Reprinted from Island Free Press

The long-planned effort to repair one of Buxton’s historic groins can now officially move forward after the final major federal permit required for the project was issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week.

According to Dare County Assistant County Manager Dustin Peele, county officials received the Army Corps permit Tuesday, clearing the final regulatory hurdle for the project after approvals had already been secured from other stakeholder agencies, including the National Park Service and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

“We had a pre-construction meeting Monday for the groin project,” Peele said in an update Wednesday. “Bids are due back later this month. We intend to have a low bidder ready for Board approval during the June 9 meeting.”

The permit approval marks a major milestone for a project that has been in development for years and was intentionally fast-tracked to align with the county’s upcoming 2026 beach nourishment project in Buxton.

Officials have previously noted that obtaining permits for shoreline stabilization work can often take two years or longer due to the extensive environmental reviews and coordination required among multiple agencies. In this case, the process was streamlined as much as possible to coincide with the scheduled beach nourishment effort, which is now expected to begin in mid-June.

The repair project focuses on the southernmost of Buxton’s three groins, which are located along the shoreline near the end of Old Lighthouse Road.

The structures were originally constructed by the U.S. Navy in 1969 and 1970 near the former Naval Facility Cape Hatteras in an effort to slow shoreline erosion and help protect nearby infrastructure. However, maintenance of the groins largely ceased after the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse was relocated approximately 2,900 feet inland in 1999.

Over time, the groins deteriorated significantly under constant wave action and lack of maintenance.

Under current North Carolina coastal regulations, only the southernmost groin qualifies for repair. State officials determined that enough of the structure remained intact, at least 50%, for the project to be considered a repair rather than a reconstruction, allowing it to move forward under existing rules. The other two groins have deteriorated beyond that threshold and are not eligible for reconstruction under current regulations.

County officials and coastal engineers have emphasized that the repair project is not intended to stop erosion entirely, but rather to help retain sand placed during nourishment operations and slow the rate of shoreline loss in a small but vulnerable stretch of oceanfront.

Plans for the repair work include removing deteriorated materials, installing new steel sheet piles, and placing additional stone scour protection around the structure. The final repaired groin will follow the same footprint, extending 640 feet into the ocean.

The groin repairs are intended to work in conjunction with the 2026 Buxton beach nourishment project, which is now expected to place roughly 2 million cubic yards of sand along approximately 2.9 miles of shoreline extending from the Haulover Day Use Area to the groin area near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

Dare County officials have repeatedly described the nourishment and groin repair efforts as complementary projects aimed at improving the resilience of Buxton’s shoreline and protecting N.C. Highway 12 from future erosion and storm impacts.

The Army Corps permit was issued through the agency’s Wilmington District under Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act and Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, authorizing work within federally regulated waters and wetlands.

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

Second and final in a series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oregon Inlet

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

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

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

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

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

Beaufort Inlet/Fort Macon

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

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

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

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

Buxton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ocracoke Island

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ocean Isle Beach

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

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

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

Interest in future terminal groins

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

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

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

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

First in a series

Something potentially and significantly consequential is underway now in North Carolina that could alter management of the state’s increasingly battered Atlantic coastline.

The state Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel is in the process of finalizing an analysis of beach erosion-control structures, a report that is expected to be submitted to the commission in June. Although the 10-member advisory panel’s study is meant to inform policymakers of their options, some fear – or hope – that it’s the first step toward repealing the state’s longstanding ban on hardened shoreline structures.

“Alarms are sounding in nearly all of our oceanfront counties,” state Division of Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller said at the commission’s meeting in November at Atlantic Beach, referring to threats from accelerating beach erosion. “Nourishment costs continue to rise and the lifespan of many of these projects is painfully short. Infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable, and some communities are very concerned.”

Since September 2025, the Hatteras Island village of Buxton, home of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and the massive corner of wild beach known as Cape Point, has seen 19 unoccupied oceanfront homes collapse into the surf. In addition to a beach nourishment project, Dare County this summer is planning to restore the only salvageable groin of a 57-year-old groin field in an attempt to prolong the project’s lifespan.

In response to calls from Dare and Hyde counties, among others, to allow more options to address erosion, the division last winter asked the Coastal Resources Commission to review the structures.

“We must approach these challenges with open minds, innovation, and balanced pragmatism,” Miller urged. “We must take a critical view of our past and current practices, embrace what continues to succeed, and replace practices that are no longer working.”

But even the draft outline that the Science Panel submitted at the commission’s February meeting,  titled “Report on The Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-ocean Coastlines,” revealed the complexity involved in redirecting, blocking, deflecting, buffering, or absorbing the power of an open ocean energized by high winds, with forceful longshore and cross-shore currents feeding beaches with sand here, starving them of sand there.

“We’ve broken this into two categories according to how these erosion-management measures function; essentially all erosion-management approaches fall into two categories,” CRC Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told the commission. “One is structures or approaches that trap sand, and the second is structures that that really harden the shoreline.”

While the report will provide details about protective barriers and techniques, she said, it is less about offering remedies than providing information about effects of each option. It will also include comparisons to beach-restoration methods such as nourishment and living shorelines.

Erosion has been a fact of life along North Carolina’s 320-mile-long ocean shoreline for centuries, but before coastal development and tourism went into overdrive, the Coastal Resources Commission, the 13-member body that sets coastal policy in the state, took steps to preserve beaches.

In 1985, after studying the down-shore erosive effects of seawalls, bulkheads, groins, jetties and sandbags, the commission established a policy banning permanent hardened structures on the ocean coast. Sandbags were permitted as temporary structures.

Upheld in court in 2000, the ban was codified as law three years later by the North Carolina General Assembly. Then in 2011, a law was passed that permitted a limited number of terminal groins — sand-trapping barriers built near inlets or at the end of an island. Much of the ban, however, remains the law of the land. Environmentalists and countless coastal scientists have credited the limits on hard structures for preserving the state’s coastal wildlife and beautiful natural beaches, which attract millions of tourists every year. But critics blame the ban for limiting the ability to protect shorelines, as well as private and public property and infrastructure.

No magic, one-size-fits-all formula exists to address erosion, Moore said, and many factors will need to be weighed.

“There are approaches and strategies that can either shift the erosion problem to another adjacent location, or in some cases, we can slow the problem down,” said Moore, who is professor of coastal geomorphology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “We can create more time to make perhaps bigger adjustments that are likely to be needed going forward.”

With seas rising and Atlantic storms intensifying over recent decades as a result of climate change, erosion on the state’s barrier island beaches has been happening faster and more dramatically, especially along the high-energy Outer Banks coastline, where erosion rates at some locations – as severe as an annual average of 14 feet – are among the highest on the East Coast. Dozens of oceanfront houses on eroded beaches, pounded and undermined by surging surf, have fallen into the sea. At the same time, more Outer Banks inlets and waterways are filling with sand, clogging channels that until the recent past had always been navigable.

But the entire coast has been experiencing its own degree of changing and increasingly destructive conditions, and the pressure has been building to find ways to prevent or mitigate damages at different locations, each with different conditions.

“I would say most of the North Carolina coastline is either barrier or behaves like barrier,” Moore told Coastal Review. “Certainly, subsidence in the north is a factor that’s going to make the relative rate of sea level rise a little higher. But there’s also the shape and the orientation of the shoreline and the wave approach angles and the wave energy and how those drive longshore sediment transport gradients, and how much sand is coming into a stretch of coast versus how much is leaving. Also, a really big factor is how frequently in the past the coast has been nourished.”

The final report is to be centered on sand-trapping and shoreline-hardening structures, Moore said. But it will also look at other widely used erosion management tactics, ranging from avoidance with setbacks or relocation, sand trapping with fences or beach plants, and building the beach with sand nourishment and dunes.

The two-category design of the document is focused on function of the structures, she said, “because there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of coastal erosion management approaches out there, and they all essentially fall into two buckets.” What the panel of volunteer scientists cannot do, she added, is analyze each approach.

“What we are trying to do is provide a better, clearer explanation of how structures function and what their effects are,” Moore said.

Moore emphasized that the science panel’s task is to provide an assessment of structures on the coastline. But she understands the urgency people feel for finding a “solution” rather than a range of options.

“And although we’re not providing recommendations, I do want to highlight that we will be discussing tradeoffs, and I think that’s really important, because whether an approach has benefits or negative effects depends on the perspective and goals of the beholder,” she said. “We certainly know that there are efforts afoot to repeal the ban. And again, it’s not our job to say whether that should or should not happen. It’s our job to lay out in a clear way what the tradeoffs are, given how these different approaches to mitigating erosion function.”

Next in the series: How have hardened structures currently installed on North Carolina beaches performed?

Ocean Isle Beach hopes to pump tens of thousands of cubic yards of sand onto the beach at the easternmost tip of the island by this spring as an erosion stopgap.

The Brunswick County town has asked the Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District for authorization to have up to 70,000 cubic yards of sand placed east of its terminal groin where erosion has been chipping away at the shoreline in front of a luxury neighborhood.

The Corps announced late last week that it is accepting public comments through March 8 on the town’s application to modify the federal permit it received in 2016 to build the terminal groin at Shallotte Inlet. 

As it stands, that permit does not allow sand to be placed east of the terminal groin.

A terminal groin is a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore at inlets to contain sand in areas with high rates of erosion.

Proposed modifications to the permit include placing sand along an 1,875-foot stretch of shoreline at The Pointe, a gated community whose oceanfront property owners have been desperately trying to hold back an encroaching sea.

Under the terms of the proposed permit changes, this would be a one-time beach nourishment project.

The town is also asking for its permitted sand borrow source in Shallotte Inlet to be expanded from about 83 acres to a little more than 117 acres, to add a new borrow area within the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and be allowed to work outside of the environmental window for dredging from April 30 to June 15.

Ocean Isle Beach Town Manager Justin Whiteside said on Tuesday that the town wants to get the modified permit as quickly as possible in hopes that the sand placement project would coincide with a federal dredging project.

The Corps announced last September it had awarded a nearly $8.5 million contract to maintenance dredge several areas along the Intracoastal, including at the Shallotte Inlet crossing.

Whiteside explained that Ocean Isle Beach anticipates receiving 25,000 cubic yards of sand “that the town is paying for” from the Corps through the inlet crossing project.

“The hope is to get this permit modified within the timeframe that the Corps’ contractor is here on site and then we could contract with them possibly to dredge more in that federal channel or go into that inlet borrow area to put that additional sand there,” he said.

Whiteside said the town does not yet have an approximate cost of its proposal to nourish the beach east of the terminal groin.

Ocean Isle’s east end had for decades been losing ground to chronic erosion, the worst of which occurred along about a mile of ocean shoreline beginning near the inlet.

An encroaching ocean claimed homes, damaged and destroyed public utilities and prompted the North Carolina Department of Transportation to abandon state-maintained streets there.

To stave off further erosion, the town in 2005 was permitted to install a wall of sandbags to protect public roads and infrastructure from getting swallowed up by the sea.

In 2011, Ocean Isle Beach was, along with a handful of other beach communities, allowed to pursue the option of installing a terminal groin at an inlet area after the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a law that banned hardened erosion control structures on the state’s ocean shorelines.

Five years later, the town received state and federal approval to build a 750-foot terminal groin.

But before construction could begin, the Southern Environmental Law Center in August 2017 filed a lawsuit on behalf of the National Audubon Society challenging the Corps’ approval of the project.

More than three years passed before the lawsuit, which later included the town, concluded after an appellate court affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the proposed project.

Construction of the $11 million project was completed in the spring of 2022, the same year the final plan for The Pointe, a 44-lot subdivision, was approved for development.

By fall 2025, The Pointe’s oceanfront properties were suffering significant erosion.

Last November, the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission unanimously agreed to grant permission to the owners of eight lots in that neighborhood to install larger than typically allowed sandbag structures waterward of their land.

Whiteside said Tuesday that those sandbags had not been installed.

Sand in the area east of the terminal groin, he said, appears to be “recovering a little bit.”

“We think over the past month and a half or so that we’ve gained, just looking at aerial photographs, approximately 5,000 cubic yards of sand that’s deposited east of the groin, so some of the beach is building back up in that area,” Whiteside said.

He explained that in 2022 the town’s federal beach nourishment project took place in conjunction with the construction of the terminal groin.

“The dredger came through and we had a huge spit on the east end of the island and that contractor came through and just dredged right through that spit and took it down to a negative 15-foot elevation,” Whitesaid said. “It’s kind of filled back in now and we’re thinking that’s why we’re seeing the growth back east of the groin. We’re hoping this shows that that’s some of what contributed to it, that it was maybe our own nourishment project through the Corps.”

“But, in the meantime, we know this is a short-term solution that we’ve got to figure out some type of long-term solution to, so our engineer firm is going to be doing some modeling to see what kind of modifications, if any, need to take place to the existing groin,” he continued.

Comments on the proposed project should refer the permit application number (SAW-2011-01241) and may be submitted to the Corps electronically through the Regulatory Request System at https://rrs.usace.army.mil/rrs or by email to Tyler Crumbley at tyler.a.crumbley2@usace.army.mil. 

Written comments may be mailed to Commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington District, Attention: Tyler Crumbley, 69 Darlington Ave., Wilmington, NC  28403.

The Corps will consider written requests for a public hearing to be held to consider the proposed application modifications.

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

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

Related: Climate change compounds challenge to stabilize beaches

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

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

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

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

Guest Commentary

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

I am writing on behalf of the Town of Ocean Isle Beach regarding the September 30 article, “Sand is vanishing on east side of Ocean Isle’s $11M erosion fix.” While we appreciate Coastal Review’s coverage of coastal management issues, the article does not provide full context and leaves readers with an incomplete understanding of the facts.

The terminal groin project was subject to a lengthy, transparent public process:

• Initial scoping meeting: October 3, 2012
• Project Review Team Initial Meeting: March 5, 2013
• Draft Environmental Impact Statement: March 3, 2015
• Terminal groin public workshop (3 West Third Street): April 4, 2015
• Final Environmental Impact Statement: April 15, 2015
• CAMA Permit Issued: November 2016
• Groin Construction began: November 2021

The development known as The Point followed a separate timeline. The developer first appeared before the Planning Board in June 2015, after the above meetings had taken place. He purchased the property in September 2015. In October 2016, the Board of Commissioners issued preliminary plat approval. After a period of stalled activity, the Major CAMA Permit for The Point was issued on June 18, 2018. The developer then submitted a new sketch plan in December 2019, and final subdivision approval was granted in 2022.

Related: Sand is vanishing on east side of Ocean Isle’s $11M erosion fix

All this information was publicly available prior to development of this area. By omitting these facts, the article gives the impression that property owners were unaware of the project, when the Town followed a thorough and publicly documented process in full compliance with state and federal requirements.

Ocean Isle Beach values Coastal Review’s role in informing the public about coastal issues, and we respectfully request that future reporting includes the full timeline, so readers have a complete understanding of both the Town’s due diligence and the developers’ decision-making process.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Debbie S. Smith, Mayor
Town of Ocean Isle Beach

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

OCEAN ISLE BEACH — When the Army Corps of Engineers issued its final decision on the terminal groin project here more than eight years ago, the document conveyed a prescient warning.

A terminal groin “may increase erosion along the easternmost point of Ocean Isle Beach, down-drift of the structure.”

Today, the shoreline east of terminal groin is being gnawed away, vanishing beach in front of a neighborhood of grand, multimillion-dollar homes built shortly after the $11 million erosion-control structure was completed in spring 2022.

A wall of sandbags fends off waves from reaching some of the waterfront homes on the ocean side of the gated community that’s advertised as “luxurious coastal living.”

Several lots remain vacant because the properties no longer have enough beachfront necessary to meet the state’s ocean setback requirements.

“I would have never developed the property if I had known this was going to happen,” said Doc Dunlap, a developer with Pointe OIB, LLC. “It’s just devastating to tell you the truth. I even had plans myself to build there, have a summer home.”

The caveat written in the federal record of decision all those years ago, one that was a central argument in a lawsuit to try and stop the terminal groin from being built, was not explicitly pointed out to the developers of The Pointe, they say.

In an email responding to Coastal Review’s questions, the Division of Coastal Management said it, “is not aware of any specific notification to those property owners other than the standard (area of environmental concern) hazard notice.”

“We were just under the impression that all of this was going to be extremely positive and help protect this part of the beach,” said Jimmy Bell, who contributed to the planning and implementation of the community. “And then, once we started experiencing this massive erosion, I started researching groins more. We had engineers and other people that were helping, and we were informed and under the impression that it was going to all be good, and now it’s turning out to not be quite as good.”

Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith pushed back on those claims.

“My heart breaks for them, but the developers knew that that groin was going in,” she said. “They knew it was not designed to protect that area. It was not designed to harm it, but they also know that adjacent 2,000 feet west of them was a line of sandbags and most of them had been there for years.”

The developers are now seeking legal representation as they continue to try to figure out how to protect the oceanfront properties within the 44-lot neighborhood.

“Mr. Dunlap is extremely disappointed in the decisions made that resulted in the placement and construction of the terminal groin and the erosion damages it has caused,” John Hilton III, corporate counsel to Pointe OIB, stated in an email. “He is committed to holding those who made these decisions legally accountable and also seeking a remedy to correct the ongoing erosion.  We are working to obtain local legal counsel to explore and pursue all available options.”

Erosion-battered shore

The east end of the island at Shallotte Inlet historically accreted and eroded naturally as the inlet wagged back and forth between Ocean Isle Beach and Holden Beach up until Hurricane Hazel hit in 1954.

When the powerful hurricane – likely a Category 4 storm using the Saffir-Simpson scale developed in 1971 – made landfall in October 1954 near the South Carolina border, it caused the inlet channel to move in a more easterly direction, accelerating erosion at the east end of the barrier island.

Erosion has remained persistent in that area since the 1970s, according to N.C. Division of Coastal Management records.

The worst of the erosion occurred along about a mile of oceanfront shore beginning near the inlet. An encroaching ocean claimed homes, damaged and destroyed public utilities, and prompted the N.C. Department of Transportation to abandon state-maintained streets.

In 2005, the town was permitted to install at the east a wall of sandbags to barricade private properties and infrastructure from ocean waves.

Sandbags revetments are, under state rules, to be used as a temporary measure to hold erosion at bay.

In 2011, the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a decades-old state law that prohibited permanent, hardened erosion-control structures from being built on North Carolina beaches.

Under the revised law, a handful of beach communities, including Ocean Isle Beach, get the option to pursue installing a terminal groin at an inlet area.

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

These structures are controversial because they capture sand that travels down the beach near shore, depleting the sand supply to the beach immediately downdrift of the structure, stripping land that is natural habitat for, among others, sea turtles and shorebirds.

Ocean Isle Beach Sea Turtle Protection Organization Island Coordinator Deb Allen said that beach conditions east of the terminal groin have hindered turtles from nesting there this season. Escarpment, sandbags and debris that Allen believes is coming from the development have impeded turtles from accessing the sandy areas they seek to lay their eggs.

As of early September, the organization had recorded four false crawls, which is when a female turtle crawls onto a beach only to return to the ocean without laying eggs, and three nests east of the terminal groin, Allen said.

The potential for that type of impact to wildlife was argued in a lawsuit the Southern Environmental Law Center filed on behalf of the National Audubon Society in August 2017 challenging the Corps’ approval of Ocean Isle Beach’s project.

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

The lawsuit, which later included the town, came to an end in March 2021 after a panel of appellate court judges affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement, or EIS, examining the proposed project.

“As we went through and talked about the impacts of terminal groins in the EIS, this was the central argument – will the land east of the groin erode at a more rapid pace? And, everything we could point to, all of the science, said yes,” said Geoff Gisler, program director of SELC’s Chapel Hill office. “There’s only so much sand and the way that these structures operate is they keep more of it in one place and necessarily take it from somewhere else. That’s why we have seen over and over again that when you build a groin towards the end of an island, what happens is the island erodes at the end. That there is less sand going to the east end is not an accident.”

‘Righting this wrong’

Gisler said the SELC will be following how the town and the Corps respond to the erosion that is occurring east of the terminal groin.

“The town committed and the Corps committed to righting this wrong if it occurred and that’s what we’ll be looking at,” he said.

Under conditions in the town’s federal permit, the town is required to monitor the sand spit east of The Pointe as well as the town’s shoreline and that of neighboring Holden Beach to the west.

Should those shorelines erode past boundaries identified in 1999, “consideration will be given to modifying the structure to allow more sediment to move from west to east past the structure,” according to final EIS.

The town also has the option to nourish an eroded shoreline.

“In the event the negative impacts of the terminal groin cannot be mitigated with beach nourishment or possible modifications to the design of the terminal groin, the terminal groin would be removed,” the EIS states.

The Corps and the Division of Coastal Management are reviewing the monitoring report submitted by the engineering firm hired by the town, Coastal Protection Engineering of North Carolina.

That report indicates that erosion “has exceeded the 1999 shoreline threshold for the area immediately east of the groin.”

“However, the applicant is working on a modification request to alter this threshold as the shoreline had eroded landward of part of that threshold prior to construction of the groin,” according to the division.

A beach maintenance project scheduled for fall 2026 to inject sand west of the terminal groin is anticipated to increase the rate of sand that bypasses the terminal groin and “would serve to ‘feed’ the shoreline immediately east of the groin with additional material,” according to the town’s engineer.

But The Pointe’s developers and property owners say they can’t wait another year.

“There’s got to be an exception to the standard application restrictions (i.e., sandbag placement and height) the (Coastal Area Management Act/Coastal Resources Commission) process has today to protect near term east of the groin due to emergency status and a path longer term that can get us to a point of evaluating what we can do for the groin from a redesign standpoint that would protect all both west and east of the groin,” property owner Brendan Flynn said. “What we’re dealing with now in my view is we need to have another review of what could be done to enhance the groin’s performance to benefit and protect the other part of this island.”

Smith said that the terminal groin is doing what it was designed to do.

“It is building up right adjacent to the groin,” she said. “It just has not built anything far enough down to protect this new development. I wish Mother Nature would reserve herself and build it up right now instead of taking it away. I wish I had some magic bullet for them too, but I don’t today. It’s really up to them to take some action.”

Kerri Allen, director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s southeast office in Wrightsville Beach, called the situation “heartbreaking,” but not surprising. The Coastal Federation publishes Coastal Review.

“When you alter the natural movement of sand with a hardened structure like the terminal groin, you might protect one stretch of beach, but you inevitably put other areas at greater risk,” she said. “And, unfortunately, the erosion we’re seeing east of the groin is exactly what experts warn could happen.  That being said, the purpose of this groin was to protect existing infrastructure that was already at risk. Instead, new homes were built in an area that’s incredibly vulnerable and these homeowners are now facing devastating losses. Moving forward, we need to focus on solutions that don’t just shift the problem from one place to another and ensure that public resources aren’t used to subsidize these risky, short-term development decisions.”

“I think this is a pivotal moment for Ocean Isle and for other coastal towns,” she continued. “We have an opportunity to step back, look at the science, and commit to managing our coast in a way that protects both our communities and the natural systems that sustain them. That means resisting the temptation to build our way out of these challenges because, ultimately, the ocean always wins.”

Update 2 p.m. Friday: The Coastal Resources Commission special meeting scheduled for Monday to review comments and consider the adoption of temporary rules has been canceled. The meeting will not be rescheduled.

Original post:

The commission that directs coastal development is to meet next week to review comments and consider adopting temporary rules that would allow local governments to put in place measurement lines for dune building.

The Coastal Resources Commission will hold the special, virtual meeting at 10 a.m. Monday. Anyone can join the meeting online or listen by phone. There will be a listening station at the N.C. Division of Coastal Management headquarters office at 400 Commerce Ave., Morehead City.

At the August commission meeting, members approved the temporary amendments authorizing the establishment of measurement lines, provided the local government has been granted a permit to construct a terminal groin, and works with the Division of Coastal Management.

The measurement line would represent the existing location of the first line of stable and natural vegetation that is covered by the dune building and beach planting project, according to the division.

The full agenda and briefing materials are to be available on the commission website at least 48 hours before the meeting. Times indicated on the agenda are subject to change.

The Division of Coastal Management is under the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. The division carries out the state’s Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, the Dredge and Fill Law and the federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 in the 20 coastal counties, applying the rules and policies set by the Coastal Resources Commission.

The commission that determines development rules and policies for the 20 coastal counties meets later this month to consider changes to align existing development rules with recently passed state laws, including new looser requirements for replacing or repairing damaged or destroyed docks.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission, during its meeting set for 3 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 27, at the Beaufort Hotel, is also expected to consider four variance requests. The commission meeting is set to resume at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 28.

The public may attend at the hotel at 2440 Lennoxville Road in Beaufort or watch online. A full agenda and related materials are on the commission’s website. Times for agenda items are subject to change.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management serves as staff to the Coastal Resources Commission. The division carries out the state’s Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, Dredge and Fill Law and the federal Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 in the 20 coastal counties using rules and policies of the commission.

Two of the three rule changes on the agenda were directed by state lawmakers.

One previous rule had required a permit to replace damaged or destroyed structures. Earlier this year, the General Assembly eliminated that requirement.

“In the case of fixed docks, floating docks, fixed piers, or floating piers damaged or destroyed by natural elements, fire, or normal deterioration, activity to rebuild the dock, pier, or walkway to its pre-damaged condition shall be considered repair of the structure, and shall not require CAMA permits, without regard to the percentage of framing and structural components required to be rebuilt,” according to the new language.

Additionally, a replacement dock can be enlarged by as much as 5 feet or 5%, whichever is less, and its height may be increased without a permit. The change does not apply to docks and piers more than 6 feet wide, greater than 800 square feet of platform area, or adjacent to a federal navigation channel.

The other legislative directive is to allow for a measurement line to be established for dune-building projects related to permitted terminal groin construction.

A third rule change on the agenda is to adjust a deadline for a permit typically used by the North Carolina Department of Transportation to replace existing bridges and culverts.

The commission is expected to consider a variance request related to a soundside walkway wider than permitted at an event site in Nags Head. The division had previously authorized most of the proposed work at the site through a major permit application, except the proposed boardwalk. The boardwalk is part of a larger project for the town and Dare County Tourism to add public amenities to the site on Roanoke Sound with existing asphalt parking, as well as a gazebo, decks, ramp, office building, pier, platform, slips, and onsite septic systems. Petitioners requested permission to build a 10-foot-wide boardwalk over portions of coastal wetlands. The permitted width is 6 feet.

The other variance requests on the agenda include one from a restauranteur on the Wilmington waterfront looking to enclose a porch with vinyl wall panels, and there are two requests from oceanfront property owners in Pender County.

Also during the meeting, the division staff is to present a periodic review of the CAMA and Dredge and Fill Act permitting process with a focus on the major permit process. The committee is also expected to consider approving the fiscal analysis for the installation and maintenance of wheat straw bales for land fencing.

The commission is to hear from a subcommittee appointed to review the third-party hearing request process. This process allows any party except the permit applicant or NCDEQ secretary to challenge the commission’s decision to grant or deny a permit.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council will have its in-person only meeting before the commission at 1 p.m. Aug. 27 in the hotel. Also in-person only, the public comment period is at 5 p.m. Aug. 27. The chair may limit comments to three minutes per person.                                                    

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Storms largely drive sand movement along the Bald Head Island beachfront and sand is being lapped away at the east end, where village officials are considering building a terminal groin to keep erosion at bay.

The unpredictability in the frequency and strength of those storms were among several points of concern raised by the Bald Head Island Conservancy last week over the prospect of additional hardened erosion control structures on the Brunswick County island’s shores.

“So, we’re going to try and control something, which we don’t even know how to predict the future of, and we’re going to try and put something there that says we know what it’s going to do?” Chris Shank, executive director of the Bald Head Island Conservancy, recently asked the village council. “It’s not an easy system to understand. To think, if we put something in the way, can you block sand in that area for a little while? You probably can for a little while. How long will it last? We don’t know that.”

Shank was invited to make a presentation to the village council during its meeting Friday, wrapping up a week when legislation was introduced that would allow the village the option to add a second terminal groin to its shoreline and replace a series of fabric sand tubes with a field of rock structures.

Related: Bald Head Island seeks to change hardened shorelines law

The proposed revision to a statute that lays out the rules for the construction, funding and number of terminal groins permitted on the North Carolina coast bumps the total of allowable hardened erosion control structures from six to seven.

Language added to the law went last week before the Senate judiciary committee, which is expected to take it up for further discussion this week. That language defines a terminal groin as one or more structures constructed at the terminus of an island or on the side of an inlet, or where the ocean shoreline converges with Frying Pan Shoals.

This would give the village the option of building what it describes as a field of rock structures that would replace fabric sand tubes installed along the west end of south beach and a terminal groin at the east end of south beach. The sand tubes have to be replaced every few years.

A state-permitted sandbag revetment installed by a private country club known as The Shoals Club protects it from the encroaching ocean at the east end of the south-facing beach.

Shank played a video of a female sea turtle lumbering under the cover of night along the beach to the sandbag wall. With no place to dig a nest, she eventually turned around and headed back to sea, he said.

“We don’t want something like that to be a long-term measure, especially not in this area,” Shank said, adding that the sandbags are analogy for how rock structures might affect nesting sea turtles.

“We’re sharing the island with our wildlife and, look, I’m not unrealistic about the fact that we have massive erosion in that area. I get that. But we have to be smart about the future.”

Bald Head Island’s beach is federally designated critical sea turtle habitat.

The soft tube groin field rests on the opposite end of the south beach from the 1,300-foot-long terminal groin the village had constructed nearly 10 years ago. The groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the ocean shoreline, is designed to stop the movement of sand.

Bald Head Island was the first to build a terminal groin after the North Carolina General Assembly repealed a 30-year ban on such hardened erosion control structures on the state’s ocean shores.

Bald Head Island Mayor Peter Quinn made clear last week that village officials have not determined whether they want to go the route of having additional hardened structures on the island’s beachfront.

“It needs to be studied before anything is acted on, and this is a step toward making sure that it’s even a possibility before we do anything,” he said. “We’re working with the conservancy. This isn’t something we’re trying to steamroll or anything.”

Shank cautioned council members that, should they decide against building groins at the east end of south beach and the bill amendment passes in Raleigh, the door is opened for a future council to do so.

“I know that there’s a process involved, but it’s complicated,” he said. “By having this legislation passed you have created a pathway for somebody else to walk through and that is a major concern,” he said. “Once that pathway’s open, then what?”

The conservancy is a nonprofit organization that sponsors and facilitates coastal scientific research and offers recreational and educational activities to the public.

Shortly after Shank’s presentation, village council members approved a contract with Marinex Construction of North Carolina Inc. to place more than 1 million cubic yards of sand onto shore at the terminal groin fillet and the east end of south beach. That project is expected to begin later this year.

The village is sending out another round of bids for a project to replace the soft groin tubes on the east end.

The first North Carolina beach community to build a terminal groin after state lawmakers lifted a 30-year ban is looking at the possibility of constructing more hardened erosion-control structures.

The Village of Bald Head Island recently asked its legislative delegates to bump the number of permits the state can issue for terminal groins from six to seven, giving the Brunswick County island government the option of building a groin at the east end of south beach to curb erosion. This is an area where chronic erosion threatens The Shoals Club, a private club that has a state-permitted sandbag revetment installed on the property to help protect it from the encroaching ocean.

The village is also considering replacing a series of fabric sand tubes installed along the west end of south beach with a rock structures.

Proposed changes to the 2011 law were recently handed over to Rep. Charles Miller, Sen. Bill Rabon, both Republicans, and N.C. Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth Biser.

Biser and Miller visited the island May 17 after touring the Brunswick County water treatment plant’s reverse osmosis project, according to Sharon Martin, DEQ’s deputy secretary of public affairs.

“Secretary Biser appreciated the opportunity to meet with the local leaders and hear their concerns,” Martin said in an email responding to questions. “The visit to BHI was part of the Brunswick County visits arranged by Representative Miller for that afternoon.”

Language the village has drafted to amend the current law specifies that the number of rock structures that would replace fiber, sand-filled tubes would not exceed the existing number of permitted tubes or surpass the length of the longest existing tube.

“The structure(s) or field of structures may consist of groins,” the draft language states.

It is unclear if and when the drafted language might be introduced in the General Assembly.

Miller’s office did not respond to a phone call and email for comment. Rabon’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.

The existing soft tube groin field rests on the opposite end of south beach from the 1,300-foot-long terminal groin built nearly 10 years ago. The groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the ocean shoreline, is designed to stop the movement of sand.

Bald Head Island Public Information Officer and Deputy Clerk Carin Faulkner explained that the village is being proactive in exploring long-term, more cost-effective shoreline stabilization alternatives at the west end of south beach.

Fiber tubes must be replaced every four or five years, she said.

Bald Head is among a small number of Brunswick beaches that get sand injections from periodic dredging that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does to maintain the Wilmington Harbor navigation channel.

The sand the village receives is typically not enough to stretch along the entirety of south beach, leaving the east end sand starved.

“We have successfully proven that an engineered beach solution works to stabilize our shoreline,” Bald Head Island Mayor Pro Tem Scott Gardner said in a statement to Coastal Review. “The combination of soft groins, a terminal groin, and a sand management plan have demonstrated that by slowing the movement of sand from our beaches, we can protect our infrastructure and property, and improve habitat for wildlife. Our 2025 plan maintains the quality of shoreline stabilization on the west end of south beach and allow us to begin investigating the possibility of a similar stabilization plan on the east end of south beach.”

The 2025 locally funded coastal storm damage reduction project will place more than 1 million cubic yards of sand onto shore at the terminal groin fillet, the east end of south beach and used to fill new fiber tubes that will replace existing ones in the tube groin field on the west end.

The village has obtained the necessary permits for the project, which is ready to go out for bids, Faulkner said.

Sand for the 2025 project is being tapped from Jay Bird Shoals, a borrow source that is not projected to have enough sand to provide for the future needs of Bald Head’s ocean beach.

The village has thus far unsuccessfully convinced the federal government to allow it to use a portion of Frying Pan Shoals as a sand borrow source.

In 2017, the village applied for a federal permit to mine with a 460-acre area on the western portion of Frying Pan Shoals about a mile off the island’s southeast shoreline.

Frying Pan Shoals is a line of shallow sandbars trailing from the southeastern tip of Bald Head island some 30 miles into the Atlantic Ocean and is an area that has no record of ever being dredged.

This is an area that includes essential fish habitat, a federal designation that describes waters and substrate necessary for fish for spawning, breeding, feeding or growth to maturity.

Bald Head Island is one of only two beach towns authorized to build terminal groins since the General Assembly in 2011 repealed the longstanding ban on the use of hardened erosion-control structures on the state’s beaches. Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County built its terminal groin in the winter of 2021-22.

Figure Eight Island in New Hanover County, Holden Beach in Brunswick County and Carteret County ultimately decided against building terminal groins on their shores.

North Topsail Beach in Onslow County is developing a draft environmental impact statement examining potential options, including a hardened structure, for stabilizing its shore at the New River Inlet.

Coastal Review Assistant Editor Jennifer Allen contributed to this report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OCEAN ISLE BEACH – This Brunswick County beach town may be the first in the state to test whether bales of hay and pine straw are an effective alternative to sand fencing.

The North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission on Thursday granted Ocean Isle Beach a variance that will, with conditions, allow the town to place hay and pine straw bales at six areas on the eastern end of the island.

The town has agreed to monitor the bales and report back to the state Division of Coastal Management, or DCM, on their effectiveness at trapping sand to boost dune building and how well or not they weather coastal storms.

Ocean Isle officials must consult with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service before the division may issue a permit. Both wildlife agencies raised concerns about the use of bales as a sand management tool when the town applied for a Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA permit, last year.

Officials with those agencies question the potential impacts to habitat, including that of nesting sea turtles, as the bales decompose, and the possibility of bales being a haven for nesting insects.

The Wildlife Resources Commission last June stated that any impacts of bales on the beach are undetermined and should “be vetted prior to allowance.”

“The direct, secondary, and cumulative impacts bales may have on these resources coast wide is unknown and should be discussed in more detail prior to the inclusion of bales as a management tool by the NCDCM. No information has been found regarding bale use on ocean shorelines in other states, so previously studied examples cannot be compared,” according to the Wildlife Resources Commission.

The Coastal Resources Commission, which held its first meeting of the year in Ocean Isle Beach, agreed that while the town must consult with the Wildlife Resources Commission and Fish and Wildlife Service, the town will not be bound by concerns raised by those agencies.

Ocean Isle hopes the bales will build up dunes along what is now a flat stretch of beach leading up to sandbags placed in front of waterfront homes to hold back erosion at the east end of the island.

In 2005, the town installed 1,800 feet of sandbags along east end and in 2012 added another 400 feet. The town covered the bags with stockpiled sand to try and create starter dunes after a terminal groin was built last April on the island’s east end at Shallotte Inlet.

The Coastal Resources Advisory Council, an advisory board to the commission, visited Wednesday the more than 1,000-foot-long groin, the second to be built in the state after the General Assembly in 2011 repealed a 30-year ban on hardened erosion control structures on ocean beaches.

A terminal groin is a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the ocean shoreline and designed to reduce erosion at inlets. Engineers who met with members of the council at Ocean Isle’s terminal groin last week said that the structure appeared so far to be working as designed, but that it is too soon to determine whether it’s a success.

The lack of a dune system behind the groin leaves the east end of Ocean Isle vulnerable to storms.

Ocean Isle’s town attorney Brian Eades displayed pictures taken during and after Hurricane Ian swept up the East Coast last fall that showed ocean overwash on private properties and into streets at the island’s east end.

In the months prior to that storm, the town had tried, unsuccessfully, to buy sand fencing for the east end.

In this post-pandemic market of supply chain issues and inflation, the time it takes to get sand fencing is lagging and the cost to buy has risen.

“It’s a hardship and it’s a hardship unique to this town,” Eades told commissioners.

He said concerns raised by wildlife agencies are speculative and not supported by a peer-reviewed study. Eades also said he does not see the difference between needles from bales being on the beach and pine needles from dead Christmas trees, which are placed on some beaches to build up dunes.

In May 2015, some property owners of two lots on Figure Eight Island, a private island in New Hanover County, installed bales without state authorization. That August, the Division of Coastal Management issued a CAMA minor permit authorizing the use of hay bales in lieu of sand fencing.

The hay bales were on the beach only a few months before they were washed away by storms, according to the Division of Coastal Management.

If permitted, bales will be placed at six street-end sites along the shore under the same requirements as wooden slat and wire sand fencing.

Coastal Resources Commission Chair Renee Cahoon said, based on how the bales perform, they could “add something to the tool box.”

“We’ll never know until we try something,” she said.

Monitoring will include photographic documentation on a monthly basis, following the durability of the bales, and placing signs on the beach notifying the public that the bales are a pilot project.

In other Coastal Resources Commission business:

• The Coastal Resources Commission received additional information about proposed amendments to inlet hazard areas, or IHAs. IHAs are shorelines at inlets, which can shift suddenly and dramatically, making them especially vulnerable to erosion and flooding. The state is in the process of updating the fiscal analysis for the proposed redrawn IHA boundary maps. Though construction is allowed in these areas, there are building size limits and setbacks that must be met. The public will have more time to comment on the proposed amendments, including a public hearing, before the commission makes a decision.
• The commission discussed amendments to proposed rules on beachfront septic systems. One of the proposed rules would allow oceanfront property owners who can repair a septic tank without having to relocate it from having to obtain a permit. The commission also discussed setback requirements for property owners that have to replace their septic tanks.

The commission is scheduled to meet April 26-27 in the Outer Banks.

A Topsail Island board hopes to prompt change to a North Carolina law that requires beach towns to foot the costs of building and maintaining hardened beach erosion-control structures.

When the North Carolina General Assembly in 2011 repealed a 30-year-old ban on the structures, known as terminal groins, legislators determined that state funds cannot be spent “for any activities related to a terminal groin and its accompanying beach project … unless the General Assembly enacts legislation appropriating funds explicitly for such purpose.”

The Topsail Island Shoreline Protection Commission, or TISPC, has included in its goals for 2023 advocating for a change to state funding and local financing guidelines for terminal groins, a move that could benefit North Topsail Beach.

North Topsail is currently in a long-haul process to determine whether a terminal groin is the town’s best option in curbing erosion at New River Inlet.

TISPC Chairman and Topsail Beach Mayor Steve Smith said the commission’s move is part of a process that “would like to see if the possibility exists of the state reconsidering their position on funding.”

The commission, made up of elected officials and local government appointees from the island’s three beach towns and Onslow and Pender counties, functions as a collaboration to preserve the 26-mile-long barrier island’s beaches and surrounding waterways.

While each town has its own set of needs, the differences are perhaps most stark at each end of the island.

In Topsail Beach, the southern tip of the island has been accreting, building up an expanse of unspoiled, undeveloped land.

The scene at the island’s northernmost end is the complete opposite, where the battle against erosion is as constant as the ebb and flow of waves on North Topsail’s ocean shore.

Initial attempts to curb erosion at the north end began around the early 2000s.

In early 2013, the town had high hopes its decision to proceed with a project to realign the New River Inlet channel would adequately reduce erosion at the north end.

It did not.

By then, the state’s longstanding ban on hardened beach erosion-control structures had been repealed, leaving the town the possible option to build a terminal groin.

A terminal groin is a wall-like structure made of rock or other material placed perpendicular to the shore and adjacent to an inlet, at the island’s terminus, to control erosion.

Two North Carolina Beach towns – Bald Head Island, and more recently, Ocean Isle Beach – have built terminal groins since 2011.

The General Assembly’s decision more than a decade ago to repeal the ban on terminal groins was met with opposition from some prominent coastal scientists in the state and environmental groups, including the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which publishes Coastal Review.

They argue hardened beach erosion structures increase erosion farther down beach and are expensive to build and maintain.

Roughly a year after the New River Inlet channel-realignment project was completed, North Topsail Beach received an emergency permit to build a sandbag revetment at the northern end to protect homes and condominiums.

In all, about 3,600 feet of sandbags have been placed along the ocean shore from the inlet south to Topsail Reef condominiums.

“We are getting close to when we need to renew our permit,” said North Topsail Beach Mayor Pro Tem Mike Benson.

Benson, who is a sitting board member of the TISPC, emphasized that the town had not decided whether to build a terminal groin. In fact, no past boards of aldermen had voted to construct a terminal groin.

Coastal engineering firm Applied Technology & Management Inc., in 2018 presented to the town a recommendation to build a terminal groin spanning a minimum of 1,500 feet.

The next year, the Army Corps of Engineers signed off on a third-party agreement with North Topsail Beach authorizing an environmental engineering firm to serve as an independent contractor to evaluate all alternatives, including a terminal groin, at the inlet.

“We’re in the very beginning stages because (Hurricane) Florence came along and COVID came along,” Benson said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “is really just getting into this for us and they haven’t published a notice of intent yet.”

The initial estimated cost presented to the town to build a terminal groin was around $10 million, he said.

“We have no idea what the cost would be today,” Benson said. “We’re looking out to the future to see how we can get some state help.”

Legislators whose districts include North Topsail Beach did not respond to requests for comment.

North Topsail Beach elected officials in recent years have worked to prioritize spending to ensure the town pays off debt while funding capital projects and beach nourishment projects.

In 2021, elected officials there backed away from a proposed joint project with Surf City and the Corps that would have secured routine beach nourishment along the southernmost 4.5 miles of North Topsail’s ocean shoreline for 50 years.

The board said the town could not fund its more than $33 million of the project’s cost.

OCEAN ISLE BEACH – More than a decade, a lawsuit and a couple of extra million dollars later, the terminal groin on the east end of Ocean Isle Beach is complete.

Construction of the 750-foot-long groin officially wrapped earlier this month.

All that’s left to be done is getting equipment used during construction off the Brunswick County island. That’ll be done by week’s end if not sooner, certainly by the April 30 deadline.

The beach at the east end, where the island rounds to Shallotte Inlet, has a dramatically different look than it had in years past. A robust sand beach stretches some 200 yards or so between homes the terminal groin. Those homes had been dangerously close to the ocean.

A wall of massive rocks extends along shore out into the Atlantic Ocean. The beach here has been built up so that it is aligned with the top of the terminal groin.

The structure has attracted curious beachgoers and fishermen, so much so that the town has posted temporary signs warning them to look, not touch.

“We’ve ordered bigger, permanent signs,” Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith said after hanging up a cell phone call to a town employee.

The call was made on a recent, sunny, clear-sky morning as Smith, who offered a tour of the east end and the erosion-mitigation structure designed to keep an encroaching ocean at bay. She had called to alert the employee that a couple of “Keep off rocks” signs posted along the beach behind the terminal groin were laying on the sand.

Several hundred yards away, a small crew planted sea oats in uniform lines well back from the ocean tideline. Beach grass is to be planted in the fall.

“We’re going to put bales of hay to encourage dune building,” Smith said.

The town originally planned to install sand fencing as a way to build up dunes, but there is none for sale because of supply shortages, she said.

Portions of a wall of sandbags that stretches some 1,500 feet long remain stacked on the beach near homes. The bags are owned and maintained by private property owners. They were notified by letter a few weeks ago that they will now either have to remove the bags or cover them up.

Town-owned sandbags were covered once construction on the terminal groin began.

The bags have been part of an ongoing, seemingly last-ditch effort to keep the ocean from overtaking more properties at the east end.

The N.C. Department of Transportation abandoned the end of East Second Street years ago.

“There used to be a first street out here too,” Smith said as she drove toward the island’s eastern edge.

About a mile of the east end from the inlet down the ocean shoreline suffers most from erosion, Smith said, over the years claiming homes, damaging and destroying public utilities and roads. 

The groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the ocean shoreline, is designed to stop the movement of sand.

This function of terminal groins may be beneficial to the beach immediately behind it, but opponents argue the structures can create erosion problems downstream because they cut off natural longshore drift from reaching those areas.

Ocean Isle Beach is the second coastal town in North Carolina to build a terminal groin since 2011, when the General Assembly repealed a law banning construction of the structures along the coast.

The town’s efforts to install a groin were stalled in August 2017, when the National Audubon Society filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s approval of the proposed project. The town was later included in the lawsuit.

In late March 2021, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the proposed project.

Ocean Isle Beach had the necessary state and federal permits in February 2017 to have the terminal groin built so, once the court ruling was handed down, the town put out bids to hire a company to build the groin.

Construction began Nov. 16, 2021. At the same time, a joint project between the town and the Corps began to renourish about 1.5 miles of the easternmost beachfront with an estimated 700,000 cubic yards of sand.

Through the town’s 50-year Federal Emergency Management Act, or FEMA, project with the Corps, sand is injected onto the ocean shoreline about every three years.

“The engineering predicts (the terminal groin) will stretch that out every six or seven years,” she said.

It appears that property owners overwhelmingly support the project. When asked, Smith said she could not think of a single property owner who had spoken against the terminal groin. Opponents of the project, she said, do not own property here.

Despite the lawsuit, David Hill said he had a hunch the terminal groin would eventually be built so he bought a handful of properties on the east end.

“I didn’t have anything down here on the east end until two years ago,” he said. “I watched every one of these rocks go in. I always supported (the terminal groin) because I wanted to keep this beach. The people who don’t think it needs to be here probably don’t know the whole story of this end of the island. This is so needed. I wish it had happened earlier for some of the people who couldn’t save their homes.”

Hill said he was initially worried that sand on the east side of the terminal groin would erode, “but it’s building up.”

The $11 million project was originally estimated to cost somewhere between $9 million and $9.5 million.

The town paid for the project through an account designated for beach projects and funded through a portion of an accommodations tax charged to vacation renters

The groin includes a 300-foot-long anchor, a portion of which is covered by sand.

“It’s anticipated that the natural flow of the sand will cover this up,” Smith said, looking at the wall of rocks that were delivered on flatbed trucks from a quarry outside of Rockingham. That’s the case for the terminal groin on Bald Head Island, she said.

The Village of Bald Head Island was the first North Carolina coastal town to build a terminal groin after the state law was repealed to allow up to six groins to be built on the coast.

Bald Head’s terminal groin was completed in early 2016. The latest monitoring report, which tracked the performance of the terminal groin between May 2020 and May 2021, concluded that the structure was performing “as intended – and as predicted.”

The monitoring report was conducted by Jacksonville, Florida-based Olsen Associates Inc.

A village spokeswoman said in an email that Erik Olsen confirmed the groin continues to perform as intended and predicted.

North Topsail Beach in Onslow County is in the process of having an environmental study prepared for a proposed terminal groin at New River Inlet, a project that may be years out still in that town.

Two major beachfront projects to mitigate erosion and beef up the east end of Ocean Isle Beach’s shore are expected to be underway next month.

Once the environmental window for dredging and beach nourishment activities opens Nov. 16, contractors are set to begin building a terminal groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to shore. At the same time, a joint federal project will kick off to beef up the east end of the town’s ocean shoreline.

“We do hope to see activity on the beach the middle of November,” said Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith.

Though the two projects were initiated separately, the timing is such that they will be done together.

Ocean Isle Beach had the necessary federal and state permits by February 2017 to build a 1,050-foot terminal groin, 300 feet of which will be a sheet-pile, shore-anchorage section.

In August that year, the National Audubon Society filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the project.

A three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed last March a lower court’s decision that the Corps fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the project.

About two months prior to that ruling, Congress approved the Fiscal Year 2021 Work Plan for the Army Civil Works program.

That approval included funding for a Coastal Storm Risk Management, or CSRM, project.

Federal funds cover 65% of the project costs, with the town and state matching the remaining 35%.

According to information on the town’s website, Ocean Isle Beach submitted the 35% share of $3,045,000 to the Corps and requested the state reimburse half of that amount.

Last month, the Corps awarded a $6,675,000 contract to Norfolk Dredging Co. to dredge from a borrow area within Shallotte Inlet and place the dredged material at the far-east end of the island.

An estimated 700,000 cubic yards of sand is anticipated to be placed on about 1.5 miles of the easternmost beachfront, according to Dave Connolly, public affairs chief of the Corps’ Wilmington district. Ocean Isle’s ocean shoreline is about 5.5 miles long.

“The work will be completed simultaneously and it is likely the town’s contractor for the groin will start work on the groin and our contractor will start and pump sand behind the groin and fill out the template,” Connolly said in an email response to Coastal Review. “This portion of work behind the groin is a contract option fully funded by the town – we are doing this work for them through an Additional Work Memorandum of Agreement.”

The cost to the town, per that agreement, is an estimated $2.45 million and does not include the cost of constructing the terminal groin, according to information provided on the town’s website.

Of the two bids the town received in September to build the terminal groin, Coastal Design and Construction Inc. of Virginia submitted the lowest at about $11.4 million. Coastal Protection Engineering, the Wilmington firm the town hired to oversee the project, recommended Ocean Isle award the contract to the low bidder contingent upon the town receiving a North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit modification.

The state has granted the permit modification extending the deadline of the completion of the terminal groin from March 31 to April 30, 2022.

Smith said the request for an extension was made in the event of possible weather-related or equipment-related issues that could push back work on the terminal groin.

“Hopefully with everybody out there it will move quickly,” she said.

A news release earlier this month from the Wilmington District described how, by the end of the project, “the east end of the island will look drastically different and provide added benefits toward recreation, erosion protection and a potential habitat for sea turtles and nesting birds.”

Smith said that opting to have the Corps build up the beach behind the terminal groin cuts down on costs.

“It will save the town money on the terminal groin project because it will save some on the mobilization cost of the dredge,” she said.

Smith said she did not know the specific cost savings, adding, “It’s substantial money.”

The terminal groin is designed to reduce the erosion that has for years eaten away at the east end of the island, where a wall of sandbags 15 feet tall and some 1,500 feet long barricades the ocean from private properties, roads and public utilities.

“Our engineer and modeling reports do say that the terminal groin should extend the life of the (CSRM) project,” Smith said. “How many years we don’t know for sure.”

Dredging for the Coastal Storm Risk Management project is expected to end March 31, 2022.

A recent court ruling now opens the way for Ocean Isle Beach to build a terminal groin at the east end of its ocean shoreline and plans are underway to kick off construction later this year.

A three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s decision that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fairly considered the alternatives included in an environmental impact statement examining the proposed project. The judges rendered their opinion March 26.

Their decision ends a yearslong fight stretching back to August 2017, when the National Audubon Society filed a lawsuit challenging the Corps’ approval of the proposed project. The town was included in the lawsuit shortly after the suit was initially filed.

Ocean Isle Mayor Debbie Smith said in a telephone interview last week that she expected town commissioners to approve engineering contracts in the coming days.

She said the town will have updated information on the present condition of the shoreline, including surveys and beach profiles, before soliciting bids.

“All that has certainly changed since our original bid opening,” she said.

Smith said the town is aiming to start construction on the project in November.

Ocean Isle Beach had both a North Carolina Division of Coastal Management-issued Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit, and the necessary federally approved permit by the end of February 2017.

Those permits remain valid.

The Department of the Army’s authorization is effective through Dec. 31, 2027.

As long as the town adheres to the permit conditions and does not request to modify the permit, the town will not have to reapply for federal authorization, Emily Winget, a public affairs specialist with the Corps’ Wilmington District, said in an email.

The town’s CAMA major permit will expire Dec. 31. A spokesperson with the Division of Coastal Management said the town will not have to apply for a new permit or provide additional information to the state unless the town changes the project from what is currently permitted.

The town had advertised for bids on the project, which will include construction of a 750-foot-long terminal groin of large armor rock, before the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Wilmington.

The lawsuit claimed that the Corps had approved the multi-million-dollar project without fairly considering other alternatives that would be cheaper for the town’s taxpayers, adequately protect vulnerable properties and maintain wildlife habitat at the east end of the barrier island in Brunswick County.

The Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed the suit on behalf of Audubon, alleged that the Corps failed to fairly evaluate project alternatives in the EIS and secondary effects of the alternatives presented in the study. The lawsuit also alleged that the alternative selected by the engineering firm hired by the town to complete the EIS and approved by the Corps was not the least environmentally damaging alternative and that the Corps did not independently evaluate environmental information submitted by Coastal Planning & Engineering of North Carolina Inc.

Geoff Gisler, senior attorney with the law center’s Chapel Hill office, said the appellate court’s decision is disappointing.

“I think one of the things that is important as we go forward is that part of the reason the decision came out the way it did is that the court deferred to the Corps that there would not be harmful effects on the eastern end of the island,” he said. “If the town chooses to go forward with the project we’ll be watching to make sure that is the case.”

The terminal groin, a wall-like structure built perpendicular to the shore, would be designed to mitigate erosion along 3,500 feet of the town’s oceanfront shoreline west of Shallotte Inlet.

About 264,000 cubic yards of sand dredged from that inlet will be placed behind the structure once it is complete.

A wall of sandbags 15 feet tall and at least 1,500 feet long stretches along the east-end shore to protect private properties, roads and public utilities from erosion, Smith said.

“And I’m ready for them to be covered up and never seen again,” she said. “The town of Ocean Isle has worked diligently for a lot of years to try to make this a reality. They’re proven structures when properly installed.”

Those efforts began more than 10 years ago in a pursuit to get North Carolina legislators to ditch a decades-long ban on terminal groins, hardened erosion control structures that, opponents argue, may cause increased erosion down the beach from where they are constructed.

The North Carolina General Assembly in 2011 passed Senate Bill 110, which repealed a 30-year-old ban on hardened structures and allowed four test terminal groins to be built on the coast. That number was later raised to six.

Since then, only one town – the Village of Bald Head Island in Brunswick County – has built a terminal groin.

North Topsail Beach in Onslow County is in the process of having an environmental study prepared for a proposed terminal groin at New River Inlet.

WANCHESE — As Oregon Inlet continues to thwart nearly every effort to tame it, North Carolina Congressman Greg Murphy, a Republican from Greenville, is lending his voice to reviving pursuit of twin jetties to prevent sand clogging the inlet’s navigation channel.

“What we need to do is we need have the jetties built,” Murphy said at a brief press gathering Friday after touring Wanchese Marine Industrial Park. “That will be the fix.”

Despite being the subject of 40 years of battles from Manteo to Washington, D.C., the controversial Oregon Inlet jetty project was finally killed off in 2003 by the White House Council on Environmental Quality after a report the prior year that described economic and environmental concerns as unresolved. But it has since transformed into a mythical zombie, its huge shadow looming over frustrated attempts to harness the channel.

During a brief interview at the marine park office, Murphy explained that he had met several times with the Oregon Inlet Task Force Chair Jim Tobin, also a member of the Dare County Board of Commissioners, who had taken him to see the conditions in Oregon Inlet for himself.

The inlet, the only opening from sound to ocean between Virginia and Hatteras, has been badly shoaled from recent storms, making it hazardous for fishing vessels and charter boats to navigate. The authorized depth of the navigation channel is 14 feet, although the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has had difficulty maintaining the channel to that specification. With the new Basnight Bridge having multiple high spans, there is now flexibility to re-mark the navigational channel to follow best water, but shoaling persists.

Dredging, which can be costly and difficult to schedule, has not been able to keep up with maintenance needs.

“We’re putting good money after bad,” Murphy said.

The design of the proposed jetty project includes one, 2-mile-long jetty on the north side of the channel and a 3,500-foot-long jetty that would be attached to the existing half-mile-long south terminal groin. The project also would include a sand-bypass system to promote sand movement and prevent beach erosion.

Murphy said there’s an “exceedingly good economic argument” for the jetty project.

But for now, with dredging the only available solution to keep the channels open, he said he found more money to help. In February, Murphy submitted a special request for an additional $1.3 million from the Army Corps of Engineers to do more work in Oregon Inlet, Silver Lake Harbor, and New River Inlet, according to a press release.

“Dredging is an indispensable and critical service to eastern North Carolina’s commercial and recreational fishing industries,” Murphy said in the statement. “Livelihoods as well as our national defense depend upon navigable waters in the Third District.”

The congressman won a special election in 2019 to replace Rep. Walter Jones, who had represented the district for 25 years until his death in February 2019. Murphy was reelected to a full, two-year term in 2020.

Although he was not specific, Murphy said it was “suggested” that he visit the marine park, which opened in 1981, except then it was known as the “Seafood Park.” Originally, the park was supposed to be a hub for commercial seafood industries with trawlers moving local catch from the harbor out through Oregon Inlet to the ocean. But Oregon Inlet proved too unpredictable and difficult to maintain the channel depth required for the huge trawlers. Before long, most of the trawler fleet relocated to deeper ports, and by the mid-1990s, the park started its transformation to a premier boatbuilding location.

“It’s an amazingly well-run, well-equipped facility that’s not only known in North Carolina, but internationally,” Murphy said. “This is a gem for eastern North Carolina.”

Oregon Inlet, as legend has it, was named for the first ship that navigated through it — and promptly struck a shoal — after the inlet was carved out by a vicious hurricane in 1846. Ever since, the inlet has moved steadily to the south, at a rate of as much as 100 feet a year. Known for its powerful currents and fickle conditions, Oregon Inlet is regarded by coastal scientists and mariners as one of the most dynamic inlets on the East Coast.

In the brief time that Murphy made himself available Friday, he did not elaborate on what he would do to support the jetties.

In January, state Sens. Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan, and Michael Lazzara, R-Onslow, introduced Senate Bill 26. The one-page bill, “An Act to Clarify That A Terminal Groin Is Not An Erosion Control Structure And Therefore Is Not Subject To Limitations On Those Structures,” strikes out the words, “A ‘terminal groin’ is not a jetty.”

Rep. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, introduced a companion bill in the House. Hanig told Coastal Review in January that the measure was “a first step” to restart legislative action on the inlet and changes to the bill were possible.

As of Wednesday, both measures were still in committee, where they’ve been since early February.

Steinburg did not respond to multiple messages for comment and information about the bill.

“I stand ready to help in any way I can at the federal level.”

Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C.

Murphy said a jetty at Oregon Inlet would improve navigation.

“I am supportive of the effort in the North Carolina General Assembly spearheaded by Rep. Hanig and Sen. Steinberg to clear the path for this to become a reality. The inlet would continue to need further dredging, but I stand ready to help in any way I can at the federal level,” Murphy said Tuesday in an emailed statement his office provided in response to Coastal Review’s query.

Harry Schiffman, the vice-chairman of the Oregon Inlet Task Force, said in interview that he did not know the impetus for the bill in the North Carolina General Assembly. The task force was not aware of the legislation, he added, nor did it ask for it.

“My feeling was, well, there’s a lot of history out there on the meaning of these names,” he said.

In short, groins protect property, jetties protect channels.

At Oregon Inlet, a terminal groin — a structure built at the end of a piece of land — was built on the south side to protect the Bonner Bridge and N.C. 12 from erosion. Over time, sand built up — about 60 acres —behind the rock wall.

“So, it was very successful in what it was intended to do,” Schiffman said.

But Schiffman, who has spent his lifetime navigating Oregon Inlet, knows better than most how difficult it would be to not only get approval for the twin jetties, but to get the funding to build them.

The immediate hurdle is the fact that the U.S. Department of the Interior owns the land.

“The first thing that would have to happen is that the state would have to get control of both sides of the inlet because the DOI has always opposed the jetties,” he said. “Then you’d have to reengineer the project and there would have to be environmental assessments. All of that would have to be ramped up.”

Watermen started lobbying in the early 1960s for the twin jetties, which they argue would block sand from entering the inlet channel. In 1970, Congress approved the $108 million jetty project, but failed to fund it. But for the next 33 years, the lobbying continued, with proponents, including Schiffman, saying it would create jobs, save lives and allow for the inlet to be able to safely flush.

Environmentalists and scientists said it would harm fisheries and worsen erosion.

In 2013, the state created a task force to study acquisition of the inlet. But the effort fell flat, in large part because the federal government was not interested in trading or selling its land.

Schiffman said he believes the current plan that is underway to build a private-public dredge to maintain Oregon and Hatteras inlets is the most realistic option to maintain the waterways.  The Oregon Inlet jetty project would be a much heavier lift.

“What kind of success we would have, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m scarred and worn-out on that one. So, if (the dredge) fails, then only thing left is the jetties. And somebody else is going to have to fight that battle.”

RALEIGH — Legislation filed last week in the North Carolina General Assembly could help clear the way for federal assistance with the extension of jetties at Oregon Inlet and possibly secure funding for a proposed terminal groin at North Topsail Beach, according to state and federal representatives.

In an interview with Coastal Review Friday, Rep. Bobby Hanig, R-Currituck, said companion bills filed in the state House and Senate are a way to secure more federal help for the long-sought, controversial projects.

“I see this as a first step,” Hanig said, adding that he is still researching and getting feedback on the best route to restart a legislative effort on the inlet and may modify the bill.

The state and Dare County are already in partnership on a new dedicated dredge for the inlet, but it’s likely to take another two years before the vessel, which is being built in Louisiana, begins service.

Even then, Hanig said, dredging is not going to be the complete answer.

Hanig’s bill, and the measure filed in the Senate by Sens. Bob Steinburg, R-Chowan, and Michael Lazarra, R-Onslow, would exclude terminal groins from the definition of erosion-control structures under the state Coastal Area Management Act.

Hanig, the House Republican deputy whip, said the bill is the result of a request from staff for U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who is working on a long-term solution for chronic shoaling that makes crossing the ocean bar at the inlet increasingly treacherous.

“It’s really dangerous,” he said, recalling his own experiences trying get a boat from open ocean into the inlet. “You have to really know what you’re doing and even then it’s difficult. I’ve seen 30-foot boats in the air.”

Hanig, who chairs a new House committee on marine resources and aquaculture, said keeping the inlet open is crucial to boatbuilders, commercial and recreational fishing, and tourism.

In addition to the economic impact, the safety issues in the inlet put fishing businesses in peril.

“To me, it is just beyond unacceptable that people have to put their life in danger to go out there to make a living,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that way. It just shouldn’t be that way.”

Over the years, the state has struggled to find a solution to the navigation troubles at the inlet, but environmental and economic concerns have made that more difficult.

The state also has explicit language in terminal groin laws that prevents state funds from being used.

Hanig said the intent of the legislation is not to get around that ban.

“It isn’t my goal to have the state pay for a jetty,” he said. “My goal is to clear the path for the federal agencies to build the jetty.”

Even though a 2015 compromise allowed another four terminal groins to be built on the coast, high costs for local governments, engineering hurdles and environmental challenges have either stalled or killed most attempts in recent years.

Oregon Inlet also has a further complication, which is part of the reason for the bill.

“The sticking point is that with Oregon Inlet, it’s federal property on the south side and the north side is state property,” he said. “Senator Tillis, his office, is, trying to clear the path for them to step in and be able to help get the jetties put in.”

Hanig said restrictive 2003 legislation was meant to stop terminal groins from proliferating on the coast, but wasn’t intended to apply to Oregon Inlet.

Dare County officials have pushed repeatedly for an extension of the existing Oregon Inlet jetties and last year went on record again in support of revisiting the jetty extension.

In a statement emailed to Coastal Review over the weekend, Republican Congressman Greg Murphy of North Carolina’s 3^rd District, said he supports the state legislation and efforts to improve access to the inlet.

“As much as the eastern North Carolina economy relies on maritime travel, it is imperative for our waters to be navigable. Having personally visited Oregon Inlet to assess its needs,” Murphy said, “I am a strong proponent of the effort in the General Assembly to construct an additional jetty there.”

New River Inlet also in mix

Federal help could also be coming for a proposed terminal groin in North Topsail Beach at New River Inlet, which has repeatedly shoaled over the past several years.

A legislative fact-finding trip to the inlet in 2016 drove that home when one of the vessels carrying members of a House transportation committee nearly ran aground after attempting to get close to the mouth of the river.

At the time, Rep. Phil Shepard, R-Onslow, said he was trying to put together a deal between local and state officials and the Marine Corps to keep the inlet open.

Murphy said Sunday that the three-way effort is ongoing and noted that the Army Corps of Engineers is moving forward on studies while he’s working with local leaders on a funding plan.

“The USACE is currently working on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for public comment on this project. The EIS will be released in the coming months,” he said. “I will continue to work with the leadership of North Topsail Beach in exploring all funding options.”

HOLDEN BEACH – A terminal groin at the east end of Holden Beach was a given.

The town board had unanimously supported legislative efforts to allow the hardened structures at North Carolina inlets as a way to control beach erosion.

In the fall of 2011, the year the General Assembly repealed the decades-old ban on terminal groins, initially allowing up to four be built, town commissioners at the time passed a one-page resolution authorizing the town manager to apply for a state permit to build one at Lockwood Folly Inlet.

Word around the barrier island town was that the structure would cost a mere $1.5 million, that it would be funded by higher government and provide hurricane protection.

“Basically, all our dreams will come true,” recalled Tom Myers, president of the Holden Beach Property Owners Association.

When the organization decided to include the terminal groin as a topic in a 2015 survey of property owners, the feedback was clear – a majority of people could not make up their mind as to whether they supported or objected to a terminal groin. They wanted more information.

So those at the helm of the property owners’ association obliged, setting off on what became a collaborative information-gathering mission that would eventually turn the tide from “this is a must” to “this is not what’s best” for the town.

A Deeper Look

“We did not set out to kill the groin,” Myers said. “That wasn’t our objective. We set out to get to the bottom of the information.”

Ronda Dixon, who owns a home in Dunescape, a gated community at the far eastern end of Holden Beach, was one of the property owners who wanted to learn as much as she could about the proposed structure.

“It took a lot of time and effort of everyone’s part,” Dixon said. “It was a major, major project.”

The draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, on the proposed project was released for public review by the Army Corps of Engineers in August 2015.

The document was compiled by a firm hired by the town to examine the effects on inlet- and shoreline-stabilization alternatives.

It gave property owners their first real look into what was being proposed: a 1,000-foot-long terminal groin with an estimated $34.4 million cost associated with construction, maintenance and routine sand injections needed to supplement the structure over 30 years.

That information was brought to light during an April 2016 public meeting in the town, where about 150 property owners gathered in a local chapel and listened as coastal experts dissected the EIS.

A terminal groin would provide erosion protection to a much smaller number of homes than reported in the EIS, protect less than $1.2 million in tax revenue over 30 years and push chronic erosion at the east end of Holden Beach to spots further down the barrier island, experts argued.

“Honestly, it was the first time a majority of people heard from the other side,” Myers said. “We got criticized for it being one-sided. We invited everybody we could think of on the other side.”

Proponents of the proposed terminal groin, including representatives with Dial Cordy and Associates, the environmental consulting firm that compiled the EIS, did not attend.

“I think that meeting was the very beginning of when the tide started to change,” Myers said. “It started to snowball from there.”

“It was interesting because everybody who started to look at the facts started to come around.”

Tom Myers, president, Holden Beach Property Owners Association

The POA started to record a fact sheet, which included information such as the projected costs and the long-term maintenance and re-nourishment cycles associated with the proposed terminal groin.

“We tied every fact to either the draft EIS or the beach inlet report,” Myers said. “It was interesting because everybody who started to look at the facts started to come around.”

The property owners association’s 2017 survey revealed that about 80 percent of those polled either opposed a terminal groin or were still on the fence. Twenty percent said they supported the proposed project.

The survey results came in before the association hosted its meet-the-candidates forum held before the November 2017 municipal election. The seven candidates running for town commissioner were asked to state whether they supported or opposed a terminal groin.

“The five that came out on record that they were against it were the five who were elected,” Myers said. “I think that’s pretty telling.”

A Final Vote

Through the years, the property owners association has taken its concerns to commissioners related to issues including noise, parking and cabanas left overnight on the beach – typical topics in small beach towns along the North Carolina coast.

“(The terminal groin) was totally different because we were taking on a train that left the station and had taken on a whole lot of momentum,” Myers said. “What we were taking on was the system was against us. To take on something like that around was a lot more work. It took a lot more research on our end and lot more digging into the facts. It was going to have an enormous impact on our property taxes. It was probably the biggest financial impact to our members. We wanted to bring the town to the right decision and we wanted to bring the town to the best decision.”

In April, about a month after the final EIS was released, the town board unanimously voted to withdraw the town’s permit application with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Commissioners concluded that, “the total costs to the Town, its citizens and visitors of the proposed Lockwood Folly Inlet Terminal Groin greatly outweigh the potential benefits thereto, both financially and otherwise,” according to a resolution they unanimously adopted following their vote to revoke the application.

Holden Beach is the only North Carolina beach town to formally revoke its permit application to construct a terminal groin since the ban on the structures was repealed.

Commissioner Peter Freer said the town is not abandoning or ignoring erosion at the east end. The board is making sure there’s budgeted funds to get sand dredged from the inlet by the corps of engineers to place on the east end.

More than a year ago, the town completed the first phase of its $15 million Central Reach project, which pumped about 1.3 million cubic yards of sand along about a 4-mile stretch of oceanfront in the middle of the island.

Commissioners also established in April an inlet and beach protection board to serve in an advisory capacity to the town.

The town, the Holden Beach Property Owners Association and the Dunescape Property Owners Association recently received a North Carolina Coastal Federation Pelican Award for exceptional coastal stewardship.

“When I first got involved it was a foregone conclusion that a terminal groin was going to be built,” Freer said. “It wasn’t solve the problem of erosion on the east end, it was build a terminal groin. It took a long time to change that foregone conclusion to what I felt was an easy decision. From my point of view, it didn’t make sense technically, environmentally or financially. It was actually very satisfying that the process worked.”

Learn More

• Read the Terminal Groin Committee’s report and the town board’s resolution

HOLDEN BEACH – Holden Beach commissioners are withdrawing the town’s permit application to build a terminal groin at the east end of the barrier island.

“… the total costs to the Town, its citizens and visitors of the proposed Lockwood Folly Inlet Terminal Groin greatly outweigh the potential benefits thereto, both financially and otherwise.”

Holden Beach Board of Commissioners

During their regular meeting Tuesday night, board members unanimously voted to permanently revoke the town’s application with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Commissioners have concluded that, “the total costs to the Town, its citizens and visitors of the proposed Lockwood Folly Inlet Terminal Groin greatly outweigh the potential benefits thereto, both financially and otherwise,” according to a resolution they unanimously adopted following their vote to revoke the application.

Commissioners directed attorney Clark Wright, a special environmental lawyer hired last December by the board, to notify the Corps of Engineers of the board’s decision to “withdraw fully and cease any and all further processing of, or action on” the permit applications and associated National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, documentation.

Federation Applauds Action

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, publisher of Coastal Review Online, has been against the terminal groin since it was first proposed.

“It is great news that the town will not be pursuing this destructive process,” said Todd Miller, executive director of the federation. “Town officials have been receptive in listening to the negative impacts of a terminal groin, which are extremely expensive and not guaranteed to work.”

The federation noted in a press release that its opposition to terminal groins and similar hardened structures is because of the threats they pose to public beach access and natural habitat for endangered or threatened species, including sea turtles and shorebirds.

The town has spent nearly seven years and more than $600,000 on studies examining various ways to mitigate severe erosion at the Lockwood Folly Inlet.

The final Environmental Impact Statement, or FEIS, a study prepared by coastal engineers hired by the town and released by the Corps last month, identified a 1,000-foot-long terminal groin as the preferred erosion-control method.

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

What’s Best for the Town

Board members did not discuss why they chose to revoke the permit application before casting their votes, but the two-and-a-half-page resolution states that the analyses in the draft EIS and FEIS use out-of-date data, “without regard to more recent coastline and inlet changes.”

At the close of the meeting, Commissioner John Fletcher said everyone on the board thoroughly researched the environmental studies before making the decision to revoke the permit application.

“I think everybody made the decision on what they felt was best for the town individually,” Fletcher said. “My view is to keep the nine miles of beach beautiful.”

Engineers with Applied Technology and Management Inc., or ATM, identified a 700-foot-long terminal groin with a 300-foot-long shore anchorage system as the preferred alternative to shoreline erosion control at the island’s east end.

Fran Way, a senior coastal engineer with ATM, said earlier this month that the town would save $12 million over 30 years if it builds a terminal groin. During that April 6 meeting, Way encouraged commissioners to move ahead with obtaining the permits.

O’Neal Varnam, a Brunswick County resident who has been coming to the island for decades, asked commissioners Tuesday night to proceed with the proposed groin project.

“It would catch the sand,” he said. “This is something that’s really serious. We need to talk about it. You really need to think about this thing.”

Better Off Re-Nourishing

Opponents of the terminal groin have argued that the estimated $34.4 million cost associated with construction, maintenance and routine sand injections needed to supplement the structure over 30 years is too high a price tag to protect what would equate to protection of a handful of homes at the east end.

Several people who spoke during the April 6 meeting about the FEIS said the town would be better off re-nourishing the beach.

The town has been routinely pumping sand onto the eastern end of the 8.1-mile-long barrier island for 50 years. Sandbags have also been placed along the shore throughout the years as a temporary means to protect homes and properties.

About a year ago, the town completed the first phase of its $15 million Central Reach project, which pumped about 1.3 million cubic yards of sand along about a 4-mile stretch of oceanfront in the middle of the island.

The resolution commissioners adopted Tuesday acknowledged the Central Reach project and “significant beach nourishment on the East End, including beach nourishment utilizing low cost sand available as a by-product of the continued dredging of the Lockwood Folly Inlet at costs orders of magnitude lower than costs utilized by the USACE in the DEIS and FEIS.”

Ronda Dixon lives on an oceanfront lot at the east end. If the town had proceeded with building a terminal groin, the structure would have been built on a portion of her property.

“I think that (the permit application revocation) was the best possible decision for Holden Beach and for all the taxpayers,” Dixon said. “It was not done lightly. It was a tremendous amount of work and research that went into the formulation of that decision and I’m very happy with the result.”

Dixon said she suspects discussions about building a terminal groin at the east end will “come back again.”

“But at that time my hope is that they will start from scratch and look at updated data,” she said.

First to Back Out

Holden Beach is the first North Carolina beach town to formally revoke its permit application to construct a terminal groin since the General Assembly in 2011 repealed a decades’ old law banning coastal hardened erosion control structures.

The law allows for the construction of up to six terminal groins along the coast.

Bald Head Island is the only beach town in the state to build a groin since the 2011 repeal.

Figure Eight Island, a private barrier island in New Hanover County, got as far as seeing through the completion of an FEIS that identified a terminal groin as the preferred alternative at Rich Inlet. Property owners voted down the proposed project.

Ocean Isle Beach’s plans to build a terminal groin have been on hold since August when a lawsuit challenging that town’s FEIS was filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Audubon North Carolina.

North Topsail Beach in Onslow County is in the early stages of studying erosion-control alternatives at New River Inlet. Coastal engineer consultants hired by that town said that the preliminary preferred alternative to mitigate erosion at the northern end of town is a 2,000-foot-long terminal groin.

Learn More

• Read the town’s resolution

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND – The Army Corps of Engineers has released its final environmental study on Figure Eight Island’s proposed terminal groin project.

The publication yesterday of the final Environmental Impact Statement triggered the Figure Eight homeowners’ association’s board of directors to file for a federal permit to build a 1,500-foot-long terminal groin at the island’s northern end.

Before a federal permit may be issued, the proposed project must get the green light from several federal and state agencies.

The homeowners’ board must also obtain a Coastal Area Management Act major permit from the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management before construction can begin.

“We are preparing the state application now,” said David Kellam, Figure Eight Island administrator. “I certainly would say we will get it in in the next couple of months anyway.”

The Corps is taking public comments on the final study through Aug. 1.

The Corps will decide whether to issue a permit after the comment period ends and after completing its formal consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service over the groin’s potential effects on protected endangered and threatened species.

Those agencies are reviewing the project’s potential impacts to critical habitat to fish, sea turtles and shorebirds, including federally protected piping plover and red knots.

For nearly a decade, sand has accreted at the private island’s north end, creating what is now nearly 60 acres of unspoiled beach at Rich Inlet in New Hanover County. This sandy spit is a nesting, resting and eating haven for thousands of shorebirds.

Opponents of the project argue that the build up at the north end defeats a need for a terminal groin.

The channel in Rich Inlet historically shifts to a more northern alignment toward Hutaff Island, a move that is expected to occur in the future and prompt erosion at the north end, according to the study.

“It might be protected today, but there’s no guarantee that in the next year or two years or three years from now they will not be back in the same predicament,” said Mickey Sugg, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington office.

Figure Eight’s board says a terminal groin will prevent the severe erosion at the north end that the island has experienced in the past. A terminal groin is a structure made of rock or other material placed perpendicular to the shore adjacent to an inlet to stabilize the beach.

Environmental groups, including North Carolina Audubon and the North Carolina Coastal Federation, have been fighting the board’s proposal to harden the shoreline at Rich Inlet. The inlet is one of the few remaining natural inlets in the state.

Audubon, the federation and the Southern Environmental Law Center submitted several comments on the Corps’ supplemental environmental study questioning the need for the project and its potential harmful impacts.

Comments from those groups, federal and state review agencies and the general public, including more than 450 individual emails, were submitted during the supplemental EIS comment period last year.

In a number of comments from the fish and wildlife service, the federal agency stated that the Corps’ supplemental study did not adequately discuss the potential effects to designated piping plover critical habitat.

“The Service has concerns for the potential losses of nesting and foraging habitat due to both direct and indirect impacts, particularly within the Critical Habitat Unit,” the agency stated. “The [biological assessment] and final EIS should address the potential loss of designated critical habitat over time, as a result of the construction of the terminal groin.”

The final study states that modeling shows the sand spit north of the terminal groin would remain fairly stable and that, at the end of the five-year simulation based on 2012 conditions, the spit “was still a viable feature on the north end.”

The Corps released nearly a year ago a supplement to its 2012 draft Environmental Impact Statement after the homeowner’s board submitted a preferred design and location different from what was included in the original study.

The new design placed the structure 420 feet further north of the alternatives listed in the original study.

Figure Eight’s preferred alternative would extend about 505 feet seaward between mean high and low water lines. The remaining 905-foot anchor would span across the north end of the island, ending near the Nixon Channel shoreline.

The anchor will need to be built across upwards of 12 to 15 properties.

The HOA board will have to obtain easements from the owners of each of those properties.

Figure Eight Island is unincorporated, and the homeowner’s association doesn’t have the legal authority to condemn property. If even one property owner holds out, it could stall the proposed project indefinitely.

“We are in the process of securing easements,” Kellam said. “None have actually been written, but numerous property owners have agreed to them. Some of them have requested further conversation with us on it.”

The homeowner’s board will be meeting with those property owners after the July 4 holiday, he said.

According to state statute, a CAMA major permit application must include a copy of the deed “or other instrument” claiming title to the property.

Moving forward with the project without first securing the needed easements is a waste of money and everyone’s time, said Todd Miller, the executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation. “The Figure Eight Homeowners Association is like an emperor with no clothes in  its attempt to build a groin on private properties without getting landowners’ permissions,” he said.

The Corps does not require proof of land ownership in its application.

“When we receive a request, whether it’s this project or any kind of project, we’re under the assumption that they have received any easements they need to receive,” Sugg said. “If we issue a permit that doesn’t supersede any type of requirements for the applicant or permittee to go through someone’s property. Our permit doesn’t supersede anybody’s property rights whatsoever.”

To Learn More

• Final EIS

First of two parts

More than 4,500 feet of new terminal groins could armor the southern N.C. coast within the next few years. That’s a wall of rock, concrete and metal to stretch more than triple the length of the longest Navy supercarrier.

Of the proposed terminal groin projects in North Carolina under federal review, the shortest is 750 feet long. The remaining projects are no less than 1,000 feet long.

All will jut from public beaches, span navigable waterways and, in some cases, cross private properties.

Since the General Assembly in 2011 repealed a decades-long ban on hardened erosion-control structures on the beach, terminal groins have been at the center of a debate about the potential effects man’s engineering will have on the state’s barrier islands.

Not everyone with a stake to claim agrees a terminal groin is best for their island. That is particularly true of some of the property owners who may be asked to grant land easements to their local governments for the purpose of building these controversial structures.

If even one property owner holds out, the process for a town and, in one case, a private island, could become mired in months, if not years, of legal battles, stalled permit applications and delayed construction.

There is also the issue of building on public property, an issue that is being overlooked in discussions about terminal groins, said Mike Giles, a coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation.

“These groins, some of them are proposed to be anchored on private property, but they extend on public recreational beaches,” he said. “Does everybody in North Carolina agree on putting these rock structures on public property? They would be not only on public beach but in public waters. They keep saying these terminal groins will be buried, that you won’t see them. I don’t believe them. You can go to Oregon Inlet and see the structure there. For the applicant to say there’s not going to be a negative effect on these beaches, it’s incorrect.”

Bald Head Island

The anchor of newly built terminal groin at the Village of Bald Head Island is buried and future maintenance of the structure should ensure it stays that way, the village administrator said.

Bald Head Island is the first North Carolina beach town to build a terminal groin since legislators repealed the law in 2011 and allowed up to four structures to be built along the coast. During the legislative session last year, lawmakers upped the number to six.

The Bald Head project received state and federal permits to build up to a 1,900-foot-long terminal groin and did not require any easements to private property.

The first phase of Bald Head’s terminal groin – 1,300 feet long – was finished in early January.

“The idea is that we monitor it,” said Chris McCall, the island’s manager. “At a minimum, it might take two to three years if there’s going to be a need for phase two. We just really would like to sit back and monitor the performance of it. Once we get some actual data that supports it’s working we could certainly weigh in more. We’re only asking to try and correct a man-induced problem with an engineered design.”

Bald Head Island has for years dealt with its erosion-embattled south and west beaches where chronic sand loss increased with the widening and deepening of the entrance to the Wilmington Harbor channel.

McCall said 99 percent of the island’s property owners understood the need for a terminal groin as part of the village’s long-term beach maintenance plan, “so there wasn’t any real pushback,” he said.

In 2014, village voters overwhelmingly passed an $18 million bond to secure funding for the project.

The village did not have to obtain private property easements on which construction crews would need to access to build the terminal groin and no portion of the structure is on private land.

The location of the second phase of the project, should the village opt to add on another 600 feet, would primarily be in the water, McCall said.

Figure Eight Island

That will not be the case for Figure Eight Island, whose homeowners’ association’s board of directors wants to build a 1,500-foot-long terminal groin at the northern end of the private island in New Hanover County.

Figure Eight was the first community in the state to submit a draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, selecting a preferred location of its proposed terminal groin to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2012.

Pressed by environmental groups, the Corps last year released a supplement to the draft study after the homeowners’ board submitted a preferred design and location different from what was included in the original DEIS.

The new design calls for the structure to be 420 feet farther north of the alternatives listed in the original study.

The decision to move the proposed structure, according to some property owners opposed to the project, was made so the board would not have to obtain easements from homeowners who indicated they would refuse to grant easements to their properties.

Figure Eight is unincorporated, and the homeowners’ association doesn’t have the legal authority to condemn property.

The HOA board will need anywhere from 12 to upwards of 15 property easements.

“The number will be determined once the final location has been permitted and determined through the EIS,” said David Kellam, Figure Eight Island administrator. “Obviously, the terminal groin in its general location and general elevations has been engineered in preliminary forms. I’ve not looked in a long time into the actual number that we would be proposing to pursue in getting easements for. We are certainly waiting until we know the facts of the (final) EIS so that we’re not asking somebody to grant an easement without knowing for certain that we’ll need that easement.”

Holden Beach

According to information in the DEIS of Holden Beach’s proposed terminal groin project, it appears the 1,000-foot-long structure would cross two private properties.

Beachfront properties have actually accreted within the gated neighborhood of Dunescape at the far eastern end of the island where about 300 feet of the proposed terminal groin would be anchored on the shore.

The beachfront just below where the sand buildup has occurred has had chronic erosion problems for decades. What were once second-row beach homes on McCray Street sit on the oceanfront.

Holden Beach officials have said they do not think the proposed project will require property easements.

They are waiting for the final EIS to be released later this year before determining if easements will be necessary. Town officials have also not determined how to pay for the 30-year project.

The proposed $34.4 million project has its fair share of skeptics, including property owners and town commissioners who question whether a terminal groin will benefit the entire island or merely a handful of properties.

Ocean Isle Beach

Holden Beach’s neighboring barrier island immediately to the west, Ocean Isle Beach, is already is the process of gathering dozens of property easements for its proposed terminal groin project.

“We’re not looking at acquiring any private property,” said Town Administrator Daisy Ivey. “We’re looking at obtaining easements for the construction of the terminal groin and then maintaining it.”

The town earlier this year mailed out requests for 50 property easements it needs to access the construction site for the terminal groin and for future sand nourishment projects associated with the structure.

The town has to have the easements prior to applying for a Coastal Area Management Act major permit.

“We’re hoping to get it (the permit) in and approved to be able to go to construction this year if possible,” Ivey said.

Tuesday: Will town condemn needed property?

OCEAN ISLE BEACH – Pressure from environmental groups last week stopped coastal regulators from processing this town’s incomplete state permit application to build a terminal groin.

Officials with N.C. Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Coastal Management on Thursday reversed a decision to accept the application following objections by the Southern Environmental Law Center and the N.C. Coastal Federation. The groups argued successfully in separate letters to the division that the application could not be judged as complete until a required environmental study is finished.

The state officials previously said all requirements for the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA, major permit had been satisfied. The state law that allows terminal groins on the beach requires that applicants prepare an environmental impact statement, or EIS. The EIS that is also required by federal law for the dredging permit would meet the state requirement, but that study is still being reviewed by the Army Corps of Engineers and is not expected to be completed until late next summer.

Division officials originally said the Corps’ draft EIS, along with comments from various state agencies, would suffice but later changed their decision based on advice from the DEQ’s attorney, who reviewed the environmental groups’ stated concerns. Officials said their previous decision had been based on incorrect guidance.

Mike Giles, a coastal advocate with the federation’s office in Wrightsville Beach, said he was pleased with the outcome but troubled that state regulatory agencies do not regularly audit and review the laws and rules that govern their decisions.

“One has to wonder what other decisions that affect the protection of our coast have been based on incorrect information. Development of the former Mad inlet site and potentially illegal taking of public lands for private development at Sunset Beach come to mind,” Giles said.

The environmental groups had threatened a legal challenge if the division moved forward with processing the application. In his letter to the division sent Oct. 26, Geoff Gisler, the law center’s senior attorney in Chapel Hill, urged the division to determine that the application was incomplete. Gisler told Coastal Review Online that if the division had accepted the application, “I would characterize it as illegal.”

Gisler said the legal mandate for a final EIS is to provide full disclosure of the potential environmental effects. “When you look at these projects – they were banned for 30 years for a reason – there’s a mandate to take a deeper look at these projects to look at environmental impact and also make sure the public has a look at the impacts,” he said.

Ban Repealed

The longtime state ban on terminal groins along the beachfront to control erosion was repealed in 2011 when the N.C. General Assembly passed a law allowing four of the structures to be built. The legislature this year raised the total to six by allowing groins at Bogue and New River inlets. Bald Head Island has received a state permit and started construction. Figure Eight Island and Holden Beach are in the review process for federal permits.

Ocean Isle Beach filed its application to the Corps of Engineers in 2012 for a federal dredging permit to build a terminal groin to slow the chronic erosion problem on the east end of the 5.6-mile-long island. Past efforts to protect the beach from erosion had failed. About 45 homes are deemed at risk over the next 30 years, should past erosion trends continue. Of those homes, 18 are on the oceanfront row. Five homes have been lost to erosion on the east end of the beach since 2005.

‘Wholly deficient’

The review for the required state CAMA major permit involves a dozen or more state and federal agencies.

Gisler said that without the environmental impact statement, the proposal cannot be properly evaluated by those agencies or the public. The Corps released  the town’s draft EIS in January. It was “wholly deficient, with a multitude of errors,” Gisler said.

Gisler also focused on the lack of public disclosure. “The public still hasn’t had opportunity to review this project as required by federal law and state law. It’s clearly required and serves a central role in this process,” he said.

The federation expressed similar criticisms of the draft EIS in its comments submitted in March, calling it “misleading” and “flawed.”

“The DEIS does not provide the public and decision-makers with the thorough and comparable analysis of reasonable alternatives, thus confining the public information to narrow, selective and targeted information that supports only the preferred alternative. Further, the flawed document denies the residents of Ocean Isle Beach an unbiased analysis of the project so that they can make an informed decision about whether to fund this project with local funds,” the federation said.

The federation urged the Corps to issue a revised draft that addresses its concerns.

The Town’s Risk

Doug Huggett, who manages major CAMA permit applications for the Division of Coastal Management, responded Wednesday to the law center’s complaint. He defended the initial decision to accept the application, saying the legislation allowing terminal groins “can be confusing.” State and federal agencies completed their review of the draft EIS in March, Huggett noted in his written response. But the review did not address the comments received, as required for the final document.

When that review was completed, the division told Ocean Isle that it could apply for its state permit with the caveat that the final EIS, also required under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, could lead to changes.

“The division cautioned that the town that it was assuming the risk, if it chose to apply before the NEPA process was completed, that additional CAMA authorizations could be required if the final EIS review resulted in changes to the various aspects of the proposed project,” Huggett noted. “In this case, the town chose to accept this risk and to move forward with the permit application process.,”

Gisler on Wednesday countered Huggett’s letter, saying the process is not complete until the final EIS is circulated. A final EIS is required because “it is essential to the law’s underlying purpose, disclosure of environmental impacts.” Responses to comments must be included in the final EIS, he added.

HOLDEN BEACH — Two environmental groups weighed in this week on this beach town’s plan for a terminal groin to combat erosion. One group focused on the project’s possible effects on birds while the other criticized the proponents’ science and the environmental review process.

The terminal groin proposed for the east end of the island will have “significant and lasting” ill effects on birds and other wildlife and fail to stop erosion at the east end of the beach, the National Audubon Society’s state office noted in its comments on the project. The N.C. Coastal Federation also submitted comments this week, mainly taking issue with procedural and scientific shortcomings of the study. The 45-day comment period on the study made public in August ended Tuesday.

Walker Golder, Audubon N.C. deputy director, submitted the comments Monday to the Army Corps of Engineers’ Wilmington office regarding the draft environmental impact statement, or DEIS, for the plan known officially as the “Holden Beach East End Shore Protection Project.”

The Brunswick County beach town’s preferred plan, known as Alternative 6, is to build a roughly 1,000-foot-long terminal groin at the east end of Holden beach and begin a beach renourishment regime that would place between about 120,000 and 180,000 cubic yards of sand on the beach. The sand would come from a site at the crossing of the Intracoastal Waterway and Lockwood Folly Inlet. Renourishment would be needed about every four years, according to the DEIS.

“This alternative, as well as other alternatives that include the construction of a terminal groin or any other hard structure … will have significant and lasting negative direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts on birds and other wildlife that depend on the dynamism of mid-Atlantic coastal inlets at critical points in their life cycles,” Golder writes in the letter.

The Coastal Federation said in its letter the Corps cannot issue a final environmental study until it complies with the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, requirements and other federal laws.

“The Corps has failed to comply with the requirements established by NEPA and with other federal laws. The DEIS is replete with deficiencies that must be addressed,” according to the Coastal Federation’s letter.

The organization’s letter says the Corps’ study does not provide an objective analysis, rather it provide justification for decisions already made.

“The … (Corps) does not provide the public and decision-makers with a thorough and comparable analysis of reasonable alternatives, thus confining the public information to narrow, selective and targeted information that supports only the preferred alternative,” according to the Coastal Federation’s comments.

Supporters of the project say it’s needed as a long-term solution to the erosion problem that has claimed more than two dozen homes on the east end of the beach during the past 25 years. Some environmental advocates say they also see potential benefits.

Holden Beach Mayor Alan Holden said he and other town officials are sensitive to the concerns about birds and wildlife, but also bear the responsibility for protecting taxpayers’ investments and the infrastructure on the island. There’s a balance, Holden said.

“We try to do everything we can to comply with all regulations and take care of our natural assets. We’re not going to do anything to jeopardize that, knowingly,” Holden said. “As far as I know, we are in good standing with all of the environmental departments that monitor those kinds of things and we want to continue to stay in good standing.”

Holden said the east end of the beach has long a trouble spot for erosion but efforts to stabilize the beach have been somewhat successful. The groin would further stabilize the beach, he said. The strand meets the criteria as an engineered beach, as defined by federal agencies that regulate renourishment projects.

Working to protect the homes all along the nine miles of beachfront is important to the local and statewide economy, Holden said. “We have to do all we can. We’re trying to work with nature; we’ve studied drifts, east and west, and we think we’re ion the right path,” he said.

Those who oppose terminal groins say they may help stop erosion in the areas where they are built but usually cause increased erosion farther down the beach because of the interruption of the natural movement of sand.

Terminal groins were prohibited in North Carolina for 30 years until 2011, when the N.C. General Assembly passed a bill that allowed up to four “test” terminal groins to be built on state beaches. Holden Beach was one of four coastal communities to apply to the Army Corps of Engineers to build a terminal groin under the new law. The other applicants were Figure Eight Island, Ocean Isle Beach and Bald Head Island.

This year, the legislature, without waiting to see how the “test” projects worked – construction has begun on only the Bald Head Island structure, so far – allowed two more terminal groins to be built, raising the total number to six. The latest provision specifies the locations for the two additional projects as North Topsail Beach and Bogue Inlet.

Environmental groups generally oppose terminal groins, saying erosion is a natural process and stopping that movement of sand has ill effects elsewhere along the beach. That’s a focal point in Golder’s comments on behalf of the Audubon Society.

He writes that the DEIS takes a “make them go somewhere else” approach when addressing the effects on birds of the preferred alternative and most other alternatives. “It perpetuates the common misconception that breeding and non-breeding shorebirds and waterbirds have alternative places to go when habitat is lost and that, because birds have wings, they will simply move somewhere else,” Golder notes. “The truth is, the birds are already occupying alternative locations. They have been relentlessly forced to abandon high-quality habitats throughout their range because of habitat loss and degradation.”

According to Golder, the loss of habitat is reflected in the elevated conservation status of many of the bird species that depend on inlets and barrier islands, including those that depend on Lockwood Folly Inlet. Nearly all can be found on state or federal lists of threatened and endangered species.

Terminal groins are designed to stop the movement of sand along the shore. Golder cites studies that show terminal groins actually accelerate erosion of the shoreline downdrift of the structure and notes that more frequent renourishment would be needed.

“The near certainty that Holden Beach will need to mine sand from Lockwood Folly Inlet and replenish the downdrift beach on Holden Beach more frequently than every four years has not been accurately assessed in the DEIS,” according to Golder.

Golder also cites threats to sea turtles from renourishment. Tony Marwitz, president of the Holden Beach Turtle Watch, or Turtle Patrol as the volunteer organization that works to protect sea turtles is better known, disagrees with Golder’s assessment. Marwitz, who has been active in the group for nearly 20 years, said renourishment isn’t a threat.

“Renourishment can’t be done during nesting season, they’re prohibited from doing that,” Marwitz said. “I’m not concerned about beach renourishment affecting turtle nests.”

Nesting season runs from May through October. That’s when female turtles dig nests to lay their eggs along the N.C. coast. According to the N.C. Fish and Wildlife Service, sea turtles dig about 775 nests on N.C. beaches each year, and all sea turtles that nest on U.S. beaches are listed as threatened or endangered. This season saw 53 nests on Holden Beach.

The Turtle Patrol and its roughly 65 members operate under the authority of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, searching during nesting season for turtle crawl tracks in the sand and following the path to find the eggs. If the nests are in an unsafe location, the group moves the eggs to a safer part of the beach. There, the new nest site is covered with a protective grating and marked off with stakes, ribbons and warning signs. The group then continues to monitor the nest for the next 50-70 days of incubation until the eggs hatch, at which time patrol members begin nightly watches until the hatchlings make it safely to the ocean.

Marwitz said the terminal groin project would benefit turtles and other wildlife by stabilizing the habitat.

“Our beach has changed drastically. It’s mobile with a fair amount of erosion. We’ve had nests erode, literally get washed away, during storms. Anything for a stable, more consistent beach would be much more beneficial to the turtles,” Marwitz said.

Erosion is a problem on both ends of the beach, Marwitz said, but the problem is most severe at the east end.

“If nests are laid there, we have to move them. We can’t really leave them there because there’s no beach. The tide goes up to the dune line,” he said.

A greater area of sand would benefit shorebirds, as well, Marwitz said. “I am assuming the terminal groin will do what the people tell me it will and build a more stable beach,” he said. “I don’t see how the construction of the terminal groin can be detrimental to the turtles or the birds. The purpose of the terminal groin is to make the habitat larger and more stable. How can that be a detriment?”

It could be, depending upon where the new area of erosion is after the terminal groin is built. Golder points out that terminal groins and other coastal engineering projects affect inlets and adjacent beaches. The environmental study falls short in addressing those effects, according to Golder.

“The DEIS fails to cite the applicable, most recent scientific literature and fails to accurately describe the impacts a terminal groin, beach renourishment, and inlet channelization would have on Lockwood Folly Inlet and adjacent areas. Some of the impacts that are insufficiently addressed are the narrowing of downdrift oceanfront beach, loss of sediment from the inlet system, impacts to spits at ends of adjacent islands, loss of critical wildlife habitat, and cumulative impacts of the alternatives,” according to Golder.

Golder notes it is well documented that terminal groins accelerate erosion of the shoreline downdrift of the structure.

The terminal groin’s effect on sand movement would also affect fisheries and other wildlife, recreation and the local economy, according to Golder. “These impacts and the loss of saltmarsh resulting from removal of sand from Lockwood Folly Inlet have not been assessed for the preferred or other alternatives in the DEIS,” Golder writes.

The inlet has been a problem for mariners for years and requires nearly annual dredging. The channel was most recently dredged in February-March this year. By June, mariners were reporting shoaling had returned with only mid- to high-tide passage recommended.

Holden said the inlet crossing is a big concern locally and especially for the Army Corps of Engineers, which is charged with maintaining navigation.

“It’s just about impossible for barges to navigate from the north end of North Carolina to the south end through the waterway these days,” Holden said, adding that a project that mutually benefits the Corps and the beach town is a good deal for taxpayers. He said there is a history of cooperation among various interests involved.

“If we all work together like we’ve been doing its better for everyone,” Holden said.

Learn More

Comments by Audubon N.C.

Comments by the N.C. Coastal Federation

HOLDEN BEACH – The fourth and, at least for the moment, last federal draft environmental study to build a terminal groin on a North Carolina beach is out for review.

The Army Corps of Engineers recently released its draft Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, for the proposed construction of a terminal groin on the east end of Holden Beach in Brunswick County.

The town’s preferred project includes a 1,000-foot-long structure that would extend about  700 feet into the ocean. The remainder would anchor the groin to shore. The proposed project would be within the Lockwood Folly Inlet and encompass about a mile of oceanfront shore.

Under the shoreline protection plan, Lockwood Folly would be dredged every four years for the purpose of beach re-nourishment.

Like other beach towns along the coast seeking similar projects, officials in Holden Beach believe a terminal groin will relieve the east end of chronic erosion. Holden Beach Mayor J. Alan Holden did not return calls seeking comment.

Holden Beach is the fourth North Carolina coastal town to apply for an application to build a terminal groin. The town may be the last to do so, according to current state law, which allows four hardened structures to be built on the coast following a 30-year ban lifted in 2011.

“We’ve reached our limit,” Emily Hughes, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington district, said last week. “This is the final one.”

A special provision recently tucked into the state budget, which continues to be in negotiations, would raise the limit to six, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

Rep. Pat McElraft, R-Carteret, told Coastal Review Online earlier this month that the Senate injected the provision during deliberations over funding to keep Oregon Inlet from clogging up due to shoaling. Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow, one of the N.C. Senate’s budget writers, later confirmed that a provision will be included in the budget but that it would allow groins to be built at New River and Bogue inlets.

The subject of weeks of meetings, a proposed state budget for 2015-16 is expected to be released today.

Environmental groups such as the N.C. chapter of the Sierra Club oppose lifting the cap on terminal groins, saying that such a major policy change should be openly discussed.

Construction of a terminal groin on Bald Head Island in Brunswick County is underway. Federal environmental studies for Figure Eight Island, a private community in New Hanover County, and Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County are ongoing.

In Holden Beach, town-sponsored projects have pumped a little more than 825,000 cubic yards of sand on the east end beach, but it has primarily depended on federal navigation maintenance dredging projects to re-nourish the two-mile stretch of beach where the highest erosion occurs.

Facing an uncertain future of federal funding for beach nourishment projects, the town decided to pursue a 30-year shore protection project.

“Rather than just alone depending on the federal projects and the scheduled beach re-nourishment projects they’re looking at this as an additional, more long-term project,” Hughes said.

According to the draft EIS, the average long-term erosion rate along the east end of Holden Beach is among the highest in the state. That rate ranges from three feet to eight feet a year.

Within the past two decades, erosion has destroyed nearly 30 oceanfront properties, including houses and town infrastructure.

A 2010 report produced by the coastal engineering firm Moffatt & Nichol determined that more than $27 million in property is at risk on the beach west of Lockwood Folly Inlet.

The draft EIS includes a handful of project alternatives, the preferred of which is a groin built of four-foot to five-foot in diameter granite armor stone to allow sand to pass through the structure.

The proposed project will not impact wetlands, according to the draft study. A portion of the rock wall crossing dry beach would be buried, the study states, to maintain recreational beach access.

“The modeling really didn’t result in any adverse affects on the neighboring shorelines,” Hughes said. “Looking at it we don’t foresee any major objections from the resource agencies.”

The Corps has not formally initiated the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, consultation process with federal agencies that oversee the protection of endangered and threatened wildlife, including the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“That process should be starting in the next month,” Hughes said.

The Corps will host a public hearing on Holden Beach’s proposed project at 6 p.m. on Sept. 24 in Holden Beach Town Hall. The public may submit written comments on the Corps’ draft EIS through Oct. 13.

A final EIS is expected to be released sometime next year.

If the town receives the required federal and state permits to build a terminal groin, construction may begin during the winter of 2017, Hughes said.

Learn More:

Army Corps of Engineers Major Projects

Holden Beach Draft Environmental Impact Statement

WILMINGTON — An update to a 2012 federal study of a proposed terminal groin at Figure Eight Island details a new preferred design that includes a structure that is longer, bigger and about 420 feet farther north of the alternatives listed in the original study.

The Army Corps of Engineers has released its supplemental draft Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, of the newest terminal groin design and location preferred by the island’s homeowners association’s board of directors.

Pressed by environmental groups, the Corps decided to amend its draft EIS more than a year after the Figure Eight Island Homeowners Association’s board agreed on a revised project alternative well after the public comment period ended for the draft study.

The amended study’s release starts a 45-day public comment  that ends Aug. 24.

The Corps does not plan to hold a public hearing on the updated study, said Mickey Sugg, project manager with the Corps’ Wilmington office. “At this time we don’t feel that it’s necessary,” he said.

That may change if the Corps receives requests for a public hearing on the supplemental EIS, Sugg said.

Skipping a public hearing would be a disservice to the public, opponents of the proposed terminal groin argue.

A major concern of project critics is that the Corps’ has yet to formally start the required consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about threatened and endangered species that use Rich Inlet as critical habitat.

“That should happen as early in the draft process as possible,” said Mike Giles, a coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation. “How can they issue the draft EIS almost two years ago without this formal consultation? They don’t have the full picture.”

The federation and Audubon North Carolina last year sent a letter to the Corps through the Southern Environmental Law Center asking the agency to initiate consultation.

“They’ve had plenty of time to start the consultation process,” said Geoff Gisler, a senior attorney with the SELC. “The failure to include any discussion of consultation prior to this supplement is really hard to explain, particularly when an EIS is to provide the public information.”

Sugg defended the Corps’ decision to wait. “If we initiated consultation prior to the draft EIS then in all likelihood we would have to amend the biological assessment again,” he said. “We have been informally consulting with Fish and Wildlife. We have been doing that since the beginning. Fish and Wildlife has been notified of the changes and they’ve been part of the project from the very beginning.”

Since 2006, sand has accreted at the north end, creating what is now nearly 60 acres of unspoiled beach. The accretion of sand on the north defeats a need for a terminal groin, opponents say.

“The reality of Figure Eight right now is there is a lot more beach than there used to be,” Gisler said. “The Corps can’t dismiss the reality of what’s on the ground.”

The spit at the north end where the 1,500-foot rock groin would be built is critical habitat to thousands of shorebirds, including piping plover and red knots, which are protected under federal law.

If a terminal groin is built on the north end, at least some portion of the spit would wash away. That habitat loss will likely affect foraging and roosting behavior of shorebirds, according to the supplemental study.

“Birds use habitats throughout the inlet,” said Lindsay Addison, a biologist with Audubon North Carolina. “They use the entire inlet. They use the backside, the inner tidal portion of that spit. The loss of that spit, which is what the terminal groin would seem to produce, represents significant loss for piping plovers, red knots and all other shorebirds that use Rich Inlet.”

The bar channel in Rich Inlet historically shifts to a more northern alignment toward Hutaff Island, a move that is expected to occur in the future and prompt erosion at the north end, according to the study.

“The conditions are favorable right now for an unknown period of time, but we know that will change and the erosion will return,” said David Kellam, the Figure Eight Island administrator.

Kellam said the homeowners association’s board has not started the process of obtaining rights-of-way needed to build a terminal groin across properties at the north end.

The board will have to get rights-of-way from anywhere from eight to 12 properties, he said.  “It all depends upon where we built it,” Kellam said.

Since the island is not incorporated, the board cannot take the necessary land through eminent domain.

Kellam said the board would like to be in a position to build a terminal groin once it has received all of the state and federal permits required for construction.

The cost to build the terminal groin, based on very preliminary estimates, is between $2.5 million and $4 million, he said.

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Learn More

Supplemental EIS: http://www.saw.usace.army.mil/Missions/RegulatoryPermitProgram/MajorProjects/SEISFigure8.aspx

WILMINGTON – A planned terminal groin on one of North Carolina’s few remaining natural inlets could wipe out a premier nesting area for least terns, a type of small shorebird already endangered by human activity.

The threat comes as least tern populations are showing some signs of recovery here after being nearly wiped out by hunting decades ago and more recently by coastal development.

“The north end of Figure Eight Island is just once again gangbusters,” said Lindsay Addison, an Audubon North Carolina coastal biologist.

The spit of unspoiled beach stretching from the developed north end of the private island to Rich Inlet is critical habitat to thousands of shorebirds, including threatened piping plovers.

It’s also where the Figure Eight Island Homeowner’s Association Board of Directors wants to build a terminal groin to protect homes from beach erosion, a move environmentalists fear would eventually wipe away much of the roughly 60-acre spit.

A supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS, for the proposed project is expected to be released in the coming weeks by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We’re reviewing it right now and we’re on the final end,” said Mickey Sugg, project manager in the corps’ Wilmington district office. “We’re pushing for certainly within a month.”

Projections by engineers hired by the island’s homeowners association to design a terminal groin project show that the spit of beach crucial to shorebirds will eventually erode away if a groin is built.

The modeling “assumed a worst-case scenario for inlet dynamics,” according to the association’s board of directors, which argues that a groin may instead help protect nesting habitat.

Figure Eight Island Administrator David Kellam did not respond to a request for comment.

Mike Giles, a coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation, said that altering the inlet will destroy the natural process vital to shorebirds.

“Rich Inlet represents how Mother Nature can actually take care of our coast,” Giles said. “The spit has grown and has provided an unbelievable piece of habitat for wildlife and for people. This is a public treasure that should be protected and not destroyed by a small, private group of homeowners.”

Last year, 840 pairs of least terns – the largest colony in North Carolina in more than 40 years – nested on Figure Eight’s north end.

“Pretty much all the least terns in the Cape Fear region were at that site,” Addison said.

The numbers, which were not immediately available, aren’t expected to be quite as big there this year primarily because least tern nests are more evenly distributed in other areas, including Lea-Hutaff Island, Fort Fisher and the northern and southern ends of Wrightsville Beach.

This year, 232 nesting pairs of least terns have been documented on the southern end of Wrightsville Beach. That’s well below the 597 nesting pairs documented in 2012, but significantly higher than 2014.

“Last year we had five pairs that tried to nest and failed and they failed primarily due to disturbance from the dredging re-nourishment project,” Addison said. “We’re very happy that they’re back. It’s just so important that they have multiple places that they can use.”

Rich Inlet sways between the north end of Figure Eight and Lea-Hutaff Island, one of the state’s few remaining un-bridged, undeveloped barrier islands.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designates the land created by the inlet’s movement as “critical nesting habitat” for threatened piping plovers.

There is at least one confirmed piping plover nest on the northern end of Figure Eight Island, said Sara Schweitzer, coastal water bird biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

“These southern beaches we’ve just had one nest pop up here and there the past several years,” she said. “The southern beaches are much more developed than those further north, including our national seashores. The piping plover seems to be super sensitive to that disturbance.”

Rich Inlet is a “very important” area for nesting and migration, Schweitzer said.

“I’m pretty sure from the resource side of the story we would be pretty concerned with the impacts of a hardened structure on that site,” she said. “Something that’s as permanent as a groin is going to undergo a lot of scrutiny.”

The wildlife commission along with other federal and state agencies that protect natural resources  has yet to have that opportunity.

“That’s a concern,” said Giles.

The corps should have initiated formal consultation with the agencies that oversee the protection of endangered and threatened wildlife long before now, Giles said. The corps released the draft EIS in May 2012.

A final EIS should not be issued without completing the required consultation under Section 7 of the federal Endangered Species Act, according to a federal rule issued by the Council on Environmental Quality, which establishes uniform standards for federal environmental impact statements.

The rule states that “to the fullest extent possible, agencies shall prepare draft environmental impact statements concurrently with and integrated with environmental impact analyses and related surveys and studies required by the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and other environmental review laws and executive orders.”

Sugg said federal consultation “will likely happen” after the supplemental EIS is released.

The corps initiated a supplemental EIS late last year after the HOA board submitted a design not included in the draft EIS. This preferred option is a rock groin 80 feet wide and would extend 1,200 feet across the beach and into the ocean.

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND — It wasn’t D-Day, but on July 2 four environmental groups including the N.C. Coastal Federation made a landing on the northern tip of Figure Eight Island at Rich Inlet. Their mission was to share with the local media information about the amazing natural habitats and processes of the inlet, and why an ill-conceived effort to build a 995-foot-long sheet pile wall attached to a 505-foot-long rock groin in the middle of this fragile spit of land should be abandoned in favor of a more environmentally friendly alternative.

Cross-section drawings show that it will be a massive pile of rocks.  It will require digging out about a half football field length of sand (140-foot wide excavation area) to about five and half feet below sea level.  A bed of rocks 120 feet wide bed will be placed in the hole. This includes a 30-foot scour apron seaward of the groin to protect it when the beach washes away.  The visible rocks will be 80 to 90 feet wide and about six feet above the sand.

There was a welcoming committee for our landing. The paid administrator for the private homeowners association on the island had learned about it in advance, and he sat in his beach buggy a few hundred yards away watching with binoculars.  And then we were joined by a handful of local property owners who came to learn more about what we had to say as well.

That designation makes it illegal for federal agencies to authorize development, such as a massive rock terminal groin, within this designated critical habitat area that would in anyway damage its natural values. If for some reason the federal agencies fail to do their job, environmental groups have already compiled a massive agency record so that they’ll be ready to successfully pursue legal actions to protect this critical nesting area.The sand spit on the northern tip of the island is accreting rapidly and has become home for many oystercatchers, skimmers, terns, willets and plovers. Coastal biologist Lindsay Addison who works for Audubon North Carolina says that if is the largest least tern colony on record in N.C. in over forty years. “This year it’s the largest colony on the entire Atlantic coast,” she said in a recent interview. “It represents about a third of the breeding least terns in the state.” Given the huge amount of bird activity on these 65 acres, it’s easy to understand why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated it as “critical habitat” for endangered and threatened bird species.

Naively perhaps, we thought that the proponents of building the groin would also see just how valuable this land is for the birds, and would recognize that they will face insurmountable natural, legal and fiscal obstacles if they continue with this project. Since 2008, the Figure Eight Homeowners Association spent $210,000 lobbying the N.C. General Assembly mostly to allow the groin. These lobbying efforts have done nothing to weaken or remove barriers to the project imposed by the Congress through the Endangered Species Act.

One of the goals of the media outing was to help inform people about why this bird habitat is so special.  We are always surprised when it is claimed that a groin will “stabilize” the habitat and make it better. This habitat is productive because it is so “unstable.” It must remain very low in elevation with no vegetation and occasionally experience flooding to be useful as nesting and foraging areas for these species of birds.

If the groin were built, it would cause the barren sand landward of the structure to become higher and vegetated.  This would destroy its value as bird habitat.  It would also destroy the beach and sand flats that are public trust areas used heavily by boaters and beach goers from all over the state. Computer models paid for by the association show habitat seaward of the groin washed away within five years of construction.

According to the association, it has spent more that $1.6 million on environmental studies for the terminal groin.  What it got for its money was one of the worse draft environmental impact statement studies that various government agencies and the public have ever reviewed. Fundamental issues, such as securing permission from inlet landowners to build the project on their private lots, were completely overlooked. This resulted in having to go back to redo these already costly environmental studies. Due to the needed permission from landowners the association now proposes a groin location farther north on the island as the best alternative. The former location was also promoted as the best alternative by the association so one must wonder what their parameters are to determine what is best.

The 2012 draft study predicted disaster for property owners at the north of the island if the groin was not built. Instead, nature in a few short years has rebuilt the north end of the island at no cost to anyone. The draft study estimated the cost of managing the location of the inlet channel with dredging as hugely expensive, but again nature showed these costs projections were highly inflated. The channel would only take minor dredging to keep it in its current location if that became necessary. The costs of this minor dredging are far less than the costs of building and maintaining the terminal groin.

It’s time to forget the groin, and for everyone to work together to devise a much lower cost and practical alternative for Rich Inlet.  That would be a much more productive and cost-effective use of everyone’s talents and resources.

Members of the media gathered last week at the north end of Figure Eight Island to hear what a terminal groin might do to valuable bird habitat.

Todd Miller, left, and Mike Giles of the N.C. Coastal Federation face the cameras to talk about the terminal groin.

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND –About 60 acres of unspoiled beach that is critical habitat to hundreds of shorebirds on land bordering one of North Carolina’s few natural inlets will be swallowed by the Atlantic if a terminal groin is built there.

Projections by engineers hired by the Figure Eight Island Homeowners Association to design a terminal groin project show that the spit of white sand beach stretching from the developed north end of the island to Rich Inlet will eventually erode away if a groin is built.

“By their own modeling in five to six years all of this sand spit will be gone,” said Mike Giles, a coastal advocate with the N.C. Coastal Federation’s Wrightsville Beach office. “That’s a huge concern. It should be a huge concern for everybody.”

Giles and representatives with Audubon North Carolina, PenderWatch & Conservancy and the Southern Environmental Law Center met with media last week on the northern tip of the private barrier island to kick-start the “Save Rich Inlet” campaign.

Environmentalists aim to educate the private barrier island’s property owners and surrounding communities about the possible environmental implications a terminal groin would have on the inlet, the island and other shorelines.

Rich Inlet sways between the north end of Figure Eight and Lea-Hutaff Island, one of the state’s few remaining un-bridged, undeveloped barrier islands.

“When that inlet channel wags south, it creates this beautiful spit,” Giles said.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service designates the land created by the inlet’s movement “critical nesting habitat” for threatened piping plovers. More than 800 pairs of least terns – the largest colony in North Carolina in more than 40 years – are nesting on this beach this year.

Derb Carter of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Chapel Hill says he’s never seen a study as bad as the one done for the groin.

The inlet is a haven for these and other shorebirds, which rely on inlets to feed and rest along their migratory journeys.

Least tern need open sand on which to nest, explained Lindsay Addison, a biologist with Audubon North Carolina.

“Right now the birds here are fledgling their chicks,” she said. “Rich Inlet provides several different types of habitat in one place. If the terminal groin were to be put in place all the critical habitat would be gone.”

The island’s homeowners association is in the process of possibly becoming the first of four beach communities in the state to obtain a federal permit to build a terminal groin.

The association has for years been looking at ways to manage the inlet to stop beach erosion at the northern end.

Stakeholders in 2007 initiated a project to relocate the inlet, but that concept was pushed aside when, in 2010, the N.C. General Assembly lifted a ban on new construction of terminal groins along coast. Terminal groins are long, low walls built perpendicular to shore at inlets to reduce shoreline erosion by trapping drifting sand.

The law allows for the construction of four groins that will essentially be test sites to determine how the structures affect inlets and shorelines.

Figure Eight was the first to seek a permit to build a terminal groin. Bald Head Island, Holden Beach and Ocean Isle Beach in Brunswick County are in various stages of the environmental review process required by federal law to obtain permits to build terminal groins.

David Kellam, administrator of Figure Eight Island, has said the experts with which the association has consulted agree that a terminal groin in conjunction with beach nourishment is the most preferred alternative environmentally and economically. He did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Sand on the northern end has actually accreted, environmentalists say, solving the problem of beach erosion at that end of Figure Eight.

They agree that, if natural erosion occurs again, it can be corrected by relocating the channel within the inlet with “modest” dredging.

This has been a proven method at Bogue and Mason inlets and substantially cheaper than building and maintaining a terminal groin.

Figure Eight property owners have not been told what the proposed project might cost.

What’s also unclear is whether the association will get the easements it will need to build the terminal groin across a series of about a dozen properties. Without all of the easements, the project cannot move forward.

Figure Eight Island is unincorporated, which means, unlike municipalities, it cannot enact eminent domain to seize property for public use.

A small handful homeowners continue to refuse granting easements to their land, according to those who’ve been following the proposed project closely and property owners who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“They couldn’t build it today if they wanted to because they don’t have the land,” said Derb Carter, director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office. “I’m still astonished they’ve been able to get as far as they have without getting these easements.”

The Army Corps of Engineers released in 2012 its draft environmental impact study of the proposed project.

Carter called it “one of the worst environmental documents our office has ever seen.”

No one can predict what the terminal groin will do to Rich Inlet, noted Stan Riggs, a geologist at East Carolina University.

That study did not include the association’s newest alternative, announced to property owners last spring, which lists the preferred spot for a terminal groin about 420 further north than the one included in the draft document. A final study is expected to be released in the coming months.

The proposed groin would be a rock wall 80 feet wide. It would span 1,500 feet, about 300 feet of which would cross coastal wetlands.

Building a wall would block Rich Inlet’s natural function, said Stan Riggs, a coastal and marine geologist and distinguished research professor of geology at East Carolina University.

“Because we have this pile of sand it’s like a natural dike out here,” he said. “Inlets are living, breathing organisms. This inlet is the heart of that organism. It’s the pump.”

During a storm, such as a hurricane, an inlet’s function is to act as a safety valve allowing water from the storm surge to flow into and out of rather than flow over a barrier island.

No one, Riggs said, knows just what the consequences might be if a terminal groin is built at the inlet.

“The other variable in this is, where’s your sand?” he said. “There is precious little sand on the continental shelf. The best sand you’ve got is already on this beach. You start blocking this up with an engineered structure you’re going to send sand somewhere else. We cannot afford to engineer our coast in the state of North Carolina. This is a world-class resource.”

The shallow water and shifting sand bars of Rich Inlet provide habitat for animals and are a playground for people. Both would be threatened if Figure Eight Island, on the right, were to build a terminal groin. That’s Lea-Hutaff Island to the left of the inlet. Photo: Army Corps of Engineers

FIGURE EIGHT ISLAND – A dozen or so double-crested cormorants huddled on a sand bar in Rich Inlet, their backs to the brisk east wind.  Hunched over and their long necks pointed skyward, the birds held out their wings as if in prayerful supplication.

“They’re drying their wings,” Mike Giles informed the group as he guided the Jones Brothers’ skiff past the bar on a recent beautiful but breezy early spring day.

The boatload of gawking people slowly wending its way through the labyrinth of sand spits and bars startled a small flock of bufflehead ducks that were bobbing and diving in the water. These little sea ducks with the bulbous heads are common winter visitors along the N.C. coast, where they find shelter and food in the shallow estuaries and inlets. They will be gone soon, heading to the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska. There, the females will raise their young in borrowed tree cavities made by northern flickers. The flickers don’t seem to mind.

Hundreds of boaters use the sand bars, the northern tip of Figure Eight Island and the shoreline of Lea-Hutaff Island as getaways. Others hunt for clams in the little creeks that course through the marsh. Photos: Mike Giles

The little ducks took to the sky as one, flying low to the water and squawking at the intrusion.

A splash on the port side. Then another, followed by the inevitable oohs and aahs on the boat. Dolphins.  A small pod broke water not 20 feet away. Giles shifted the boat into neutral.  The dolphins swam around the drifting boat, some jumping several feet out of the water.

“Why do dolphins jump like that?” Giles asked the group.

Most were probably trying to come up with the scientific answer for leaping dolphin. No one could, though.

“Because they can,” Giles said.

Several dolphins came alongside, gliding just inches below the surface. The eyes of these undulating apparitions were clearing staring up at the boat. They saw a pod of humans staring back, most clicking away furiously with their cell phones.

People are also common inhabitants of the inlet, said Giles, a coastal advocate for the N.C. Coastal Federation who lives a few miles away up the Intracoastal Waterway. They come in flotillas of watercraft in the summertime to fish, to swim and to play on the inlet’s stunning array of islands and bars.

“There might be 200 to 300 boats lining that shoreline,” Giles said, sweeping an arm toward Lea-Hutaff Island. Much of the uninhabited island is a protected bird sanctuary.

“They’ll meet with friends and neighbors and barbecue on the beach. They’ll sit in chairs to sunbathe and read. The kids play in the water. It’s a social happening,” Giles said, as we approached our ultimate destination. “And it may all be gone.”

The bow of boat bumped gently onto the beach of Figure Eight Island, and the boat’s passengers piled out. Lindsay Addison, a biologist for Audubon North Carolina, was right behind. She beached her boat and its passengers followed the others up the beach.

The 15 people gathered in a circle on the north end of the island. The wide beach was deserted.  Off in the distance, beyond the rise of low sand dunes, loomed some of large houses that make up this exclusive, private island.

Those houses were the real reasons these people had come. Audubon, the federation and the N.C. Sierra Club sponsored the trip here to show what might be lost in order to save a handful of them.

About a dozen of Figure Eight’s houses are said to be threatened by erosion.  To protect them, the island’s homeowners association wants to build a 1,600-foot-long wall of rock and sheet metal that would encase the north end of the island and extend into the Atlantic Ocean.

This small jetty, called a terminal groin, would be built not too far from where the people were standing.  If it were already there, these people would be swimming.

Mike Giles, right, stands by one of the survey stakes that mark the prospective path of the groin. Photo: Frank Tursi

Lindsay Addison said many species of birds have few places left to feed and nest. Photo: Frank Tursi

Until 2011, such things used to be illegal on the beaches of North Carolina because of their demonstrated abilities to protect private houses while destroying public beaches. After intense and prolonged lobbying by some Figure Eight property owners and others, the N.C. General Assembly changed the law to allow four terminal groins on the coast. Figure Eight’s project is currently undergoing environmental review.

Addison has been fighting for birds all of her career. She’s heard proponents of one type of beachfront construction project or another brush off her concerns by noting that the threatened birds could go somewhere else.

“We’ve been telling birds to go someplace else for years,” Addison told the group. “This is someplace else. There’s not a lot of good bird habitat left along the East Coast. They can’t lose much more.”

As if on cue, a piping plover was seen pecking along the wet sand of the falling tide. The sparrow-sized bird nests and feeds only on sandy and gravel beaches in North America. Hunted for its plumage, the plover’s population plummeted in the early 20th century. A federal law in 1918 stemmed the widespread killing and the birds’ population started to recover only to have its habitat later destroyed by beachfront development. It is now an endangered species on both the federal and state lists.

A dozen pairs of eyes watched through binoculars or sighting scopes as the plover went about its daily routine of feeding itself.

Some in the group broke off to wander up the beach to look at the huge sand bags that protect some of the houses or to stand between the metal and plastic poles that mark the jetty’s prospective path to the ocean.

If the rock and sheet metal wall is built, this end of the island will be gone, Giles said. “This will be open water,” he said. “No more piping plovers, no more Sunday outings to walk the beach with the kids.”

The jetty will also likely change the dynamics of the inlet itself. The sand bars and spits that are the favorite haunts of praying cormorants and splashing children will likely disappear as well.

“These shallow inlets are very special places,” Giles said on the trip back to the mainland. “They are wonderful habitat for animals and a great place to come and sit and enjoy the beauty of our coast. They should be protected, not destroyed.”

It’s time for the Army Corps of Engineers to bring some sanity to the examination of building a terminal groin at Rich Inlet on Figure Eight Island.  It’s received an overwhelming stack of detailed comments from numerous federal and state agencies and community organizations, and it’s clear that the current draft Environmental Impact Statement is beyond hope of ever being viewed as having any credibility.

The draft document prepared by the applicant’s hand-picked and long-time terminal groin consultants is simply too biased in its construction to ever be considered an impartial and fair review of possible project alternatives for the island.

We have to ask why an Environmental Impact Statement is being prepared. A complete permit application has never been submitted. Normally for projects proposed by private parties with private funds, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review would only begin after a complete permit application has been submitted and a determination that an Environmental Impact Statement is necessary because the project has the potential to cause significant environmental impacts.

In this case, no complete application has ever been submitted to either the federal or state agencies. In fact, because the applicant has not secured the necessary private property rights to build its preferred alternative a complete application is not even possible under both federal and state permit application rules. Until a complete permit application is submitted and these property rights are secured, it is a colossal waste of everyone’s time and resources to evaluate the terminal groin alternative.

There’s even a question of whether any property is currently imminently threatened, and therefore whether state law allows consideration of a terminal groin. The inlet channel is shifting naturally, and the beach in front of houses that were imminently threatened is currently building back. The beach is accreting in front of the properties that are currently sand-bagged, and they are no longer within 20 feet of an erosion scarp. None of these properties can be deemed “imminently threatened.”

The project has not been adequately defined to even trigger a NEPA review. The project’s scope, purpose and need have been drastically changed without any public notice in the Federal Register. In this case, the applicant has been on a fishing expedition regarding project alternatives, and it has identified and defined these alternatives with no involvement by any outside agency or the public in the past two years. There has been no ongoing role in the development of the study by the Corps appointed “Project Delivery Team” that has not met for two years. This has allowed the applicant to define the project alternatives that are not its preferred alternative. They have been defined in a manner that makes them appear less desirable.

The draft study cannot be salvaged to make it a useful document. While it might be possible to correct inaccuracies, omissions, content and the disorganized state of the document, making the study a truly independent and unbiased analysis of alternatives will be impossible. It is fundamentally flawed because it is entirely constructed around justifying the terminal groin alternative.

One of the consultants that helped prepared the study recently made a presentation to the Figure Eight Homeowners Association annual meeting.  His handouts further document that the consultant is totally sold on the need for a terminal groin, and the one-sided presentation to the homeowners clearly was designed to sell that alternative instead of giving a fair and balanced analysis of possible alternatives. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, but just like the Corps would not hire the Coastal Federation to prepare this study, it should not be relying on a terminal groin advocate to do it either.

It’s time to call a time-out, and halt the study process.  If the Figure Eight Homeowners Association wants to pursue a terminal groin, it should be required to submit a complete and acceptable permit application to the federal and state agencies. This will require proof that it has the property rights acquired from numerous individuals to build the structure on their land. Then a proper scoping notice can be published that fully discloses what’s proposed, independent contractors can be hired to prepare the report, and the process can start again if necessary.

Trying to fix the current process simply won’t work. Let’s hope the Corps of Engineers agrees, and we can all get back to work that’s much more beneficial and productive for our coast.

NAGS HEAD — Stretching out into the churning waters of Oregon Inlet, a rock wall in place since 1991 has been credited with both building and eroding the beach on the northern end of Hatteras Island.

No other terminal groin has been built in North Carolina since the one in Oregon Inlet was permitted to save the southern approach to the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge, and with restrictions on shoreline hardening in place since the 1980s, there are few such structures existing on the coast. As the state Division of Coastal Management works with applicants to implement a new state law that permits construction of up to four terminal groins, the agency is grappling with many unknowns.

“I have no clue now what the issues will be that come up,” Doug Huggett, manager of the division’s Major Permits and Consistency Unit, told the state Coastal Resources Commission at its meeting last week in Nags Head, “but they’re going to be significant.”

Law Requirements

The terminal groin bill mandates that the sand-trapping structures be built only at inlets, and they must be accompanied by a plan that details how erosion at the inlet will be controlled. The bill also requires shoreline monitoring to determine if the groins are causing problems. Opponents argue that the structures interfere with the natural movement of sand along the beach and thus accelerate erosion farther away.

Faced with myriad options on ways to address the requirements, the division sought guidance from its panel of scientific advisors. After two meetings and “spirited” discussions with the panel, Huggett said, numerous questions remain, especially how to pinpoint the cause of post-construction erosion and whether there is expertise on the division’s staff to properly analyze and review data

To address the concern about staff limitations— including the lack of a coastal engineer —the division agreed to a voluntary third-party review of an application. There was also consensus on the science panel, Huggett said, to use existing data as much as possible, and to drop the idea of a “control” beach to compare erosion rates, since such a beach would be nearly impossible to locate.

“We have to be prepared to act on those applications,” Huggett said in a later interview.  “We have to respond to these applications just like we would any other application. You can’t always wait to process an application until we have all the information. You never get all the information. Legally, we don’t have any authority to stall.”

Whatever the challenges are, Huggett said that the division has enough experience to adequately process a terminal groin application. Budget shortages make hiring outside consultants unaffordable, he said, but the division is staffed by skilled “generalists” who routinely work with challenging projects.

“We are going to do the best we can with the resources we have,” he said.

Four Applicants

Huggett said that of the four applicants so far, Figure Eight Island is furthest along, and could potentially have a permit in six to nine months. He said he expects that division staff will meet the island’s representatives in the coming weeks.

Other applicants in various stages of the permit process, which typically takes about 18 months, are Holden Beach, Bald Head Island and Ocean Isle Beach. North Topsail Island decided earlier this month to not pursue an application.

It’s also conceivable that a fifth or sixth community will decide to apply for a permit. They may try to “sprint ahead” of an earlier applicant, Huggett said.

Applicants will be required to show that the project will not lead to significant adverse impacts on threatened species and adjacent property. They also must have the financial means to fund the project and pay for any future damage to nearby beaches or remove the groin if necessary.

David Kellam, administrator of Figure Eight Island, said that his community intends to build a terminal groin that is engineered to not harm the environment. He said it is too early to know what the structure’s design or cost will be, except to say it will likely be about 700- to 1,000-feet long and made of rock.

“We’re waiting on the state to interpret how and what they’re going to do,” Kellam said in a telephone interview. “Figure Eight certainly wants to do this right. We want to do it prudently for the protection of the estuarine ecosystems.”

State Sen. Harry Brown, R-Onslow and the Senate’s majority leader, was the bill’s main sponsor. He said that much compromise was involved before the legislation finally passed. “I think a lot of parties were probably not happy with the final results,” he said.

Brown, who first introduced his bill when he was elected about eight years ago, said he would not be surprised if others, besides the four current applicants, seek a terminal groin permit.

“I think it’s important to the coast,” he said. “And I think it’s important to the communities with inlets along the coast.”

Mike Giles, one of our coastal advocates, attended the first public meeting on the proposed groin at Ocean Isle. Read his interesting take in our blog Cape Fear Beacon.