Posted on September 19, 2025
OAK ISLAND — The Town of Oak Island is planning to dump 1.6 million cubic yards on its beaches to keep them healthy after a major rebuild in 2021.
Beth Sciaudone, a project manager with civil engineering firm Moffatt and Nichol, updated the town council on nourishment projects during its Sept. 9 meeting. Between November and April, a town-funded project will dredge up and place 941,000 cubic yards of sand on Oak Island’s shoreline. The Army Corps of Engineers will contribute 700,000 cubic yards — with some financial investment from the town — and already moved 100,000 cubic yards in March.
The new project has a $40 million price tag. The town will contribute $6.6 million to the Army Corps for its work and $33.4 million to Weeks Marine for the rest. Weeks was awarded the contract in June after a bidding process led by Moffatt and Nichol. Dredging is expected to begin in December and the project should wrap by April 2026.
After Hurricane Isaias in 2020, the dunes that provide a barrier between residential areas and the ocean had eroded away. The town built new dunes between 2020 and 2022. It also filled sand in on the beachfront, the end result pushing the water line 90 feet back. The project re-established “10-year protection,” disaster management-speak for the ability to withstand rapid erosion caused by a major storm the town would expect at least every decade.
The newest project will fill in the beach front more, maintaining the protection level the town built in 2022 and establishing a “beach berm” that should be more durable in the long run. Sciadudone noted the town should then be on a six-year nourishment cycle. The firm performed a statistical analysis and landed on 1.3 million cubic yards of sand as the town’s regular renourishment amount going forward.
Sciaudone noted the town’s beaches reached a low point prior to the 2020 projects. A succession of major storms like Florence and Isaias quickly ate away at the coastline. The dunes provide a one-time buffer against a major storm.
The town takes an annual survey of the shoreline to keep tabs on its protection level. In the 2024 survey, beaches were slightly in the green except for the east end of the island, where it was below the baseline for a 10-year storm.
Council member Mark Martin asked if the Army Corps is collecting data on the East beach, where it already placed 100,000 cubic yards of sand. He commented he hopes the town’s estimated need for sand can be adjusted downward in the future
“I’ve been skeptical of that number because it’s a very big number, and it’s a very scary budget number,” Martin said.
The town has an annual budget of about $26.4 million. It put about $2.8 million in its beach nourishment fund this year. Martin said he is not sure anyone on the council has figured out how the town will manage to pay for another nourishment project in six years.
Mayor Pro-Tem John Bach said the engineering firm optimized where the town is placing sand to make it more efficient, and it expects to make the full six-year cycle, but if the town does not the consequences would be “fiscally enormous.”
Sciaudone said the amount of sand the town loses could be below what is projected. In that case, the recommendation would be to wait longer before its next nourishment project.
“That’s what the annual mentoring does tell you,” She added. “What the state is and when you need to start making those decisions.”
