mitigation Plan.

“This plan will be tested repeatedly with every major storm that strikes our coast. Strong and persistent leadership must now translate into meaningful day-to-day policy and management decisions that actually reduce our vulnerability to extreme weather events. Today’s report establishes benchmarks by which the success of this framework will now be measured,” Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation said Tuesday after the report was released. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review Online.

Environmental Defense Fund Director Will McDow said in a statement that after devastation from back-to-back hurricanes and in the face of rapidly rising seas, “North Carolina must act with urgency to build meaningful resilience. This plan marks an important milestone towards a more resilient future for our state.”

“The Resilience Plan begins to address protecting vulnerable communities who are bearing a disproportionate share of the climate change burden,” said EDF Manager, Partnerships and Outreach Marilynn Marsh-Robinson. “What’s needed next is additional community engagement and holistic approaches developed hand-in-hand with the communities they are designed to protect. It’s critical to support those most impacted throughout the process and equip them with what is needed to implement long-term solutions.”

“The governor is starting an important dialogue on how best to prepare our state for the impacts of climate change,” added McDow. “We must now work together to move this plan into action to build meaningful resilience for our communities, businesses and ecosystems.”

Yaron Miller, an officer with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ flood-prepared communities initiative, told Coastal Review Online Tuesday that the plan is an important step for North Carolina as its residents face the impacts of frequent flood-related disasters.

“We are pleased that among the many resilience strategies identified, there is a chapter about applying nature-based and low impact development practices across the state, as well as recommendations to immediately incorporate these strategies into planning.  These are important tools to manage flooding and improve water quality,” Miller continued. “Pew and the North Carolina Coastal Federation have convened a diverse group of stakeholders to develop policy recommendations for how these solutions can be employed by state, local governments, and businesses to address flooding in the state.”

The shift in outlook on climate change has not gone unnoticed by state officials.

Regan said that following hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and Florence in 2018, audiences have become more receptive to talking about climate change.

“I think people are really feeling the implications of climate change, both from an environmental standpoint, a public safety standpoint and then from an economic standpoint,” he told Coastal Review Online following a presentation at a Wilmington Rotary Club meeting at Cape Fear Country Club earlier this year. “So our communities are experiencing these changing weather patterns, and now I think more people are open to the conversations about not only what do we do to prevent, but what do we do to recover once these events occur.”

Not only has the conversation shifted but the state’s official response is also different and includes the launch in October 2018 of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR, to “streamline disaster recovery programs statewide and help communities rebuild smarter and stronger.”

NCORR Chief Resilience Officer Jessica Whitehead said that the nature of the conversation about climate change has in the last decade gone from “Is it happening?” to “It’s happening. Now what do we do?”

“What’s stayed the same is that there are still big challenges to defining what we do,” Whitehead said. “We know climate change isn’t just what we saw in the last flood – it’s droughts, and extreme heat, and landslides, and fires, and sea level rise. North Carolina has 100 counties, and they are all different places with diverse populations who will need to recover from and adapt to these diverse hazards.”

Looking to the future, “one of the greatest challenges we face is a changing climate,” Regan told the group during his talk. “As you all know better than anyone, your communities live and work on the front lines of climate change. Less than two years after Hurricane Matthew struck North Carolina, Hurricane Florence ended up being the costliest natural disaster in our history, causing the great state of North Carolina over $17 billion in damage. And last year, Hurricane Dorian hit some of our same communities.”

When Cooper, a month after Hurricane Florence, introduced the executive order to address climate change and transition to a clean energy economy, he was being proactive, Regan explained.

“That executive order is the most ambitious step ever taken in North Carolina’s history to combat climate change and transition North Carolina to a cleaner energy economy, while keeping the economy, front and center,” Regan said, adding that the order was a message that the state could no longer wait on federal government to act, “because our environment, our economy and our way of life could not wait.”

Executive Order 80 calls for every cabinet agency under the governor’s leadership to develop a carbon-reduction strategy. Cooper tasked NCDEQ with developing the North Carolina Clean Energy Plan submitted in the fall of 2019 to serve as “a visionary roadmap of viable policies for North Carolina’s clean energy future,” Regan said.

The plan requires the state’s electric power sector to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2030 and be carbon neutral by 2050. Carbon neutral means to function in a way that compensates completely for atmospheric carbon emissions, as through carbon offsets or tradeoffs.

“We know climate change isn’t just what we saw in the last flood – it’s droughts, and extreme heat, and landslides, and fires, and sea level rise. North Carolina has 100 counties, and they are all different places with diverse populations who will need to recover from and adapt to these diverse hazards.”

Jessica Whitehead, Chief Resilience Officer, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency

Though lauded by many, Executive Order 80 was also met with criticism.

“While arbitrary platitudes might satisfy far-left donors, our state’s energy policies have to account for the real costs they impose on the public,” Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, was quoted in a news report when Executive Order 80 was introduced in October 2018.

“I support an all-of-the-above energy strategy that includes renewables, but I don’t support programs that have minimal positive impact and can only sustain themselves with taxpayer and ratepayer money from those who can least afford it. The key is to find solutions that actually work in the private market, and I’m open to any and all ideas that help get us there.”

A few days before Cooper signed Executive Order 80, Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, announced Oct. 26, 2018, appointees to the joint select committee on storm-related river debris/damage in North Carolina.

“Hurricane Florence’s devastation makes it clear that we need to work in every direction to protect lives and property from future flooding. This committee’s work will be integral to the comprehensive resiliency planning that will take place over the coming years,” Berger and Moore said in joint statement when the committee was announced.

The committee was tasked with studying flood damage mitigation caused by extreme rainfall events and are to submit a report by 2020, according to the October 2018 announcement. The scope of the study will be river basins that experienced at least 10 inches of rainfall during Hurricane Florence. The committee’s webpage on the state General Assembly website Tuesday did not have information about the release of a report.

This is the sixth installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

RALEIGH — It was not the kind of Earth Day that North Carolina State Climatologist Kathie Dello had imagined.

On April 20, Dello opened a weeklong series of events at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, but instead of an in-person talk with the giant Earth at the museum’s entrance as a fitting backdrop, she joined via teleconference from her Raleigh home.

For the better part of an hour, Dello, on the job since last July, led a virtual walk-through of the findings in the state’s new climate report, an extensive, first-ever compilation of the science, impacts and unknowns about climate change in the state.

The major takeaways from the 236-page report are familiar: a warmer, wetter North Carolina with coastal areas threatened by rising seas and more frequent heavy downpours, along with increased flooding in all parts of the state.

Dello’s job that day and every day is to put that kind of data into context.

“North Carolina is warming and we’re expecting warming unlike anything we’ve seen in our past,” she explained to museum viewers.

Dello is the state’s fifth climatologist and the first woman to lead the State Climate Office, based at North Carolina State University. Before taking the job, she served as the associate director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and the deputy director of the Oregon Climate Service.

In her talk illustrating the details in the new report, Dello pointed to effects seen around the state, breaking down the impact of warmer nights on public health and agriculture and how more intense rain events spell more frequent urban flooding. Stone fruits, like peaches, and other crops won’t do well without cool nights, she explained. Farmworkers and other outdoor laborers will experience more heat stress during the day, while warmer nights mean no chance to cool down.

It’s important, she said, to recognize that climate change is in our present as well as our future and has to be addressed accordingly.

“We’re feeling climate change now so, we don’t get to the luxury of talking about this as a future problem anymore,” she said. “It’s here in North Carolina. It’s here in our backyard and we’re seeing it through the sea level rise and extreme downpours.”

In getting to know the state, Dello said she’s been struck with its diversity, in ecological terms and the human communities within its borders.

For Dello a big part of the job of state climatologist is communicating science in a meaningful way, bringing home to people what a changing climate means. She helped author a “plain language” summary of the North Carolina Climate Science Report, which is aimed at making the science more accessible and useful for the public as well as planners and policy makers.

Creating the complex climate models, the math, is the easy part, she told viewers on Earth Day.

“I’m not being flip, that really is the easy part. The most difficult part is the human component, us, how we’re going to behave, how we’re going to react.”

In plain language

In climate science circles, North Carolina is known both for the intensity of storms and the debate here over climate science. Dello said that when she got here, only one was apparent.

“When I got the job, people were shocked that I would leave the West Coast, which seems to be a friendlier place to talk about climate,” she said in an interview with Coastal Review Online. “But I found the opposite here.”

Dello said she saw much more resistance and organized opposition in Oregon.

“I don’t know if it’s just Southern hospitality or that people are a little bit nicer, but I find that people are ready and willing to talk about climate change here,” she said. “In some cases, they haven’t been engaged at all and are grateful that someone is willing to approach the subject with them.”

Recent storms here likely played a role in that, she said. “I’m finding that folks are open and willing to have the conversation and certainly the weather and the climate over the past few years has probably helped that out.”

“I don’t know if it’s just Southern hospitality or that people are a little bit nicer, but I find that people are ready and willing to talk about climate change here.”

To understand what the future of our climate holds, Dello said it’s important to recognize that we are already seeing what climate change looks like.

“We’re in for more of it. We’re in for worse,” she said. “It’s hotter, it’s wetter, the ocean communities are dealing with sunny-day, nuisance flooding and coastal erosion.”

“Flooding is going to impact the entire state,” Dello said. There’ll be more frequent heavy rain events and more large-scale urban floods, especially when there’s a combination of events, such as a big storm after leaves have just fallen.

“The mechanism might be different — it’s not going to be high tide in Raleigh — but it may be something else.”

What that means for hurricanes is unclear, in terms of where the storms might travel, she said, but wherever they go, more intense wind and rain and more damage are likely.

“We don’t necessarily know where hurricanes make landfall. Climate models don’t reconcile that very well but we’re stacking the deck with more conducive conditions for dangerous hurricanes.”

That outlook is daunting for policy makers, and Dello said the state will have to confront repeated devastation to vulnerable communities and the disparate impact on people who work outside or can’t afford to cool their homes when heat indexes rise.

“I think this is going to take a really close look at some of our inequities across our state,” she said. “The communities that going to be hit the hardest, that have been hit the hardest are just going to keep getting hit. I think we have some tough questions to ask of ourselves.”

She said the coronavirus pandemic is reminder that it is pointless to talk about a “new normal” as if there will be a point where things plateau.

“We talk about a new normal and we were talking about a new normal before all this other stuff started happening,” she said. “But that’s not a great classification, because we’ll check in at a new normal and then there’ll be another new normal and another new normal.”

NC’s opportunity to lead

The new state climate report and its focus on the impact of climate change is one part of a state resilience and mitigation strategy put in place by Gov. Roy Cooper. The climate change report is integral to the next step in the process, a statewide resiliency plan that is due out this month.

“I think North Carolina has a really unique advantage in that we are seeing climate change loud and clear here in this state and we’re recognizing that we need to do something about it.”

Cooper’s strategy represents a considerable shift from his predecessor, Gov. Pat McCrory, who advocated for offshore drilling and inland fracking. But Cooper has been limited mostly to executive action. Following the recent series of devastating storms, the state’s legislature has been willing to back resiliency efforts, but as yet is still unwilling to enact major policy changes, such as carbon reduction goals.

Dello said that often the resistance to changes at the state level is based on the contention that it won’t make a difference.

“What people who don’t want to take action on climate use as an argument is that one individual state can’t do enough on its own. I don’t think the point is that North Carolina is trying to do this on its own. North Carolina is saying, ‘Hey, we contribute to this problem,’” she said. “Sure it’s global, but recognizing our contribution to it and knowing that the atmosphere doesn’t stop at our borders, we’re going to look closely at what we can do.”

Given its reputation, she said, North Carolina has an opportunity to show other states a way forward.

“We’ve seen with policy change in the past in the U.S., it’s the states that make the federal government act,” Dello said. In environmental policy usually those state changes come from places like California and New York.

“I think North Carolina has a really unique advantage in that we are seeing climate change loud and clear here in this state and we’re recognizing that we need to do something about it. The politics may have changed a little bit, but folks don’t see us as the most progressive state around the country. I think that North Carolina can be a leader in showing other states you can do this.”

Lessons from lockdown

“I think one of the things I keep reminding myself is that climate change isn’t stopping because of any of this,” Dello said. “This break in emissions isn’t doing very much for us.”

Still, the early reaction to the coronavirus pandemic in which most people were willing to pitch in and take the stay-at-home order seriously gives her some hope that people are willing to adapt for a common cause.

“I’m seeing folk ask questions of themselves — I’m doing it too — Why do I travel so much? Why do I go to conferences all over when really I could have them online?”

Some of those changes will carry forward, she said, but they’re only a small part of what’s needed and there’s the worry that once things return to some sense of normalcy the collective spirit will fade.

“The problem we have on our hands is really, really big, and watching people struggle with this one, I don’t know” Dello said. “I bounce back and forth between optimism and pessimism.”

This is the fifth installment in a continuing series on climate change and the North Carolina coast that is part of the Pulitzer Center’s nationwide Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

Twenty-seven years ago, an interagency panel of bureaucrats, politicians and scientists gathered for the first time in Atlanta, Georgia, to study how to save a North Carolina coastal highway skirting the volatile waters of the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

No one back then talked about resilience or adaptation, and certainly not retreat. Still, the diverse group turned out to be pioneers of brainstorming and collaborating to solve the multitude of challenges from sea level rise and other climate change impacts.

The two-lane road has been a headache for the state practically from the day the first tire hit the pavement. In 1962, the infamous Ash Wednesday Storm ripped open an inlet in Buxton and destroyed 25% of the dunes that buffered the road from ocean waves.

Still, the extreme and worsening coastal conditions for N.C. 12 serve as both lesson plan and cautionary tale for teams like the Outer Banks Task Force, working against time while begging for funds to maintain vital transportation infrastructure into the future.

Gov. Roy Cooper’s executive order in 2018 directed 10 cabinet agencies and the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to “integrate climate adaptation and resiliency planning into their policies, programs and operations.”  In response, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency was created to coordinate agencies and assist communities facing storm recovery and/or risks of future climate change impacts.

But complex problems that involve many players, a slew of stakeholders and tons of money can become unwieldy — and paralyzing.

At least 10 government entities — federal, state and local — were represented on the task force, in addition to several coastal engineers and scientists from different universities.

“How do we simplify what we’re trying to do so that we get something done?” former Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairwoman Geneva Perry asked the revived task force in November 1998, as quoted then in The Virginian-Pilot. “This thing has been going on forever, and unless we keep kicking it, it dies again.”

Built in phases during the 1950s, N.C. 12 bisects Cape Hatteras National Seashore, Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge and seven villages. It is also the only route for millions of tourists that contribute to the Outer Banks’ $1 billion tourism economy.

The roadway, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the massive Pamlico Sound on the other, is inches above mean sea level and crosses numerous weak spots on skinny barrier islands that are subject to severe beach erosion. To add to its vulnerabilities, the islands are close to the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the “super-highway” for Atlantic hurricanes.

Over the decades, the road has been repeatedly over-washed by ocean and sound tide; undermined by ocean surge; inundated by moon tide and rain deluges; buried by mountains of sand from storm-flattened dunes; broken apart by hurricanes and nor-easters; and covered by telephone poles, trees and debris from destroyed buildings.

Sections of road have been replaced, elevated, bridged or moved further from the ocean. Adjacent beaches have been widened and walkways have been built to protect dunes.

And the dunes between the beach and the road have been built, knocked down and rebuilt, higher, longer and stronger. Then flattened again.

“It’s a very good example of a corridor being impacted by climate,” Jerry Jennings, Division 1 engineer with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said in a recent telephone interview. “Certainly, from Division 1’s perspective, there’s not another road that has the challenges that N.C. 12 has.”

Located in the northeast corner of North Carolina, Division 1 is a huge, mostly rural territory that encompasses 14 counties. It not only includes the second-largest estuarine system in the nation, its coastal area — the Outer Banks — is one of the most vulnerable regions in the U.S. to the impacts of sea level rise.

Maintenance and repair of the road from Oregon Inlet to Ocracoke village has cost NCDOT about $75 million in the last 10 years, not including N.C. 12 improvements that were part of the recently completed Bonner Bridge replacement project.

Opened last year, the new Marc Basnight Bridge spans the inlet and incorporates phased work on the road to just south of Rodanthe.

The only other comparison in the state to N.C. 12 cited by some transportation officials could be the heavily traveled Blue Ridge Parkway in the mountains, which is subject to costly landslides and intense winter weather.

But a lot of environmental changes generally have been observed over time in coastal regions and in low-lying areas, Jennings said. Shoreline erosion along water bodies, for example, can impact roadway shoulders and potentially threaten the road. Flooding is a persistent problem on roads in Mackey’s Island, Aydlett and Water Lily in Currituck County and on N.C. 94 at Lake Mattamuskeet in Hyde County.

“There’s a number of those out there,” he said. “It’s not just a beach thing.”

An ongoing improvement project on Colington Road in Kill Devil Hills includes elevation of parts of the road vulnerable to tidal flooding, he said, “which seems to be a longstanding problem.”

“That project will attempt to resolve that,” Jennings said. “It’s hard to say what is directly related to climate change.”

NCDOT had been working with the new North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCORR. But NCDOT’s resiliency work has been suspended indefinitely while the agency addresses severe budgetary shortfalls aggravated by COVID-19 shutdowns.

Unspecified cuts are also expected in NCDOT’s Ferry Division, which operates about 20 ferries on seven regular routes on the coast. The passenger ferry between Hatteras and Ocracoke islands has been canceled for the season.

In March, North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies released the North Carolina Climate Science Report, an assessment of current and projected climate impacts to the state. The report is a component of the comprehensive N.C. Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan that is expected to be completed this summer.

The report found that future impacts in the state from climate change — some effects are already apparent — will likely be more intense storms, increased rain volume, more wildfires and drought, more hot days and higher humidity, increased flooding — including sunny day tide — and higher sea levels, especially on the northeast coast.

“For transportation, it means offering people multiple ways to get around, by better connecting roads and sidewalks and providing quality transit services,” the report said.

Jessica Whitehead, chief resilience officer with NCORR, said that NCDOT has been an engaged participant in discussions about such critical needs as building redundancy and updating old infrastructure.

Even with NCDOT’s and other state agencies’ budgetary woes from the pandemic, Whitehead said that resiliency work will continue.

“The thing about climate change in any of this, it’s not going to go away,” she said. “We’re still going to figure out ways to plan for it.”

Transportation projects in North Carolina have already been engineered for environmental changes, said Chris Werner, director of technical services at NCDOT.

“Resiliency is a critical part of how we design and build our infrastructure,” he said. “We work with all our partners across the state.”

Werner said that the agency has an inbuilt culture that fosters innovative and proactive approaches to problem solving.

“We’re always looking for cutting-edge analytics and software,” he said. “Most of us are engineers. The more data we can get, the more analytics we can perform.”

One example is application of the state’s data-rich Flood Inundation Mapping Alert Network, or FIMAN, to not only predict flooding on roads and bridges, but also to design for it by looking at trends in the data.

The agency, he said, is in the process of expanding the FIMAN gauge system from a property-impact focus to provide data specific to transportation infrastructure. For instance, data collection can be tailored so it can be used to prevent future road washouts.

It’s not just a matter of fixing a damaged structure, he explained, the goal is to keep it from happening again by building redundancy and resiliency.

When severe flooding on U.S. 421 in Wilmington in 2018 during Hurricane Florence damaged the road and cut off traffic, Werner said, the agency took the opportunity to “build better and stronger.” After analysis of historic and current data, instead of just replacing ruined culverts, the department replaced them with a new bridge. Another bridge was also built nearby, providing the transportation corridor with both redundancy and resiliency in the event of future flooding.

“Our goal is to build infrastructure that’s durable and safe and resilient as possible,” Werner said. “As civil engineers, we’re constantly improving what we’ve done in the past. That’s what we do. It all stems from field observation and data.”

Other measures NCDOT has put in place, he said, are monitors of water levels at low bridges, and identifying alternative travel routes on its READY NC app. The department has partnered with Google Maps and WAZE to feed their traffic data into the app. Also, DRIVENC.gov shows up-to-date closures and maintenance work on the state’s roads.

In reality, the feats of engineering for NCDOT are not so much in dramatic crane work at bridge construction sites or road restorations after storms. It’s mostly what goes on behind the scene at research centers and laboratories.

“We do a lot of work with our universities,” said Neil Mastin, NCDOT Research and Development manager. “We work with business units and academics.”

In May 2019, the department presented its first Research & Innovation Summit at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University to discuss transportation-related innovations and research.

Although it is not often a focus of public discussion, NCDOT has been studying numerous issues that could result in transportation improvements, although its research program for 2021 has been postponed, Mastin said.

Ongoing or planned research projects include the following:

• How to reduce environmental impacts of road construction.
• Building 2-D scour models to improve understanding of water interaction at bridge pilings.
• Monitoring erosion on the Outer Banks going back 20 years, along with an ongoing coastal monitoring program, that gathers data on island width, the size of the dunes and distance of the road to the ocean.
• Documenting stormwater impacts from recent storms (on pause) and studying Neuse River watershed flood abatement study (ongoing).
• Forensic analysis of sections of girders from the old Bonner Bridge that spanned Oregon Inlet to learn how they withstood the harsh coastal conditions.
• Analysis of submerged aquatic vegetation in the Currituck Sound to understand where it is and how to protect it.
• Biologic stabilization of soil to potentially increase resistance to erosion.
• Using dredged material from the Rodanthe emergency ferry channel potentially to build bird or material disposal islands or to fill eroded areas.

Mastin said that NCDOT is also “hyper-aware” of the public concern about drainage issues. The state is responsible for the ditches and culverts within road right of ways, as well as the nine ocean outfalls in the state, all of which except one is on the Outer Banks.

“Water in general,” he said, “is the enemy of transportation networks.”

In the past, locations of all small and medium drainage pipes around the state were mapped, he added, with the ambitious goal — yet mostly unfulfilled — of eventually replacing them. But that’s just pipes — and flooding is getting increasingly worse.

“Eastern North Carolina in particular, with land as flat as it is, makes it extremely challenging,” Mastin said. “We can fix one problem somewhere and it makes it worse somewhere else.”

Drones are being used more often by NCDOT to provide footage of flooded areas and to help manage flood gates, he said.  They’re also used to build wetlands, to identify plant types, to measure elevation and to help determine where to send crews after disasters. Researchers are also studying development of drones to inspect bridges.

Improvements of material — mostly concrete and asphalt — are constantly being studied, Mastin said. One example of research results is the proposed bridge replacement on Harkers Island, which would be the state’s first fully composite reinforced bridge. Rather than using corrosion-prone steel rebar, he said, the structure will be built with a mixture of carbon fiber prestressed strands and “fancy” fiberglass.

“We’ll be monitoring this closely,” he said. “This is really exciting.”

The new Marc Basnight Bridge over notoriously wild and wicked Oregon Inlet was designed to last 100 years and was built with high-performance, less-permeable concrete made to better endure corrosive salt air and water. It is the first bridge project in the state to use stainless reinforcing steel, and the bridge has longer and deeper pilings to withstand scour.

The Outer Banks Task Force, in a significant way, laid the groundwork for the bridge and the N.C. 12 improvements by determining where the problems were and what to do about them. Most importantly, the panel recognized the need for safety and access for both the bridge and the road and linked them together as a single corridor.

Jennings, the division engineer, said that over the last few years, feasibility studies have been completed looking at long-term options for eroded areas in Buxton, Hatteras and Ocracoke, as well as costs of the alternatives and how long projects would last.

Years before the panel was replaced by a “merger team” that worked on planning and permitting for the road and bridge projects, the Outer Banks Task Force had designated six vulnerable “hot spots” between Oregon Inlet and Ocracoke village that were critical to address, and started the planning process on each one.

Predictions about the dire risks at each of the hot spots – from storm surge, beach erosion, road loss, dune breaching, even another inlet cutting through – have since played out all too often.

In 1999, John Fisher, a N.C. State University civil engineer and then-chair of the task force science panel, called a reconstructed dune lost during Hurricane Dennis at the eroding Ocracoke hot spot a “Band-Aid” that wouldn’t last.

“We seriously think you should think about abandoning that whole stretch of road and relocating the ferry system,” he told the task force, according to The Virginian-Pilot on Nov. 7. “It didn’t make sense to us to try to maintain the highway.”

That is exactly what NCDOT is now considering. After storm after storm over the last 20 years wiped out dunes in the same hot spot, it seems Hurricane Dorian last September may end up taking that one off N.C. 12’s list.

COROLLA – Marshlands surrounding the Currituck Sound have been eroding away. They’ve been invaded by weeds that choke out native plants. They’ve been drowned by floodwaters, marinated in pollutants and withered by saltwater.

Old-timers who remember when the northern Outer Banks waterway was thick with waterfowl have seen the degradation over decades. The Army Corps of Engineers even released a draft report in 2011 about the dire condition of Currituck Sound — since shelved — warning that 3,600 more acres of estuarine marsh could be lost by mid-century if nothing was done.

Little has been done to stop depletion of the marsh. But now, conservation work is getting ready to be done.

Audubon North Carolina announced last month that it has received nearly $200,000 in grant funds to conduct marsh restoration and resilience planning in Currituck Sound.

According to a Nov. 18 press release, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation provided $95,808 to Audubon through the National Coastal Resilience Fund, and a matching grant of $99,500 was provided by the North Carolina Clean Water Management Trust Fund to “complete a comprehensive marsh site assessment … to determine optimal locations, techniques and design for restoring and fortifying existing marsh.” The project will include climate resilience design plans for up to three high-priority locations.

“This is really kick-starting a larger vision,” Cat Bowler, Audubon’s Coastal Resilience program manager, said in an interview. “The habitat these marshes provide is globally significant.”

“Our coastal resilience program is a long-term strategy for us. This is one important piece of that.”

Cat Bowler, Manager, Audubon Coastal Resilience program

Although the number of waterfowl, including snow goose, tundra swan, American green-winged teal, lesser scaup and northern pintail, that overwinter at the sound has plummeted — from about 300,000 a year in the 1970s to 30,000 today — Currituck is still a vital way station for birds migrating on the Atlantic Flyway, as well as a rare coastal ecosystem.

Since 2010, Audubon North Carolina has owned and managed the 2,600-acre Donal C. O’Brien Jr. Sanctuary & Audubon Center at Pine Island, tucked off N.C. 12 between the villages of Duck and Corolla on the northern Outer Banks.

In addition to marsh, the sanctuary protects bottomland and dry sandy areas and upland maritime forests, which — at last count — provide habitat for about 170 bird species, seven amphibian, 17 reptile, 19 mammal and more than 350 plant species, according to the sanctuary website.

The sanctuary, Audubon’s first nature center in North Carolina, includes a 60-acre education campus with an authentic hunt club built in 1913 that hosts researchers and conservationists. Adult education programs and kayak tours are also offered at the center, and walkers and runners are welcome to enjoy the site’s 2.5-mile nature trail.

Bowler said of the 2,600 acres in the Pine Island sanctuary, the majority is marsh habitat. But that is only a portion of the total 21,400 acres of marsh along Currituck Sound, of which 63% is in conservation.

The grant funds, she said, will allow Audubon and its partners to develop specific marsh restoration that is tailored to Currituck Sound and design restoration solutions.

The project is an initial phase of Audubon’s continuing focus on the restoration of the sound ecosystem, Bowler said.

“Our coastal resilience program is a long-term strategy for us,” she said. “This is one important piece of that.”

The sanctuary campus, situated on the Currituck Outer Banks just north of the Dare County border, is a logical location for restoration team planning and research and perhaps community meetings. Audubon also is already seeking to develop innovative adaptation strategies for shoreline stabilization and habitat protection.

“We’re transforming that place into a hub,” Bowler said.

In a July 2015 article in Coastal Review Online, Robbie Fearn, the Pine Island center’s director, said that an informal steering committee the sanctuary established called the Alliance for Currituck Sound had met the previous year to lay the groundwork for a collaborative partnership with members of the community, scientists, nonprofits and other stakeholders to restore the sound.

At the time, Fearn said that some parts of the sound with once-sandy bottoms had become mucky, and invasive weeds were taking over areas of marshland. Also, the south edge of the Audubon property, he said, was especially vulnerable to erosion because of high wave fetch, boat traffic and the natural shape of the sound.

“The underlying ecosystem has taken a hit,” he said at the time.

For many years, waterfowl hunters, bird watchers and area residents have been worried about what was happening to Currituck Sound. Shallow and brackish, the 36-mile long, 3.8-mile wide, 98,000-acre waterway has over recent decades suffered serious impacts from polluted stormwater runoff and increased salinity and turbidity. The decreased water clarity has depleted submerged aquatic vegetation, which in turn led to diminished numbers of fish and birds.

Increased effects of climate change, such as sea level rise, saltwater intrusion and intensified storms and rains, have made resilience and adaptation efforts for Currituck Sound’s ecosystem and the Pine Island center’s infrastructure even more urgent.

“Audubon is already studying those challenges,” Bowler said.

Discussions, research and collaboration that have started with some partners with be expanded for the marsh assessment and design project.  A coalition of partners will likely include the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Partnership, the North Carolina Estuarium, the town of Duck, Currituck County, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Coastal Studies Institute, among others, as well as members of the public.

“Community engagement is very important,” Bowler said.

Potential marsh restoration solutions, she said, could be construction of living shorelines that buffer land from water action or thin-layer sediment applications that can prevent marsh loss from high water.

Ultimately, a healthier and more adaptable ecosystem will benefit not just the Audubon sanctuary, but everyone who lives around and enjoys Currituck Sound.

“In just protecting and restoring these natural places,” Bowler said, “we also help reduce flood risk and storm risk for our community.”