Frustrations mount at Waterways Commission meeting as dredging plans are altered

Even with just a virtual view of the Monday evening meeting of the Dare County Waterways Commission, it was clear from members’ facial expressions that their usual level of frustration at resolving persistent navigational issues in Hatteras Inlet had increased.

The entrance to the Connecting Channel, which has recently replaced the South Ferry Channel, is still clogged. The long-anticipated realignment of the Rollinson Channel that would greatly expand maintenance flexibility for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers yet again is facing another delay. And the current dredge work being done in Connecting Channel is going to be diverted for at least a week for emergency dredging in Sloop Channel because the ferries can barely get through the narrow channel.

Although agencies were peppered with questions — “Can’t you dredge the lump in the connector on the way to Sloop? Can the realignment be sped up?” —— few definitive answers could be given.

“I know frustrations are high, and we all want to get back to work,” commission Chair Steve “Creature” Coulter, a Hatteras charter boat captain, said after complaints were voiced. “And it appears once again that our plan is going to get a little derailed.”

As bad news piled up during the course of the 75-minute meeting, commissioners looked increasingly dour, shaking their heads in disbelief, and at times, holding their heads as if struck with a crushing headache.

“We’re withering on the vine here,” member K.P. Scott, who runs the Miss Hatteras headboat, said.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to get this expedited,” he added. “This is a whole community. The Hatteras Village tournament has already been moved to Morehead City. Basically, no boats are coming here.”

Barton Grover, commission administrator, told the panel that the entrance to the Connecting Channel is a state Department of Transportation area, so NCDOT would have to ask the Corps for permission to dredge what he described as “a small hump.” Grover said he has asked the DOT to ask the Corps to add the Connecting Channel entrance to the dredge box for planned work in Sloop Channel.

In an email sent Thursday morning, Coulter said that the Corps’ dredge Merritt was still working in the Connecting Channel, and had “made good progress.” Although the Corps had anticipated starting at Sloop Channel on Thursday, they are waiting for DOT’s bucket and barge operation to move out of the way and for completion of a new survey of the channel.

Speaking during the commission meeting, Todd Horton, deputy chief of navigation with the Corps’ Wilmington District, told commissioners that Sloop “is in bad shape,” and requires that a long, thin section be widened.

“It’s to a point that if we don’t get in there,” he said, “they’re going to have to stop [ferry] operations.”

The Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry is the busiest ferry route in the state, especially during holiday weekends, (such as the upcoming Easter holiday), and the summer months.

Ken Willson, Dare County dredge projects consultant with Coastal Planning & Engineering of North Carolina, told members that the dredge permit allows 21 extra days of dredging outside the seasonal window up until Sept. 1, and that there is about 13 days left of funding available.

Meanwhile, the Corps is looking to expand the scope of the environmental assessment for the realignment of the Rollinson Channel, which would provide flexibility to maintain wherever the deep water is. According to Brennan Dooley with the Corps, the agency is considering expanding the area in the EA to parts of the Connector Channel and Sloop Channel.

“If we keep it limited to one particular area,” he said, “we might not have the ability to maintain it in the future if we don’t have it added now.”

He said it’s better to not have to add areas in a piecemeal way.

“So we want to make sure that whatever we push for right now as part of this realignment covers us for the foreseeable future as best we can,” Dooley said.

But with additional areas added, there would also be additional time — likely at least 60 days —needed for additional review before the realignment would be finalized.

Another wrinkle with the realignment is that a previous concern about impacts on submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) has not been resolved yet with National Marine Fisheries, Horton said.

Responding to the SAV issue, Coulter said that increased amount of sand washing into the inlet is affecting SAV growth, not their boats.

“We are not the ones destroying the subaquatic vegetation,” he said.

Coulter also expressed annoyance that no one from NCDOT was at the meeting, despite the various concerns with their projects.

“The ferries are not the only priority here,” the chairman said. “We’ve got the entire community of Hatteras trying to start fishing. We’ve got a lump that may take half a day to knock down.”

But in Coulter’s later email, he said that NCDOT Ferry Division had agreed to ask the Corps for a permit modification to add the entrance of the Connecting Channel to their Sloop Channel permit. “Everyone is waiting for a response from the agencies on that,” he wrote in the email. “This will help the work at the Connecting Channel that was outside of that project’s permitted area.”

Coulter also asked in the email that people hold their public comments until the end of the meeting, “because of the difficulties of virtual meets, outbursts complicate the conversation.”

Before the meeting closed, however, commission member Natalie Kavanaugh, an owner of Frisco Rod and Gun, tried to calm the waters. Saying she also had her doubts initially about clearing Sloop Channel before completing the Connecting Channel work, she now believes it’s probably a good thing — as long as the Corps get backs to the connector quickly — because Sloop is currently far less navigable.

“I think we’re going to be okay,” Kavanaugh told her colleagues. “I just feel like everyone’s just panicking about this. We really needed to be in Sloop, also, for our sake.”