Posted on January 19, 2026
Ferry navigation safety in the emergency ferry channel between Stumpy Point and Rodanthe appears likely to be assured before the height of this summer’s hurricane season, with work on both sides of the route targeting proactive maintenance plans.
Dredging of the state channel in Stumpy Point harbor began recently and already is about half completed, North Carolina Ferry Division planning and development manager Catherine “Cat” Peele reported during Monday’s meeting of the Dare County Waterways Commission in Manteo.
“It’s going really well,” she told the panel, speaking remotely.
Peele said that despite some tight areas, the entire channel is currently still accessible. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had completed a dredge project last year in its portion of the channel.
At the same time, plans to address a recurrent shoaling problem in an area of the channel in Rodanthe Harbor are being developed, Ken Willson, the county’s consultant with Wilmington-based Coastal Protection Engineering, told commissioners.
While the county has agreed to seek permits to allow the local hopper dredge Miss Katie to maintain the Rodanthe side, Willson said, additional surveys are required to determine the necessary length of the channel. Preliminary information indicates that it may have to be twice as long as previously expected.
The authorized federal channel is about a mile, but it “dead-ends” into about 6 feet of water, commission administrator Barton Grover explained in a later interview. The problem is that the county is seeking permits to dredge 12 feet deep, but the connecting waters are half that depth.
“You have to connect to waters of the same depth,” he said, comparing it to how a road has to merge seamlessly with an attached bridge. “So hypothetically, if we got a permit today, without expanding the federal channel that’s existing, they would only let us go to six-foot depth, because that’s what the adjacent waters outside the federal channel are currently.”
As a consequence, Grover continued, an additional mile will be surveyed to determine where the 12-foot depths are in existing water. “And then we’ll permit what is needed to get us from the harbor to that 12-foot of deep water,” he said. “We’ll permit a 100-foot-wide channel.”
But Grover emphasized that the additional length of the survey does not mean that it will be the additional length of the permitted channel; it’s just providing leeway to prevent the need — and significant cost — for the surveyor potentially having to return for more data. The cost of the project is being paid by the state’s Shallow Draft Navigation Channel Dredging and Aquatic Weed Fund, which will cover 75%. Dare County would pay the remaining 25% of the cost.
The emergency ferry channel was created in 2009 after previous emergencies cut off access to and from Hatteras Island on N.C. 12, the island’s only highway. Although the Rodanthe side of the emergency channel is a federal channel, the Corps cannot maintain it until the depths are below 6 feet. However, when recurring shoaling issues in a small area of the channel by the basin made the entire channel unnavigable for ferries, the county found that authorization constraints on the Corps made it impossible for them to respond to the shoaling in a timely manner.
In September 2024, Dare County paid about $100,000 to have a bucket-and-barge remove about 600 cubic yards of sand from the clogged area. After Willson last summer recommended that the commission ask the county to seek the permits for Miss Katie to maintain the channel year-round as needed, the county quickly agreed to proceed.
As Grover explained, the idea is to provide a buffer that can keep the channel open for a full year or more.
“So we’re trying to get a deeper depth to allow Miss Katie to operate in there, and also to ensure that the ferries can continue to get in there, because they’re drafting at approximately five and a half feet,” he said. “So, if you dredge it at six and you have a big storm, it might be already back at five and a half. If you dredge it to 10 foot or 12 foot, and you have a storm, it went from 10 foot to nine foot.”
The environmental authorizations, including survey work and sediment sampling, are expected to be completed by March, he said, after which the agencies will conduct their reviews.
“We’re targeting to have that permit before hurricane season,” he said, adding the goal is to have it “in hand” around July.
In the more immediate issue, the commission was informed that the Miss Katie was sent on Monday to Sloop Channel to dredge a persistent problem area that had again shoaled and was hindering ferry traffic.
“We’re looking forward to her coming down and giving us some relief,” Peele said.
That work was responding to the concern that it was too hazardous to wait for the Corps’ planned Rollinson project, which had been delayed about a month. The Corps told the commission that the pipeline dredge, due to seasonal restrictions, would first work for about a month in Big Foot Slough before moving to less restrictive Sloop and Rollinson channels. But everyone agreed that Sloop needed attention much sooner.
“There’s an urgent need,” Grover told commissioners.
No representatives from the Corps were in attendance at Monday’s meeting to answer questions.
Willson said there have also been delays getting the cultural resource surveys done at the Connector Channel and the Inlet Bar, which are requirements to secure permits the county is seeking in order to expand the dredge boxes.
“We’re hoping to see those guys at the end of January,” he said about the surveyors. “They’re trying to get some bigger weather windows, which is kind of hard this time of year.”
But with the new year underway, the situation in Hatteras Inlet overall is considerably more positive than in some recent winters.
“We’re still getting through places and everything is better than it was 10 years ago,” said commission chair Steve “Creature” Coulter, adding, “I haven’t heard anyone complain about the channel except for a couple of missing buoys.”
