Posted on May 22, 2020
Tropical systems have taken a toll on the coastline of Topsail Island. This year, town leaders in Surf City and Topsail Beach say after finishing up their beach renourishment project, the beaches are ready for this year’s hurricane season.
“Storms are unpredictable in terms of magnitude. In terms of type, whether it’s wind-based, water-based, storm surges, all that but we feel like we are much further ahead now, in terms of protecting our properties with this project,” says Topsail Beach Manager Michael Rose.
Topsail Beach just finished up their project, along its entire beach stand.
It includes a new dune in front of the existing dune area which is about 75 to 100 feet from the ocean.
Topsail Beach didn’t quite finish up its dredging operation.
Crews plan to finish taking sand from Topsail Creek at the end of the year unless another storm forces them to do it sooner.
“There’s probably about 350,000 cubic yards still of sand remaining in the dredging areas,” says Rose. “That additional sand will go back out on the beach as well. It’ll kind of help us go through after what I’m sure will be a very quiet hurricane season. But just in case, you know we’ll have that opportunity to do any kind of repair touch that needs to be done on the beach at that point.”
Topsail Beach plans to add about 900,000 plants into the new dune, to add a more protective force.
Surf City completed a FEMA sand haul project to create an emergency berm.
FEMA designated imminent critical areas they would help pay for and the town added an additional $2 million to provide more protection.
A continuous berm that now extends along the entire town limit.
“Another thing that we’re excited about is that we hope to be moving forward with this federal beach nourishment project starting in December,” says Surf City Town Manager Kyle Breuer. “The overall emergency berm project, the FEMA project, that we just completed was about 238,000 cubic yards of new sand placed between us and North Topsail Beach. This federal project will bring up to 13 million cubic yards of new sand which will be sourced from offshore. So that’ll have a pretty, pretty profound effect on the beach and Dune structure in the future.”
Town officials also urge those coming to the beaches to stay off the dunes, to keep them strong and healthy this upcoming hurricane season.
Source: WECT
