Posted on May 23, 2026
By Kip Tabb
The new round of beach nourishment on Hatteras Island is scheduled to begin next week in Avon, although the weather forecast after Memorial Day may delay the start of the project for a few days. The Avon portion of the project is expected to take two weeks.
Although the Avon beach will be the first location to be nourished, most of the attention has been focused on Buxton where 25 houses have fallen into the ocean over the past two years. As part of the upcoming nourishment project, Dare County purchased and demolished a house that will be in the dune line of the replenished beach. The county is in negotiations to purchase a second home as well.
This will be the third round of nourishment for the Buxton Beach since 2017. The 2017 project lasted the projected five years. The second round, in 2022, quickly began washing away, and in the fall of 2025, Buxton made national news as 16 oceanfront homes collapsed within six weeks.
There is no clear reason why the second round of nourishment was unsuccessful, but Dare County Manager Bobby Outten points to a damaged groin on the south end of the nourishment area that was constructed by the Navy in 1969.
The groin, Outten told the Voice, had slowed the loss of beach in the first round of nourishment, but “We believe that the groin deteriorated over time, and therefore that erosion accelerated. There’s no way to prove that one hundred percent, but that’s what we think.”
The county has budgeted between $2 million to $4 million as part of the overall $45 million Buxton project to repair the groin. Work on the groin is expected to begin in late summer, with contractor bids due by June 4. On May 19, the county received a permit for the project from the US Army Corps of Engineers, the last one needed to begin construction.
The Buxton nourishment project has grown significantly from its original scope. As late as early May, plans called for pumping approximately 1.35 million cubic yards of sand onto the beach. At their May 11 meeting, at which Outten expressed optimism that FEMA would help fund the project, the Dare Commissioners voted to increase that to 2 million cubic yards. The Outer Banks Voice – After optimistic outlook on FEMA funding, Dare Board approves bigger Buxton nourishment project.
The goal of a nourishment project, Outten explained, is to buy five years between projects. Coastal Science & Engineering ran “three [scenarios], a best case, a middle case, and a worst case,” he said.
The best and middle case scenarios indicated the 1.35 million cubic yards of sand were adequate, “but you risk the worst case,” Outten said.
The Buxton beach has a history of nourishment attempts dating back to a failed first effort in 1966. That project failed because “the borrow material…was too fine to remain as part of the…beach system and the quantity too small to have any significant impact on the inshore zone” according to a 1973 National Park Service (NPS) report.
There have been a number of such projects since then, with varying degrees of success. However, during periods when the beach has narrowed, NC12 and the north end of Buxton are vulnerable. Following a February nor’easter, the 1973 NPS report stated that, “In the village, the [overwash] fan was up to 600 feet wide. North of Buxton, sand was carried over the island and into the sound, covering North Carolina Route 12 with up to 4 feet of sand.”
What was occurring 53 years ago is similar to what is happening now.
“That area coming into Buxton is one of the Highway 12 hotspots, and then, of course, all the other roads that come off Highway 12 for the length of Buxton are similarly at risk. We already lost all of Tower Drive,” Outten stated in the Voice interview.
He noted that the purpose of a nourishment project is to protect infrastructure, not to protect homes and properties, which he described as “ancillary beneficiaries.”
The Avon project was originally scheduled to take place next year, but by combining it with the Buxton project, the county will save about $12 million in mobilization costs, Outten said.
The town of Nags Head is also nourishing its beaches. The Nags Head project is paid for through a cooperative funding agreement with Dare County.
To fund the Avon and Buxton projects and pay for the county’s portion of the Nags Head’s nourishment, “the Commissioners approved a not-to-exceed amount for the borrowing of $56,500,000. This is roughly $13.1M for the Nags Head project and $43.45M for Buxton and Avon,” Dare County Chief Financial Officer Matthew Motyka wrote in an email to the Voice.
