Susan West, a long-time advocate for the Hatteras Island fishing community and a writer who helped foster improved communications and respect between regulators and fishermen, died last week at age 73. “She made sure that Hatteras and those small fishing communities were never left out of the conversation,” recalled Karen Willis Amspacher, director of the […]
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First in a series. RODANTHE — Nothing good can be said about septic tanks leaking their foul contents onto a public beach. It sounds even worse that it’s within a national seashore on the Outer Banks renowned for its beautiful, clean beaches. That unfortunate reality illustrates the challenge adapting to rising seas under outmoded policies […]
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Absent emergency measures, bureaucratic snares could yet again hinder navigational safety in Hatteras Inlet, leaving members of the Dare County Waterways Commission worried about a lackluster fall fishing season because of poor channel conditions. At its first in-person meeting since the Coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020, held Monday evening at the county Administrative Building […]
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Big houses falling into the ocean on the Outer Banks earlier this year had many people wondering why the government didn’t do more to proactively get the houses off the beach before they collapsed, with debris spreading for miles. The changing climate has added urgency to already complex balances between private property rights and public […]
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Nearly 20 years ago, the White House Council on Environmental Quality seemed to have finally put its federal sword through the heart of the Oregon Inlet twin-jetty proposal, a project that Congress had approved in 1970 after it had brewed in local committee rooms for at least a decade. But now, as shoaling has continued […]
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As thousands of visitors joyfully play in the surf of Outer Banks’ beaches, a new exhibit at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum reminds us that a vicious German U-boat campaign in the early months of World War II had once raged offshore the barrier islands, setting the sea ablaze and filling the air with […]
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Ignited 10 days ago, most likely by lightning, a wildfire burning on private land in rural Hyde County is 24% contained, the North Carolina Forest Service announced Tuesday. But like past wildfires in the region that smoldered for many months, the Ferebee Road fire, as it is known, is deep under the surface, burning down […]
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When the subject is the cost of dredging, “time is money” is an especially apt adage. That explains why members of the Dare County Waterways Commission have, for a year, pushed for the state Department of Transportation to build an additional slip at South Dock to save the $20,500-per-day dredges from commuting back and forth […]
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Second in a series. Once the quiet and well-behaved counterpart to feral Oregon Inlet, Hatteras Inlet is now repeatedly afflicted by shoaling that defeats routine maintenance of the critically important Ocracoke ferry routes. “It’s ever-evolving,” Catherine “Cat” Peele, planning and development manager for the state Ferry Division, said in a recent interview. She added that bathymetric […]
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No matter how incessant the public frustration or how desperate the pleas from mariners to fix clogged harbors, impassable channels or eroded shorelines, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is struggling to address worsening problems in coastal North Carolina, especially on the Outer Banks. Recently, a wicked nor’easter wreaked havoc in Oregon Inlet, choking […]
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