Dredging planned for emergency ferry channel

As the hurricane season approaches its peak, the critically important emergency ferry channel between Rodanthe and Stumpy Point will be getting the attention it needs just in the nick of time to restore safe passage.

An application for a Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) general permit to remove shoaling at the Rodanthe end of the channel could be approved in a matter of days, according to an update provided at the Dare County Waterways Commission meeting held Monday in Buxton.

“Usually they take 30-plus days, but we think this will be . . . sooner than that, just due to the urgency of the matter, maybe even later this week,” commission administrator Barton Grover said in a later interview. “But hopefully, for sure by next week, we’ll see this general permit to allow Dare County to have a contractor go in there with a bucket and barge.”

County officials were informed last month that a recent survey determined a small area in the Rodanthe basin had only about 5 feet of water, making access to the channel too hazardous for emergency ferries. Ferries require at minimum 5 1/2 feet of water.

The application was submitted in early August, Grover said. In the request to the county for its share of costs, he said it included about a $40,000 buffer to cover a 30-day gap that would be result to seek a modification for unexpected costs.On Aug. 5, the Board of Commissioners approved applying to the state’s shallow draft fund for the estimated project cost of $140,000 The state fund would cover 75% of the total project cost, with Dare County providing 25% in matching funds.

Bucket and barges, mechanical dredging where a container filled with material removed from a shoal dumps it on a barge, are more suitable in tight areas and/or small projects.

The 700-foot section of the shoaled channel in the Rodanthe Harbor basin is estimated to need about 600 cubic yards of material removed to an adjacent disposal site. The contractor is expected to complete the work in 7 to 14 days.

In addition, the state Department of Transportation, which oversees the ferry division, plans to do its own bucket and barge project to remove shoaling on the Stumpy Point side, Grover said. “They can get through, but there are some spots that are a little shallow for their dredges,” he explained. The state has put the project out for bids, he said, and plans to get the work done in early September.

The emergency ferry channel was created in 2009 by NCDOT to bypass washed-out N.C. 12 in Mirlo Beach, and the service has been implemented as a backup transportation route several times since then. Ferry terminals were created in Rodanthe in 2001 and in Stumpy Point in 2002, and both were upgraded in 2013.

The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for the maintenance of all of the Rodanthe side of the channel and the basin, and all of the channel in Stumpy Point, except for the 1,200-foot approach channel in the harbor, which is owned by the state.

Meanwhile, in late July, the Corps issued a public scoping notification related to drafting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 documentation “for the purpose of enlarging the navigation corridor at the Hatteras to Hatteras Inlet Gorge Federal navigation channel, within the Hatteras Inlet complex,” as reflected in a July 26 letter from the Corps to the Waterways Commission and other stakeholders.

“They’re working on a modification, I guess you would call it, to the Rollinson realignment,” Grover said. “And that’s to include this whole new emergency Sloop channel that the ferries are using right now.”

Essentially, incorporating the input from the Ferry Division and the Waterways Commission, among others, Grover said the Corps wants to widen the authorized federal dredge corridor. It also is considering changing and/or adding placement areas for the dredged material.

The Corps is hoping to be able to pipeline dredge next winter in Rollinson Channel, Grover said, and the proposed environmental assessment “talks about placing material on the beach.”

“We’d be obviously in full support of that, and Ocracoke would be in support of that, to protect the road,” he said. “But the only section they have for placement is near Pole Road, the end of Hatteras Island. But they also have a section kind of near the Graveyard of the Atlantic, in front of where the South Dock ferry docks are in Hatteras village. This is just an environmental assessment, but we would like them to consider placing it all the way up Isabel inlet (the area opened during Hurricane Isabel in 2003 between Hatteras and Frisco villages.)”

Grover said it’s not lost on the county that pumping that distance would be more costly, but it also could be beneficial for widening the shoreline where it is narrow, leaving N.C. 12 vulnerable to high surf.

The county is including the suggestion in comments to the proposed EA, which is open for public comments through Aug. 26. As he explained it, the idea could not only potentially kill two birds with one stone but also to try to get a step ahead on addressing the hotspot.

“And so if they do get a pipeline project in there, and everything functionally works for them to be able to pump it up that far — and that’s not a guarantee — but all those functional things work out, and the funding for booster pumps and monitoring works out,” he said, “they would at least have already gone over that hurdle of doing an environmental assessment.”

In a separate issue, Patrick Tallant, Officer in Charge at the Coast Guard’s Aids to Navigation Unit in Wanchese, updated the commissioners on the proposed removal of red and green navigational buoys in shallow Cape Channel that goes from Buxton Harbor to Hatteras Harbor.

The channel is about 2 feet deep and is impassable to all but the most shallow draft boats.

Grover said that it is mostly used by duck hunters to access duck blinds, and the commission has received few, if any, comments concerned about the buoys.

Tallant said the Coast Guard is proposing to replace the four channel markers with signs warning about shallow water, according to Grover. The Coast Guard will put the proposal out for public comment in the near future, he added.

“And so they just don’t want to confuse people, especially out-of-towners who are in the area… just so they don’t think there’s a real channel there,” Grover said.

Also, the dredge Merritt , a side-caster dredge and one of the Corps’ main workhorses, is in the shop in Wilmington getting repairs done and won’t be available until about mid-September.

On the other hand, the local dredge Miss Katie was able to come in for about a week in mid-July and clean up Sloop Channel, removing 21,986 cubic yards of sand.

“So as best as we can do, the Miss Katie was successful in preventing the ferries from bumping bottom,” Grover said.

Weather permitting, the dredge will return this weekend to dredge the Connector Channel, and then possibly do some touch-up in Sloop.