Posted on April 21, 2025
The fresh injection of sand will help a section of the town’s beach where some oceanfront homes are relying on sandbags to hold back the encroaching Atlantic
- The Army Corps of Engineers is pumping sand onto Oak Island’s western end to combat erosion near Lockwood Folly Inlet.
- The project, due to wrap up by the end of April, will widen the beach by 75 feet or more.
- Surf City is also nearing completion of a separate $20 million beach nourishment project.
The brown piping snaked along the beach near Oak Island’s western tip, making a trip from the public accesses and oceanfront homes a challenge at times.
But that wasn’t bothering Donnie Fredericks as he walked the beach with his family on a windy Tuesday morning.
“I’m just glad to see this part of the beach getting some fresh sand,” said the Ohio native and frequent visitor to the Brunswick County beach town, pointing to some beachfront homes relying on sandbags to hold back the encroaching ocean. “It was getting a little touch-and-go there.”
For almost all North Carolina beach towns, sand isn’t something you take for granted. Because of North Carolina’s long-term ban on hardened structures along the oceanfront, although the rules have been watered down for terminal groins and sandbags in the last decade, getting sand onto an eroded beach usually relied on one of two things − the whims of Mother Nature pushing material back on shore or a beach nourishment project.
But beach nourishment projects are big, sometimes messy as to where to find beach-quality sand, and often very expensive − something that’s becoming an increasing problem for many coastal towns as the federal government pulls back on funding even as the price of beach-building projects keeps increasing.
That leaves many beach towns looking to Mother Nature. But in recent years she hasn’t been kind to many beach communities in the state as tropical storms and nor’easters have pounded their oceanfronts. Climate change and sea-level rise isn’t helping either, experts say.
This is especially true around inlets, the most unstable and wandering features along the coast. Beach towns that have had issues with severe erosion near inlets include Emerald Isle, North Topsail Beach, Holden Beach, Ocean Isle Beach, and Bald Head Island. Famously, things got so bad for Wrightsville Beach around Mason Inlet that the town and New Hanover County in the early 2000s teamed up to relocate the inlet back to its original location closer to Figure Eight Island and instituted periodic maintenance dredging to make sure it stayed there.
Oak Island is also on that list, as the beach on the island’s western end has been repeatedly eroded away by the nearby Lockwood Folly Inlet.
Enter the Army Corps of Engineers.
As happens in several areas along the coast near inlets maintained by the federal agency, sand pumped out of the inlet − often where it crosses the Intracoastal Waterway − has been pumped onto the nearby Oak Island beach.
Jed Cayton, a spokesperson with the corps’ Wilmington district, said the project to deepen the Intracoastal Waterway where it crosses Lockwood Folly to 12 feet at low tide should result in roughly 65,000 cubic yards of sand getting pumped onto the beachfront − although town officials said they hoped the final amount could be closer to nearly 105,000 cubic yards.
All together, the work is expected to add 75 feet or more of width to the beach in and around “The Point.”
“This strategic placement not only widens our beach but also strengthens coastal resilience against erosion and storms,” Cayton said in an email.
Work began in early April, and the contractor is required to be off the beach by April 30 to meet requirements limiting oceanfront activity to avoid impacting nesting sea turtles and shorebirds.
While 65,000 or even 100,000 cubic yards of sand isn’t a lot of material when it comes to nourishment projects, and Oak Island has a much bigger project for its entire beachfront in the works, every bit helps areas feeling vulnerable as another hurricane season quickly approaches.
Another oceanfront project in the region nearing completion is a roughly $20 million nourishment of Surf City’s beachfront. That work is seeing sand dredged from Banks Channel on the mainland side of Surf City pumped onto the beach, adding an estimated 60 feet of beach from the Topsail Beach line to 1,000 feet north of the Surf City Fishing Pier.
The breakdown of the project’s cost is roughly $5 million from Surf City and about $14.5 million in funding coming through a one-time state grant.
