Posted on February 6, 2023
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ dredge vessel Merritt is set to begin dredging a critical part of the Bogue Inlet channel between Emerald Isle and Onslow County on Thursday, Feb. 2.
Carteret County Shore Protection Office Manager Ryan Davenport, whose office helps plan and oversee dredging and beach nourishment projects in the county, said Wednesday the work is expected to last about a week. It’s all being paid for by the federal government, Davenport said.
The work is being done in what locals refer to as Dudley’s Channel.
Davenport said the area is roughly across from Dudley’s Marina in Swansboro and near Dudley’s Island. The project involves about 200 feet of shoaled material that has made it difficult for boaters.
“It’s gotten shoaled up pretty bad in the last couple of months,” he said.
Dudley’s Channel, he said, is right after boaters turn south out of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.
The county is asking recreational boaters to exercise caution navigating the inlet and maintain a safe distance from the dredging activity. Updates will be provided through the Carteret County Shore Protection Office and Carteret County Government social media as the project progresses.
The Merritt is a side-casting dredge – it scoops up material and tosses it aside, working with the tides – and works mainly off the coast of North Carolina and occasionally makes its way to South Carolina. The side-casting dredge allows for faster movement of sand, opposed to other types of dredges.
The Merritt has been involved in many Carteret County dredging projects to help keep shallow channels navigable. Dredging channels helps improve waters for recreation, commercial fishing, ferry systems, marine fisheries and emergency assets like the Coast Guard.
According to the ACE, this improves commerce by supporting the surrounding communities’ tourism, recreation and local businesses.
In many past dredging projects in Bogue Inlet – the crucial passageway to the ocean for boaters in western Carteret County and eastern Onslow County – local funds have paid for some or all of the work.
For example, in 2021, Cape Carteret and Swansboro pitched in $2,500 each. Onslow County contributed $47,000, Emerald Isle $10,000, Carteret County $35,000 and North Carolina $200,000 for a total of $380,000.
That, however, was a much larger project when the Merritt dredged a new channel close to Dudley Island, taking advantage of existing deeper water.
Overall, though, Bogue Inlet is still thought to be in good shape. During a Carteret County Beach Commission meeting in August 2022, Newport-based Geodynamics, Carteret County’s beach surveying firm, said that with some seasonal fluctuations, the channel hasn’t moved into a “safety box” map established after Emerald Isle relocated the channel in 2005. In fact, the company reported the channel moves slightly to the west, away from The Point at the western tip of Emerald Isle at times, though not enough to mitigate the overall easterly trend.
In 2005, when very expensive homes at The Point were seriously threatened by erosion, Emerald Isle and the state of North Carolina paid $11.4 million to relocate the channel farther from the rapidly eroding western tip of Bogue Banks.
The project involved a dike that blocked the existing channel so water would have to flow into the new channel that was dredged. The 710,000 cubic yards of dredged sand was piped to shore as nourishment for 4.5 miles of beach in western Emerald Isle.
Experts at the time thought they might need to repeat the process in 15 years, which would have been 2020. That wasn’t the case, so the move has outlived expectations.
Meanwhile, Davenport said Wednesday, the Carteret County Beach Commission, which advises his office, is set to meet Monday, Feb. 27 for the first time since October. The commission normally doesn’t meet in January but voted during the October meeting not to meet in November, December or January because no big projects were in the works and some members planned to travel during the holiday period.
