Christie Roberson of Buxton spoke to the Dare County Board of Commissioners during the public comment period at the meeting earlier this week.
“It is no longer okay,” she said, “that we are not in active pursuit of getting sand on the beach in Buxton.”
She noted that businesses and homeowners in north Buxton have spent “millions of dollars stabilizing our home fronts.”
“Time is of the essence,” she told the board members.
There is no question that the north Buxton beaches are severely eroding and that the ocean is threatening both private property and Highway 12.
As Roberson noted, on high tides there is barely any beach in front of some of the motels and homes and visitors are sitting on top of sandbags. Sand has been pushed up into a makeshift dune time and time again after storms.
However, it is not true that the Dare County is “not in active pursuit” of beach nourishment in Buxton.
Nourishment on Hatteras Island, especially at north Rodanthe and north Buxton, has been on the commissioners’ radar for several years now.
In the spring of 2013, the county approved a contract with Coastal Science and Engineering of Columbia, S.C., to do a feasibility study on nourishment at the two sites.
The study estimated the cost of nourishment in Buxton at $19.85 to $26.7 million.
Last summer, the board raised the occupancy tax by 1 percent. The increase is earmarked to pay for nourishment of county beaches.
And nourishment was on the mind of board chairman Warren Judge even before Roberson spoke at this week’s meeting.
Earlier that day, he and county manager Bobby Outten received a letter from Stan Austin, Southeast regional director for the National Park Service.
Outten and Judge had met with Austin and Outer Banks Group superintendent Barclay Trimble on June 5 to discuss beach nourishment, specifically in Buxton.
Outten explained after the board meeting that the conversation was specifically about Buxton because the county assumes that the N.C. Department of Transportation’s nourishment in north Rodanthe, which may finally get done this year, and its long-term bridging of the hotspot will take care of the overwash in that area.
Before the county can nourish any Hatteras Island beaches, it has to jump through many hoops and get any number of permits. But the big obstacle to future nourishment could be the Park Service, which owns the seashore’s beaches, including beaches on Hatteras and Ocracoke. The Park Service generally doesn’t like beach nourishment.
In his letter to Outten and Judge, Austin confirmed that “Beach nourishment for the purpose of protecting property is generally not allowed” by the National Park Service policies.
The policies, he notes, “require the preservation of natural processes, including erosion, overwash, deposition, inlet formation, and shoreline migration.”
Where processes are natural, he explains, beach nourishment would require a waiver from the policies.
“However,” he writes, “where natural processes have been altered by human activities or structures, the Policies direct the National Park Service to investigate alternatives for mitigating the effects of those activities or structures and for restoring natural conditions.”
He says that the long history of maintaining Highway 12 — pushing overwashed sand back up into dunes — has “most likely altered natural processes” along the seashore.
“Therefore,” he concludes, “consistent with the Policies, we are open to engaging with Dare County to evaluate whether beach nourishment to mitigate the effects of these activities is appropriate at this particular location”
That’s all on the first page of the three-page letter summing up the meeting from Austin’s point of view. It’s a promising start.
However, the next two pages spell out in great detail all that must be done to “analyze the potential effects on park resources” and “ultimately decide whether a special use permit (required for all projects that take place on NPS land) would be issued.”
At the top of the list is an Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to ensure compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.
The Park Service would also require such things as a memorandum of agreement outlining specific responsibilities of the parties and boundary surveys.
And EA or an EIS is both costly and time consuming. It doesn’t get done overnight. It can easily take a year or two to complete.
The Austin letter gets pretty dense in places with its share of bureaucratic double-speak, so the commissioners asked Outten to respond to clarify some points and ask some questions to get more definitive guidance from the Park Service.
One question that the county wants answered is what the “shelf life” of the EIS is. Can it be completed and put on hold until everything is in place or be used for nourishment down the road at other sites — the “canal zone” on Pea Island, north Rodanthe, the site of Isabel Inlet in 2003 north of Hatteras village?
In wrapping up his letter, Austin says, “While our earlier conversation and this follow-up letter do not constitute approval for a beach nourishment project, they do express our willingness to work with Dare County to evaluate and determine if the project could be permitted.”
“They seem to be saying,” says Outten, “that if we can meet the environmental regulations, NPS will allow us to nourish the beaches.”
At the conclusion of this week’s board meeting, Judge went back to Roberson’s public comments, asking her and other Buxton landowners to “stay tuned.”
The board will be diligent,” he said.
However, he also said, “It (beach nourishment) will not happen as quickly as you all want it to.”
In an interview after the meeting, Outten said that he could conceivably see Buxton nourishment happening in 2016 or 2017.
That’s definitely not what landowners there want to hear.
However, any attempt to circumvent environmental regulations, even with the help of Congress, isn’t likely to succeed.
And, if it did, it is likely to draw the attention of litigious environmental groups. Any legal action could tie up nourishment projects for a long time. Look at the Bonner Bridge replacement.
At this point, there appears to be no choice than to stay on the road that Dare County is already heading down.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Click here to read the letter from NPS Southeast regional director Stan Austin.
Click here to read a synopsis of the feasibility study by Coastal Science and Engineering.
Click here to read a blog on nourishment from April 14.
