A small but vocal group of islanders gathered at the Shipwreck Grill in Buxton on Monday to continue their campaign to get the beach on the northern edge of the village nourished with sand now — not in the summer of 2016.
About 20 people attended the meeting, organized by Carol Dawson, a Buxton resident and owner of several properties in an area threatened now in even minor weather events by the encroaching Atlantic Ocean.
Just the day before the meeting, Dawson and some friends and family were working to get piles of sand left by ocean overwash during a weekend northeaster removed from the parking lots of the businesses.
Even as the meeting started, there were puddles of saltwater in the restaurant parking lot, and N.C. Department of Transportation bulldozers and smaller pieces of privately owned equipment worked to move sand.
Owners of homes and businesses in north Buxton have been fighting back the ocean with increasing regularity, especially this fall.
It’s obvious by now that they are fed up, overwhelmed, and increasingly anxious about their future.
Warren Judge, chairman of the Dare County Board of Commissioners, and Kym Hall, acting superintendent of the National Park Service’s Outer Banks Group also attended the meeting.
Both officials got an earful from the people in the room.
“It’s too late.”
“We can’t wait until 2016.”
“We’re not going to be here in 2016”
“We’re going to be gone.”
“What about the school kids? What about people who need to get to chemo treatments or doctor appointments?”
“Why isn’t the Park Service advocating for the local people (on this issue)?”
“There’s no way in hell we’ll be here in two years,” said Dawson’s indomitable and indefatigable mother, Carol Dillon, who is now well into her 80s, after the meeting. “If we had a Gov. Christie, we could get this done.”
Judge pointed out, as he has in other meetings and in conversations with locals:
- That the county decided to move ahead and not wait for DOT to restore the Buxton beach.
- That the commissioners have approved the project and hired a consultant to move ahead with getting required environmental studies and permits.
- That the county will have the money to fund the project through a percentage of the occupancy tax set aside for that purpose.
- That it must be done in summer because hiring a contractor to do nourishment in the stormy winter months would be cost prohibitive.
- That the project is fast tracked, moving as quickly as possible.
- That it took Nags Head seven years to get beach nourishment.
“If this happens in June 2016, it will be the fastest project in Dare County,” he said.
Hall reiterated that the Park Service is committed to working with the county on the beach restoration project, but that the agency must “go through the process” to issue a special use permit for nourishment.
Both Judge and Hall talked about the regular meetings that are happening with the agencies involved, including NCDOT, to keep the project moving ahead.
However, NCDOT is one agency the folks at the meeting are definitely not happy with right now.
Despite what various officials have had to say in public meetings and other conversations, they just don’t think that the agency is taking the issue of keeping the transportation corridor open on Hatteras seriously enough or moving quickly enough.
Carol Dawson remembered a meeting with state officials — including Gov. Pat McCrory, DOT Secretary Tony Tata, and Board of Transportation member Malcolm Fearing — just after a particularly damaging northeaster in March 2013 when the group visited the Bonner Bridge and the Highway 12 problem area at the S-curves in north Rodanthe.
Dawson said she told them that Buxton can’t wait any longer for nourishment and showed them photos. She said that the last thing Tata said to her was “We’re going to make this work.”
“Now, it’s been two years,” she said.
She also noted that she could not persuade them to go to Buxton on that visit.
Judge added that a former DOT official said at that meeting that the northern Rodanthe area qualified for an emergency declaration, but that Buxton did not.
Hall added at one point that it was her impression from meetings on the Buxton nourishment project that DOT’s stance is that “until there is an inlet and the road is damaged, the agency can’t do anything.”
Members of the group asked Judge about the possibility of a class action lawsuit against DOT.
He responded that he wasn’t a lawyer. He again assured the group that Dare County was pressuring DOT and that their concerns were not “falling on deaf ears.”
The chairman said that he felt many of the questions being asked needed to be answered by DOT and that he would make a request on behalf of the county, that Secretary Tata visit Buxton and listen to the islanders’ concerns.
In an interview after the meeting, Dawson said that her goal was to get the attention of the governor and DOT not just about Buxton, but about other “hot spots” on the island, including Rodanthe and northern Hatteras village, where Hurricane Isabel cut an inlet in 2003.
“These critical spots,” she said, “need immediate nourishment.”
She also thinks that the beaches in these areas should be stabilized with some method of building artificial reefs to keep the sand from washing away.
She believes that DOT needs to be proactive and not just reactive.
“They’re rock stars when it comes to putting it back together,” Dawson said. But she added, “Let’s play offense, not defense.”
She also believes that the beach restoration project could be done much more quickly if it required only an Environmental Assessment instead of the more complicated, expensive, and time consuming Environmental Impact Statement.
And she feels that if state and county officials ask for the less involved study, the federal agencies would agree.
Dawson also says that she has become involved in the critical issue of nourishment only because of her concern for the island where her family has lived for generations.
The issue, she said, is keeping Highway 12 open for economic and public safety reasons — it is not about her oceanfront property — or anyone else’s. She said she is well aware that public money cannot be spent only to protect private property.
Dawson and others who feel like her say they will keep the pressure on — making phone calls, signing a petition, and following every possible avenue for help for Hatteras.
The number for the governor’s office is 919-814-2050. She notes callers can press 2 to leave a message and 3 to talk with a staffer.
A petition started earlier this year on Change.org is still online and can still be signed. As of this afternoon, it had 1,950 signatures.
And, finally, there will be another meeting, sponsored by the Hatteras Island Business Association, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. at the Avon Fire Station.
That meeting will be with Taylor Griffin, a New Bern, N.C., businessman and consultant who has offered his services pro bono to help Hatteras Island. He is a former adviser to President George
