There have been many headlines in the media in recent months about the dire condition of Oregon Inlet, which just two weeks ago was closed by the Coast Guard to almost all boats because of severe shoaling in the channel.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers got emergency dredging underway last week, and conditions are improving in the inlet, but the channel is still in trouble and county and state leaders are looking at long-term solutions to keeping the economically important inlet open.
Just to the south, Hatteras Inlet also has its problems with shoaling, but right now the inlet is open and navigable.
That’s good news for boat captains, commercial fishermen, private boaters, and the Hatteras Inlet ferry as the tourist season gets underway and the offshore fishing tournaments begin.
The first tournament — the Hatteras Village Offshore Open, the first event in the Governor’s cup series — gets underway on May 12 with fishing May 13-16.
In recent years, some boat captains have been reluctant to come to Hatteras for the tournament because of the sorry shape of the heavily shoaled inlet. That should not be the case this year.
“Last year we couldn’t tell them there was a good way to go,” said Hatteras charter boat Captain Rom Whitaker of the Release. But that has changed.
“The inlet is not a problem,” he said. “You’re going to have to go farther but it (the channel) is deep and it’s well marked.”
Captain Ernie Foster of the Albatross charter fleet called the situation “functional but not ideal.”
What has changed since last year is that in late August, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that an alternate, longer route through Hatteras Inlet is now the permanent route and will be marked and maintained as such.
The problem with the “new” and deeper, well marked channel is that it is also longer — for the Hatteras Inlet ferries going to and from Ocracoke, for the Coast Guard heading into the ocean on rescues, and for charter, commercial, and private boats.
The traditional route to Ocracoke and out into the ocean for all of these boats — also called the “old” or “regular” route was shorter and faster.
The best way to understand the difference between the “old” and “new” routes is to skip to the first slide in the accompanying slide show — see the link at the end of the blog.
As the designated federally-maintained route, Rollinson Channel has historically provided passage for boats from Hatteras village to the end of the Hatteras spit. Then boats would turn into the inlet toward the ocean or southwest to the Ocracoke ferry docks in a state-maintained channel.
However, the portion of Rollinson Channel through the inlet is where the most problematic shoaling occurs.
So, on the “new” route, boats use Rollinson Channel almost to the end of Hatteras spit, turn right into Barney Slough, head north, then cut over in deep water to Sloop Channel, which runs back to the south and into the Ocracoke ferry docks. Boats heading into the ocean keep on going from the ferry docks, along the north end of Ocracoke, and then into deeper water through the inlet.
For a time after the August announcement, commercial and charter boats could still use part of Rollinson Channel past the turn to Barney Slough to get to the deeper water out to the ocean on the Ocracoke side of the inlet. However, that ended in December, according to Whitaker. Now the ferries and almost all of the other boats are using the new route.
The difference, according to boat captains, is about 4 1/2 to 5 miles and adds 35 to 40 minutes to the trip.
This has an economic impact on both Hatteras and Ocracoke islands.
For instance, the ferry now takes an hour or more, instead of about 40 minutes.
That translates to more fuel and fewer passengers. In August 2013, 134,291 passengers were transported on the short route which had up to 52 departures a day. In August 2014, there were 119,260 transported on the long route, which had up to 42 departures a day.
It costs NCDOT as much as $250,000 more per month in labor and fuel to run the long route.
Fewer ferry passengers in the summer months has had a big economic impact on Ocracoke businesses, which are very dependent on those “day-trippers.”
It also costs Hatteras charter and commercial captains more in fuel and makes the trip into the ocean and out to the Gulf Stream longer.
“Most of us have had to raise prices,” Whitaker said.
Hatteras watermen who depend on the inlet aren’t complaining for now. They realize that the situation to the north in Oregon Inlet is much, much worse.
In addition, the economic impact of Hatteras Inlet on the area economy is less than Oregon Inlet — an estimated $150 million to $169 million for Hatteras, compared to $548 million for Oregon.
However, there are still millions of dollars at stake in the fight to keep Hatteras Inlet navigable.
And Hatteras and Ocracoke islanders want the old route back.
Whether or not that is possible or even affordable is the question.
Let’s diverge just a bit here to get in a bit of history about the two inlets.
Inlets have formed, shoaled up, and disappeared all up and down the Outer Banks during recorded history. Old maps show plenty of them that no longer exist.
However, Hatteras and Oregon inlets have stuck around for almost 170 years now. They both were formed by the same hurricane in September 1846.
Interestingly, the present-day Hatteras Inlet is the second to have that name.
According to the late David Stick, the Outer Banks’ premier historian, the first Hatteras Inlet, as shown on maps, was about halfway between the present inlet and the village of Ocracoke.
In his book, “The Outer Banks of North Carolina,” Stick writes that the “persistent story” was that the original Hatteras Inlet began closing up after a British Ship was grounded and abandoned there in the 1730s. It was said to be completely closed by 1755 and Ocracoke and Hatteras Island were joined.
Stick wrote about an Ocracoke pilot who lived in Hatteras village and walked to work — until 1846.
For a while, Hatteras Inlet was busy with ships entering from the ocean and traveling up the sounds. But, coastal shipping declined after the Civil War, and Stick wrote that old-timers said that the last commercial vessel passed through the inlet in 1895.
It has been used primarily by smaller boats since then — commercial fishermen and, since World War II, the growing number of charter boats serving a burgeoning population of visiting anglers.
In 1936, Rollinson Channel was dredged out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make navigation in the inlet easier. Then in 1956, extensive improvements were made to the channel and to the harbor in Hatteras village.
After World War II, Hatteras villager Frazier Peele transported cars on a small, wooden ferry boat — three or four autos at a time — from Hatteras village to Ocracoke. Stick says that Peele sold out to the state in 1957, which started up ferry service between the islands.
Although there were periodic problems with shoaling, traffic continued pretty much normally on the “old” traditional route until the past decade or so — starting perhaps after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and becoming much worse after Hurricane Irene in 2011.
Now, we clearly see a startling difference between Oregon and Hatteras inlets. While Oregon Inlet, and most others, migrate to the south, Hatteras Inlet is migrating to the north.
Bodie Island spit has been building out into Oregon Inlet since the Bonner Bridge was completed in 1963. Today, only about half the bridge remains over water. The rest travels over dry land and tidal sand flats.
The bridge was built with a tall, wide center span for boats to pass under, but as the Bodie Island spit and the inlet have migrated south, so has the channel. The deepest water is no longer under the bridge’s center span but under it’s southern end, forcing boats that can to pass under the bridge in an area where there is little clearance and the concrete fenders supporting the bridge are very close together, increasing the possibility of a boat striking the already fragile structure.
On the other hand, you can clearly now see that Hatteras Inlet is migrating north. The end of Hatteras Island — Hatteras spit — has been eroding badly, especially since Hurricane Isabel.
This can be best seen in the second slide in the slide show, which shows how the spit has eroded from 2002-2010.
The north end of Ocracoke has gained some sand, but not to the extent that Hatteras has lost it. Thus the inlet has gotten wider and wider in recent years — and shallower and shallower.
In the ’80s and into the ’90s, the inlet was perhaps a half mile wide. Now boat captains estimate it is close to two miles wide.
As sand washes off the end of Hatteras island, it’s going into Rollinson Channel, exacerbating the shoaling there. It’s not unusual these days to see the remnants of shrubbery, such as cedar trees, sitting out in the sound.
The southern tip of Hatteras Island was a wide sand or mud flat 20 or 30 years ago, a favorite place for fishermen, beachcombers, and families picnicking and clamming. From the end of the Pole Road, the sand road leading from the end of Highway 12 at the ferry docks, out to the end of the island, it was a half mile or more to the inlet. Now the inlet is at the end of the sand road. There is no beach left there.
Interestingly, scores and scores of birds nested on the sand spit — terns, skimmers, oystercatchers. The nesting conditions on the tidal flat were ideal, despite the pedestrian and vehicle activity.
The erosion of Hatteras spit shows no signs of stopping anytime soon — as the inlet grows even wider. It’s troubling, to say the least, and could conceivably at some point threaten the southern end of the village, including the Coast Guard Station, the ferry docks, and the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
Meanwhile, that big wide inlet is letting a lot of water flow through the inlet.
“The ocean water and all the sand are going straight into the channel,” said Ed Goodwin, director of DOT’s Ferry Division.
Goodwin says that the Ferry Division would love to run the shorter route, but he doesn’t see that happening any time soon.
He notes that it is the responsibility of the Army Corps to keep the federally designated Rollinson Channel open.
However, the money the federal government once spent on dredging shallow-draft inlets, such as Oregon and Hatteras, has dwindled to nothing.
For instance, Congress provided $544,000 for dredging Rollinson Channel this year, according to a Corps spokesman. Parts of the channel were dredged twice — once in the fall and once in the winter, at a cost of $477,000. So only $67,000 remains.
State and local officials are beginning to deal with the reality that if the inlets — and the state’s deep-water ports — are to be kept open, it’s going to fall to them to fund the effort.
Dare County has already started at look at ways to find long-terms funding for both inlets, but Oregon Inlet is taking priority. (You can read more about long-term funding in last week’s blog, “Keeping track of your tax dollars.”)
Foster calls Oregon Inlet “an unmitigated disaster” and Hatteras Inlet a “short-term calamity.”
“Once the disaster is mitigated, we’ll be looking at long-term solutions for both,” says Foster, who serves on the Dare County Tourism Board and the county’s Oregon Inlet Task Force.
It would make sense to Foster that the state might be interested in using the money it spends on fuel for the longer route for dredging to keep the shorter route open.
“I don’t know how much money it would take,” says Goodwin. But he thinks keeping the short route open year-round would cost a lot more than the $2 million to $3 million a year the state is spending on extra fuel for the new route.
He notes that the channel in the area of the inlet shoals back up just as fast as the Army Corps can get it dredged.
Going back to the short route is problematic for the Ferry Division in another way. It would like to see the 100-foot Rollinson Channel made wider, so the larger, newer ferries can pass each other more easily and safely. Since the Army Corps is authorized to maintain it only at 100 feet, widening it would take new studies and approval by Congress.
Goodwin notes that the state’s inlets, waterways, and ports are a priority in Gov. Pat McCrory’s long-term transportation plan.
“We’ve got to do a better job of addressing that problem (shoaling) and address the long-range solutions,” he says.
Whitaker says he’s heard state and local officials talk about the problems at Hatteras Inlet and the need for a long-term plan.
“But I haven’t heard anybody say the when, why, what, where, and how yet,” he says.
There are a lot of ideas out there right now. Some address ways to fund dredging long-term. The Ferry Division is studying and testing using a passenger ferry on the Hatteras Inlet route. Hatteras Island Commissioner Allen Burrus has even suggested that the county should buy its own dredge.
Burrus has said in interviews that the county could use it to dredge its own inlets and waterways and lease it out to other counties, or the state, or private users to help pay costs.
Perhaps it’s not that far-fetched an idea. And a quick Google search shows that there are plenty of dredges for sale out there.
Who knows?
Click here to see slide show.
