Posted on September 25, 2024
In the wake of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) announcement that it has suspended dredging by the Miss Katie in the Oregon and Hatteras inlets, county officials will meet with the USACE on Sept. 25 to try to resolve the issue, according to Dare County Manager Bobby Outten.
Outten says the county representative who will be present at the meeting include himself, Commissioner Steve House and the county’s consultants. Officials of EJE Dredging, which owns the Miss Katie, will not be present.
The Miss Katie arrived in Dare County in August 2022 and was funded with $15 million from the state as part of public-private partnership and a forgivable loan agreement. A top official of the company is Jordan Hennessy, a key aide to former State Senator Bill Cook, a member of the Coastal Resources Commission, and a principal of the Coastal Affordable Housing LLC that had partnered with the county on its affordable housing initiative until this past April.
In its Sept. 18 announcement of the suspension of Miss Katie dredging, the USACE said that data from the National Dredging Quality Management Program (DQM) from September 2023 to June 2024 “shows that work was unnecessarily conducted by dredging well outside the authorized widths and depths of the navigation channels. According to the data gathered, 98% of all dredging loads associated with both complexes were not compliant with permit conditions.”
The USACE release also stated that it had previously issued two dredging noncompliance notices to Dare County in April and August 2023.
Outten told the Voice that one of the county’s goals at the Sept. 25 meeting is to figure out “how do we give [the USACE] assurances we comply with their conditions.” The county wants to “make sure we’re all on the right page,” he added. “It’s complicated.”
The county manager also explained that the DQM dredging data is provided to EJE, the USACE and Dare County, but acknowledged that “we don’t get all of the DQM data and after that meeting, hopefully we’re all working…with the same data sets.” Outten said he expects the meeting to produce a successful resolution of the issue.
