Property owners in north Buxton have been very vocal since Hurricane Irene two years ago about the desperate need for beach nourishment in the area.
You could hear the pain and frustration in their voices as they asked questions at a public meeting last week to discuss the beach restoration project that is about to get started.
They watch the nourishment about half finished at the S-curves and north Rodanthe and they wonder why those dredges can’t just head south and pump some sand onto the Buxton beach while they are at it.
The Buxton folks want nourishment and they want it now, not in 2016, which is the most optimistic estimate for completion by the consulting firm the county has hired to oversee the project.
The northern Hatteras nourishment, a project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the North Carolina Department of Transportation, is being done to protect Highway 12 in an area that has been very frequently overwashed and closed in storms in recent years. The road there was breached during Hurricane Irene in 2011 and almost washed away after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency for the S-curves area in March of 2013 after yet another storm pounded the area
Carol Dawson, who with her husband Dave owns the Cape Hatteras Motel, the northernmost building in Buxton, posted a comment on the Island Free Press article about the Tuesday public meeting.
“Two more years!” she wrote. “There won’t be anything left in Buxton. It has needed beach nourishment for decades not a few years! If the commissioners had pressed our governor to add Buxton to the emergency declaration along with Rodanthe we would be receiving the long needed sand right now!”
Carol Dillon, who owns the Outer Banks Motel, had a stern warning for officials at last week’s meeting.
“I am angry,” she told them, flat out.
“If somehow you people don’t speed up this project, we’re going to lose the road,” she said. “We can’t wait until 2016.”
“If you are not going to speed it up, you better have a plan for (dealing with) the inlet,” she warned.
There are private houses and three large motels on the oceanfront in north Buxton that is severely eroding and at risk.
However, the governor doesn’t declare a state of emergency to protect private property.
“No where in North Carolina has a state of emergency been declared for private property,” county manager and attorney Bobby Outten said at the meeting.
The nourishment project at the S-curves would benefit some private properties in Mirlo Beach, but it is being done to protect public infrastructure — in this case, Highway 12. Also, the governor declared a state of emergency at the S-curves 18 months ago and the nourishment wasn’t started until late July.
And the fact of the matter is that the highway in north Buxton is nowhere near in the shape that the road was at the S-curves and Mirlo Beach before nourishment.
Yes, an inlet opened there in the Ash Wednesday storm of 1962. Hurricane Dennis washed out the highway between Buxton and Avon in 1999. And even run-of-the-mill northeasters can cause overwash at the area of the motels that often puts water on the road.
And, yes, it is at risk to see another inlet.
But there are some, especially in Hatteras and Ocracoke villages, who would disagree that the north Buxton area is any more in need of an emergency declaration than where they live or have to travel.
One is the area between Frisco and Hatteras village, where Hurricane Isabel cut an inlet in 2003. On Wednesday, just after high tide as a stiff wind blew off the ocean and the beaches were pounded by the swell from Hurricane Cristobal, Highway 12 was high and dry in Buxton. However, ocean water seeping under the dunes covered one lane of the road just east of Hatteras village.
Other areas at very serious risk are the northern end of Ocracoke, which is every bit as narrow — if not more narrow — than north Buxton and the “canal” area on northern Pea Island near the Bonner Bridge.
That having been said, north Buxton is in bad shape and the oceanfront properties and those behind them are important to the county’s tax base.
It behooves the commissioners to move ahead with the nourishment in the fragile area, and most would not question their commitment to the project at this point.
At the Aug. 18 meeting, the Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to hire Coastal Science & Engineering of Columbia, S.C., to manage the project at a cost of $1.6 million.
However, the nourishment project is not a done deal at this point. And the timeline in CSE’s proposal to the board is very ambitious.
The company proposes getting environmental documents completed and permitting by the federal and state government done at a record pace — with sand being pumped onto the beach in the summer of 2016.
The proposal also notes that if the permits cannot be obtained in time to allow nourishment in the summer of 2016, the company would wait until the summer of 2017. Putting sand on the beach in the winter is too dangerous, the consultants said.
The permits — specifically a special use permit from the National Park Service — are absolutely essential to the project.
The Park Service owns the beaches in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and, generally, the Park Service frowns on beach restoration projects, preferring to let nature take its course.
County officials met with Stan Austin, NPS southeast regional director, in early June to discuss the possibility of beach restoration in north Buxton to protect Highway 12.
He told them at the meeting and reiterated in a letter to county manager Outten that beach nourishment for the purpose of protecting property is generally not allowed by Park Service management policies. However, he said, that in an area where “natural processes have been altered by human activities or structures,” the policies allow NPS to consider nourishment.
Austin noted that the long history of maintaining Highway 12 has likely altered natural processes in north Buxton and that the NPS is “open to engaging” with Dare County about beach restoration.
But, make no mistake, if the county cannot meet the environmental regulations and get the project permitted, there will be no beach nourishment.
Outten and Austin had another exchange of letters, and last week county officials and CSE consultants met with acting seashore superintendent Kym Hall and members of her staff.
It is only the first of what will be many meetings with park officials as CSE works on such documents as an Environmental Impact Statement.
Outten has described all of the NPS officials — Austin, former superintendent Barclay Trimble, and acting superintendent Hall — as “positive and helpful” in meetings.
And, indeed, Hall was positive as she could be in a phone interview last week without saying the Park Service would for sure issue a special-use permit.
She said the Park Service was “supportive” of the project in the sense that it understands the importance of protecting Highway 12. And she said the NPS was “grateful” to be included in the collaborative effort to get the project permitted.
Seashore personnel, Hall said, would work with CSE to define the effects of beach restoration on such things as wildlife, hydrology, infrastructure, and fisheries.
There will be several opportunities along the way to permitting, she noted, for public input.
Staff members, she added, were already at work last week to get CSE the special-use permit it needs just to have access to certain areas of the beach for such things as surveys and design work.
“We are optimistic,” Hall said carefully, “that together we will be able to save Highway 12.”
And she said the park would do everything possible to help CSE meet the goals in its timeline.
However, it won’t take much more than a hiccup in the project to throw it off schedule.
There is so much to do, and so little time — at least in terms of permitting for a major project by federal agencies.
Most of us on the island are used to how long it took to get final environmental impact statements and permits on big projects such as the Bonner Bridge replacement and the seashore’s Off-Road Vehicle Plan.
But those were produced by federal employees with many other responsibilities. It should be in the project timeline’s favor that it’s being managed by a company and its subcontractors whose employees are focusing only on this one project.
Many of us never would have believed five or 10 years ago that a beach nourishment project anywhere in the seashore would get as far as it has.
And, although nourishment won’t happen soon enough for many, the project’s timeline is still very, very ambitious.
Whether it is too ambitious, remains to be seen.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Click here to read NPS Southeast Regional Director Stan Austin’s June 20, 2014 letter to Dare County manager Bobby Outten.
Click here to read Outten’s June 30 response to Austin.
Click here to read Austin’s July 31 response to Outten.
Click here to read the Aug. 20 article in Island Free Press about the public meeting on Buxton beach restoration on Aug. 19.
To read an blog from April 18, 2014, “Where we are on beach nourishment on Hatteras Island, go to http://islandfreepress.org/PivotBlog/?e=289#body-anchor
To read a blog from June 20, 2014, “Buxton beach nourishment is moving, but not quickly enough for some, go to http://islandfreepress.org/PivotBlog/?e=297#body-anchor
