Posted on March 30, 2026
By Joy Crist
An audience of coastal leaders from across the country got a detailed look at the challenges facing Hatteras Island and Ocracoke Island during a featured panel at the annual American Shore and Beach Preservation Association (ASBPA) Coastal Summit.
The session, titled “Preserving Access to N.C. Coastal Villages and America’s First National Seashore,” brought together representatives from local organizations, government, academia, and environmental groups to outline the complex and increasingly urgent issue of maintaining access along increasingly eroding sections of the Outer Banks.
For many attendees—from California to Maine—the panel marked a first in-depth introduction to the barrier islands, which are often only seen nationally through fleeting viral videos of oceanfront home collapses and storm damage.
Moderated by Patrick Barrineau of Coastal Science & Engineering, the discussion focused on the intersection of public access, coastal management, and long-term sustainability within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and its centuries-old communities.
Aerial photo of Buxton on Feb. 2. Photo by Don Bowers.
Buxton Civic Association: “We are the people who live here”
Representing the Buxton Civic Association, Heather Jennette and Brian Harris grounded the discussion in lived experience, sharing both personal perspectives and a video presentation highlighting recent conditions in Buxton.
“We are not professional lobbyists or full-time advocates,” the presentation stated. “We are the people who live here… small business owners, first responders, fishermen, contractors and many more.”
The video detailed rapid erosion, environmental concerns tied to the former Buxton Naval Facility, and increasing threats to infrastructure, including N.C. Highway 12. It also outlined the current confines of the state’s ban on permanent and hardened erosion control structures like non-terminal groins, which makes only one of Buxton’s three deteriorating groins eligible for repair in the near future.
“For villages like Buxton, the restriction leaves communities with very few choices as the ocean continues to advance,” the presentation stated.
Jennette, a full-time nurse, emphasized that access is at the heart of every concern.
“It’s about access—whether it’s for commerce, for tourism, whether it’s so that I can get my patient who’s really sick off the island,” she said.
Harris echoed that urgency, while calling for updated approaches.
“We just want modern solutions, using modern science,” he said. “We’re just behind the eight ball… it’s time for us to catch up.”
Northern Ocracoke on December 9, 2025
Ocracoke Access Alliance: “We need to buy ourselves some time”
Justin LeBlanc of the Ocracoke Access Alliance described similar concerns on Ocracoke, where access is entirely dependent on ferries and a vulnerable stretch of N.C. Highway 12.
“We’ve sort of reached a crisis level of having to deal with access in the near term,” LeBlanc said.
He noted that overwash-prone “hot spots” are worsening, and that temporary solutions are becoming longer-term realities. The sandbags that protect Highway 12 on northern Ocracoke Island have grown from about 800 feet to almost two miles long, and ocean overwash that inundates the island’s only highway has become a routine problem.
Short-term proposals include a limited roadway shift within the existing corridor, while medium-term options could include beach nourishment. Long-term options like bridges or relocating the Hatteras-Ocracoke ferry terminal are costly, but may be necessary to preserve access in the decades to come.
But LeBlanc stressed that immediate action is the most pressing issue.
“We need to do some things that may not be consistent with the long-term solution so that we can get to the long-term solution,” he said. “We need to buy ourselves some time, or our island community will die.”
N.C. Highway 12 on Pea Island on Sunday, Oct. 14. NCDOT image.
Dare County: “When you lose that road, you lose everything”
Dare County Manager Bobby Outten framed N.C. Highway 12 as a critical lifeline, emphasizing that it is the only road connecting Hatteras Island communities with the rest of the world.
“When you lose that road, you lose everything,” Outten said. “You can’t get there any other way… you lose your ability to move ambulances, go to the grocery store – anything that you do.”
He outlined past storm impacts – including inlets cutting through the island during Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and Hurricane Irene in 2011, which isolated communities for months. He also highlighted the high cost and the many logistical challenges of maintaining highway access from Oregon Inlet to Ocracoke.
Outten noted that large-scale infrastructure solutions—such as the once-discussed 17-mile bridge along Pea Island—are financially unrealistic in the current funding environment. Instead, Dare County and its partners are focused on more targeted, cost-effective strategies, including shorter bridge segments at Hatteras Island’s six erosion “hot spots.”
Arial view of the Jug Handle Bridge in November 2021. Photo by Kerry Hooper, Jr. of Hooper Photography Solutions, LLC
“That bridge that you see here was about a $250 million bridge,” Outten said, referring to a presentation slide of the Rodanthe Bridge, or Jug Handle Bridge. “We’ve got six places to do that, and no money to do a large project [like this.]”
Rather than pursuing massive bridge project solutions, officials are now looking to launch smaller projects that are more achievable.
“How do we take those big bridges and break them into smaller pieces… and do a series of $10 million bridges, rather than a single $250 million bridge that we can’t get funding for?” Outten said.
At the same time, he said Dare County has relied heavily on beach nourishment as a protective measure, investing hundreds of millions of dollars locally to shield both infrastructure and oceanfront communities.
Using a single word to summarize priorities, Outten said: “Access… because access is the key to everything.”
National Park Service: “We’ve seen the trade-offs”
David Hallac, superintendent of National Park Service sites in eastern North Carolina, emphasized the challenge of balancing access with the agency’s mandate to preserve natural resources.
“We have both the blessing and challenge of having unincorporated villages that are right up adjacent to the National Seashore,” Hallac said.
He cautioned that many commonly used solutions—such as sandbags and dune construction—carry long-term consequences.
“The science is very, very clear that when you armor an area, you are likely to have the same types of effects that you have with sea walls,” he said. In essence, creating temporary measures to trap sand in one location may negatively affect other areas of a shoreline, and barrier islands naturally need to move and migrate west in order to stay intact. Locking them in place with infrastructure bolstered by erosion control measures can inadvertently cause barrier islands to narrow.
Hallac described decision-making as a “three-legged stool” that includes law and policy, best available science, and long-term public interest.
“If we negatively impact the area that we came to protect in the first place, then maybe some of those solutions are not a good idea,” he said.
Buxton Beach Nourishment in July 2022. Photo by CSE.
Science perspective: “There’s no silver bullet”
Dr. Katherine Anarde of North Carolina State University provided a scientific overview of shoreline dynamics and the trade-offs associated with different management strategies.
“Shoreline change is driven by both natural and human factors,” she said, noting the roles of erosion, sea level rise, and overwash processes.
While tools like beach nourishment and stabilization can “buy time,” she said they do not stop long-term trends.
“There’s no silver bullet… but there may be a silver buckshot,” Anarde said, emphasizing that a mix of strategies will likely be needed for Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands.
Legal and policy perspective: “Think long term”
Julie Youngman of the Southern Environmental Law Center highlighted the legal, environmental, and policy complexities involved in maintaining access to Hatteras and Ocracoke, pointing to a mix of accelerating natural forces, competing land uses, and regulatory constraints.
“We’ve got erosion and sea level rise and storms, and they’re accelerating,” she said, noting that the pace and intensity of coastal change is increasing beyond historic patterns.
Youngman explained that the challenge is compounded by overlapping land designations and responsibilities, including the National Park Service’s responsibility to preserve natural resources, the presence of the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, and the needs of residents, visitors, and local economies.
“That’s a lot of different land uses that we’re demanding out of one skinny little island that wants to move,” she said.
She also pointed to the complex network of laws and funding structures that govern coastal management, from federal environmental regulations to state transportation funding and disaster recovery programs.
“There’s a very limited amount of funding available… so if you’re spending millions of dollars on a single project elsewhere, those millions aren’t available” for Hatteras and Ocracoke, she said.
Youngman emphasized that solutions should not be driven solely by immediate needs, but instead grounded in a broader understanding of long-term impacts, community values, and physical limitations.
“Let’s not do anything in the short term that is just going to make the problem worse down the road,” she said.
Using a familiar analogy, Youngman added that coastal dynamics ultimately cannot be controlled indefinitely.
“The ocean is not going to just stop, because as a matter of policy, we want it to,” she said.
Justin Leblanc explains Ocracoke’s landscape and erosion issues.
Common ground: Maintaining access is the goal, and there are no easy answers
Despite differing perspectives, panelists consistently returned to a shared priority: maintaining access to Hatteras and Ocracoke.
“I think it’s wild that all of us here are all about access as the top priority,” Jennette said.
Potential solutions discussed ranged from beach nourishment and groin repairs to bridge construction, roadway shifts, and longer-term concepts such as causeways or relocation strategies.
But panelists emphasized that each option comes with trade-offs—financial, environmental, and social—and that no single approach will solve the problem.
Ultimately, the discussion underscored the complexity of preserving access to North Carolina’s barrier islands, while also highlighting the growing national awareness of the challenges facing communities along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.
As Harris noted, the goal is simple—even if the path forward is not:
“We only desire to be good stewards of the special place we call home… but to succeed at that for the future, we need help.”
