Waterways Commission voices concern about Rodanthe-Stumpy Point emergency ferry channel

With a number of Hatteras Inlet projects either cued up or awaiting final permits, the Dare County Waterways Commission on Monday quickly dispensed of its business at a briefer-than-usual meeting at the Dare County administrative building in Manteo.

Still, with the June 1 start of the Atlantic hurricane season looming, the panel expressed its uneasiness with the lack of certainty about safe passage in the emergency ferry channel between Rodanthe and Stumpy Point, which still lacks a plan for dredging.

“I’m sitting here stuttering because the need to get this done is absolute,” Commissioner Ernie Foster said, responding to an ongoing discussion with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about permitting maintenance on the Rodanthe side. “And we’re sitting here twiddling our thumbs?”

The Waterways Commission’s angst stems from a small, shoaled area near the Rodanthe Harbor basin that the county learned in July essentially made the entire emergency channel inaccessible to ferry traffic. Environmental windows for dredging limited the Corps to working only between November and March, but the county was eventually able to secure a permit for a bucket-and-barge project — which scoops out sand onto a barge — to clear the shoal.

In an effort to be proactive, the county had subsequently asked the Corps to change its authorization to allow for bucket-and-barge dredging any time of year, or alternately, to authorize its pipeline dredge to go to eight feet, rather than the current six feet, buying time for the ferries until the Corps would be able to do its dredging in the winter.

However, as commission administrator Barton Grover informed the panel on Monday, a definitive response from the Corps has moved “not much further,” although discussions are continuing.

Foster reiterated that “the notion of not having an emergency channel available” during hurricane season was unacceptable.

“That’s why we keep bringing (the issue) back,” responded commission chair Steve “Creature” Coulter.

There may be some comfort in that the Corps reported in February that its contract dredge had completed a previously scheduled maintenance project on the Stumpy Point side of the emergency channel. And at the recent meeting, Catherine “Cat” Peele, planning and development manager with the N.C. Ferry Division, reported that during recent ferry test runs on both sides of channel, it was “pretty shallow” but the vessel was able to get in.

As Grover explained in a later interview, the authorized depth for dredging the channel is six feet, but ferries need about 5 1/2 feet of water. The channel depth is currently about six feet. But it’s not unreasonable to fear that the same problem could develop in the spring or summer, and solutions that seem simple are rife with complications.

“So, if it shoals in a half foot, the ferry starts struggling to be able to get in,” Grover said. “But usually deepening the channel is like an act of Congress. It’s really hard to do.”

The county has been trying to look at every angle to find solutions, he added.

“We asked the Corps to look into it, because this is going to happen every year.  We’re going to see it shoal in May, and we’re going to ask them to dredge it, and they will tell us they can dredge it in November. And we want to dredge before August, before hurricane season.”

Whatever solution is found, the Corps does not have any funding for 2025 to dredge Rodanthe, Grover added, so for now, Dare County would again be responsible for picking up the cost of any work, despite it being a federal channel except for a small portion at the end of Stumpy Point.

Dare had paid for last year’s bucket-and-barge emergency work, which scooped out about 600 cubic yards of material from a 700-foot section of channel in the Rodanthe basin in early September.

Corps funding could even be difficult to secure on a regular basis in the future, as well, because of the complexity of the Congressional budget process and the Corps’ priorities,  Grover said.  Federal funds would typically be available after a hurricane with an emergency declaration, but even then it can take weeks for the Corps to be able to respond.

The emergency ferry channel was established in 2009 as a way to provide emergency supplies to Hatteras Island and an evacuation route to the mainland for islanders when N.C. 12 or the Basnight Bridge are inaccessible.

In other updates, Ken Willson, Dare County dredge projects consultant with Coastal Planning & Engineering of North Carolina, speaking remotely, said that the Corps is currently bidding out fiber core work in preparation for the permitting process for a proposed 9-foot channel to bypass shoaling at Bigfoot Slough, which has been a recurrent hazard near the Silver Lake ferry terminal for ferry traffic on the  Ocracoke-Cedar Island and Ocracoke-Swan Quarter routes.

The Corps’ hopper dredge Murden had recently done some emergency work clearing the channel after a ferry on March 6 ran aground and was caught there for hours.

Willson explained that the Corps is looking to do a pipeline project in Bigfoot Slough, in addition to the regular maintenance work it is planning in Hatteras Inlet. Meanwhile, the Corps, NCDOT, and Hyde County, he said, are working to get a permit for dredging a new natural channel near Bigfoot, similar to the permit that had been authorized in recent years for the horseshoe channel in Hatteras Inlet.  Willson is also working with Hyde County in seeking a permit that would allow the Wanchese-based Miss Katie dredge to work in the existing Bigfoot Slough channel when the Murden can’t do the work.

“At best, that process is still a four or five-month process,” Willson told commissioners. “There are still a lot of contingencies.”

Willson also said that the county has requested an opportunity to review a draft list of permit conditions to restore the Miss Katie’s dredge project permit for the Connector Channel.  Once the survey data is collected, the permit would be expected to be issued within 14 days, he said.

The Army Corps’ Wilmington District in September 2024 suspended five of the county’s permits for EJE Dredging Service’s Miss Katie operations in Hatteras and Oregon inlets for disregard of permit conditions and failure to implement corrective actions. According to a Corps press release, review of the National Dredging Quality Management Program revealed that 98% of EJE’s loads from the inlets were removed outside the designated channels between September 2023 and June 2024.

Since then, EJE has taken corrective measures, and two permits, including for Oregon Inlet, have been restored.

The Connector Channel permit would include modifications that would allow dredge work on the bar as well as inshore dredge material disposal.

“The Corps is ready to go ahead to issue that permit once we make a final request to turn that permit back on,” Willson told the commissioners.