UPDATE:  Commissioners vote to fund Hatteras Inlet dredging

The Dare County Board of Commissioners this morning approved spending $113,000 for the county’s share of a project that is aimed at relieving  the severe shoaling problems at Hatteras Inlet.

The vote on the measure to approve the funding was unanimous.

Dare County manager Bobby Outten told the board members that the total cost of the project is estimated to be $452,000 — with the county paying one-fourth, and the state paying the remaining 75 percent from its inlet management fund.

The N.C. Department of Transportation Ferry Division will head up the project to remove approximately 75,000 cubic yards of sand from an area, about 1,150 feet wide, that will open up the so-called “northern route” for commercial, charter, and private boats and other vessels to get from the state’s ferry channel to the Hatteras Inlet gorge and into the Atlantic Ocean.

The work will be done by a state-owned pipeline dredge, and the sand will be deposited at a state-owned spoil site on the south end of Ocracoke  near the ferry docks.  The spoil sand will eventually be used by NCDOT to repair the dunes on the island that were flattened in storms in late September and early October.

According to a schedule provided by the Ferry Division, the work will take about 75 days and will be finished about Jan. 21, weather permitting. The dredge will work 12 hours a day, from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m., seven days a week.

Set-up for dredging the 800-foot west side of the project will begin this week with dredging beginning about Nov. 13 and ending Dec. 23.  Dredging on the 350-foot east end will begin about Jan. 1 and finish about Jan. 21.