Posted on July 3, 2018
By Brad Rich, Carolina Coast Online
“It was a dream scenario, but it didn’t work out.”
That was the word Thursday from Carteret County Shore Protection Office Manager Greg Rudolph.
Mr. Rudolph, along with Atlantic Beach Mayor Trace Cooper and Pine Knoll Shores Manager Brian Kramer, attempted this week to convince the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to undertake a massive beach nourishment project this year that would encompass all of the Bogue Banks oceanfront, except Fort Macon State Park, eastern Atlantic Beach and western Emerald Isle.
The trio met with ACE officials Tuesday in the agency’s Wilmington district office, and came away “very disappointed,” Mr. Rudolph said, but not completely surprised.
“Timing was a problem,” he added, as was the availability of a hopper dredge that would have been used to move sand from a planned Morehead City Port Harbor dredging project to western Atlantic Beach and Pine Knoll Shores.
Mr. Rudolph’s idea had been to link a western Atlantic Beach nourishment project – using federal money allocated to dredge the port harbor – to a long-planned project set for this winter to nourish beaches from the eastern boundary of Pine Knoll Shores through the eastern part of Emerald Isle.
The Pine Knoll Shores part of the work would have been switched to link with the Atlantic Beach project, using the harbor sand, while the Salter Path, Indian Beach and eastern Emerald Isle work would have used sand dredged from a site just offshore in the ocean.
Because of the federal money involved, the combined project would have cost the county and the towns less – $23.4 million – than the original $28 million pegged for a project without Atlantic Beach and without harbor sand.
But, Mr. Rudolph said Thursday, the ACE is set to open bids on one dredging project at the port Wednesday, July 11, and another contract will be awarded by Monday, October 1.
The first one – just inside Beaufort Inlet – is a pipeline dredge project, Mr. Rudolph said, with offshore placement of the dredged material planned for a new nearshore berm off Shackleford Banks.
“There’s simply no way to change that scope of work now,” he said.
The second contract, set for October, is part of a regional hopper dredge plan that includes not just Morehead City, but also Wilmington’s port and the ports in Brunswick and Savannah, Ga.
“Changing the scope of work for Morehead City now would adversely impact the regional bid,” Mr. Rudolph said.
The good news is that all involved in the meeting this week agreed to formulate a new long-term memorandum of agreement that will enable the county and the ACE to more easily undertake these kinds of projects in the future.
“It’s a small step in the right direction,” Mr. Rudolph said, but the bottom line is that it’s now back to the drawing board for the project the county had originally planned for this winter – eastern Emerald Isle, Salter Path/Indian Beach and Pine Knoll Shores.
The goal had been to get half of the $28 million from the state’s new Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Fund, which the legislature approved in 2017, but didn’t fund.
The legislature’s stated long-term goal is to establish a dedicated revenue source for the fund, similar to the boat gas tax that contributes millions in revenue to a fund that helps local governments pay for inlet dredging projects.
The legislature, however, didn’t identify a funding source for the CSDMF during its recently completed budget session, and instead, at the request of state Rep. Pat McElraft, a Republican who lives in Emerald Isle, transferred $5 million to the CSDMF from another fund intended to help create jobs in “distressed” counties.
That left the county beach project short about $9 million.
One option to make up that deficit would be to do the same project using the $5 million from the state, but increasing the financial contributions from the towns and the county, which has a beach nourishment fund that should hit $20 million by the end of this summer.
Under the original plan, the county was going to put up $10.54 million and the towns a total of $3.51 million in order to supply the match for the hoped-for $14 million from the state.
But with the state’s $14 million cut to $5 million, the county’s share under that plan would have to increase to $17.35 million and the towns’ share to $5.78 million. The county’s beach nourishment fund, which gets half of the revenue from the county’s occupancy tax, stands at about $18.2 million.
The project is planned to encompass 9.5 miles of beach and result in the deposition of 1.5 million cubic yards of sand.
Thursday, Mr. Rudolph suggested another possible alternative, dividing the project over two years.
“We are … thinking about bidding (the project) … with a completion date of April 2020,” he wrote in an email to the Carteret County Beach Commission, which had informally endorsed the combined project during its monthly meeting June 25, in Pine Knoll Shores town hall. “That could give the dredgers the flexibility to complete the entire 1.5 million cubic yards of nourishment this winter (2018-19) OR over the course of two winters.
“We would sequence the (project) … west to east (Emerald Isle to PKS),” he added in the email. “We’re just trying to allow flexibility to create a more favorable bid result.
“Obviously we have a lot more discussion with the municipalities to do before any final decisions are made.”
Eastern Emerald Isle is a priority because it’s long been an erosion hot spot, and it’s been years since Salter Path/Indian Beach and Pine Knoll Shores beaches have received significant sand nourishment.
While some might think Bogue Banks beaches are in good shape, and engineers’ surveys show they are, it can be deceiving, Mayor Cooper, chairman of the beach commission, said during the panel’s meeting Monday.
In fact, he said, there’s plenty of sand, but much of it is in relatively new dunes, formed over the years by sand fences and vegetation catching blowing sand in many locations. That’s a plus for storm protection, but the recreational beach is flatter and much narrower than it has been along much of the island. That fact is big, as the recreational beach is the main revenue-generator for the towns, the county and businesses.
One Pine Knoll Shores business person, Alyce Kelly, general manager of The Inn at Pine Knoll Shores, formerly the Clamdigger, said that’s a problem.
“We can only put out one row of (beach) chairs” in front of the inn now, she said Monday before the meeting. “My belief is we’ve got to do something. I’m just here to listen and take back what I hear to the ownership.”
Source: Carolina Coast Online
