Beach Replenishment on Ballot in South Nags Head

By Catherine Kozak, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

Apr. 15–Whatever the virtue or sins of beach nourishment, the Outer Banks is one of the few resorts along the state’s 320-mile coast where the shoreline has not been widened by extensive replenishment projects.

Dare County has had its hat out to Washington since 2000 waiting for a $21 million appropriation to start an approved Army Corps of Engineers project. Of that proposed 14.1-mile project, most would involve building up Nags Head’s beaches.

As storm after storm has chewed up dunes, roadway and houses in South Nags Head, town officials have decided to try to go it alone in hopes the federal money will come through in the future.

The referendum Tuesday is asking property owners to agree to pay a share of the $32 million it will take to replace the beach that has eroded away in the past 10 years. It’s considered an emergency project and won’t hinder future construction by the corps.

“The permit that has been applied for is a permit that would mesh with the federal project,” said Bob Muller, the treasurer of protectnagshead.org, a group working for passage of the measure.

If Nags Head voters approve the $24 million bond — Dare County has agreed to pay the additional $8 million — their property taxes will be raised for five years, with oceanfront and oceanside owners in a special zone picking up the bulk of the tab. The annual cost: 5.54 cents townwide and an additional 32.08 cents in the special district along the beach.

Townsfolk are divided: Some think it’s essential to preserve the beach, the biggest draw in the tourist-driven economy. Others think it will ruin the natural beauty of Outer Banks beaches and probably won’t work. Others believe they’d be paying to save the oceanfront property of rich, out-of-town owners.

As much as 4.5 million cubic yards of sand will be pumped from a borrow site about 2 miles offshore into the hold of a hopper dredge. The dredge will then steam to a pump-out point from which the material will be sent through a pipeline to the beach.

The material will be a mix of all the sizes of grains on the 10 miles of Nags Head beach, said coastal geologist Tim Kana, the president of Morehead City contractor Coastal Science & Engineering.

Nature will eventually sort the grain sizes, as it does now, he said, and deposit the courser grains on the north end and the finer grains on the south.

“This is extraordinarily good sand, and there’s a lot of it,” Kana said.

Kana said the town is seeking a permit to dredge in the summer and mitigate for turtles by running a trawler in front of the dredge. The usual dredge window from January to April is too hazardous on the Outer Banks, which has frequent nor’easters, he said. It would be nearly impossible to find any dredge company willing to do the work.

Sand will be placed on the beach in four sections, or reaches, in relation to the erosion rate.

The first three reaches, near Forest Street, Islington Street and Surfside Drive, will have deposits of sand ranging from 52 cubic yards per foot to 130 cubic yards per foot. The final reach on the south end will taper into the National Park Service beach. The shoreline would advance 50 to 125 feet.

The project is expected to take four to seven months. When and where it will start has not yet been determined.

“It may do a mile to the north, a mile to the south,” Kana said. “I think the key point is whichever direction it starts at, no single property will be impacted by the pumping for more than two or three days.”

The erosion rate in South Nags Head, according to the state Department of Natural Resources, averages 4 feet to 6 feet per year over 50 years, or a loss of about 275,000 cubic yards per year since 1994.

At Whalebone Junction, the rate is about 2 feet per year, and it climbs steadily going south. At Surfside Drive, the erosion rate averages about 5 feet per year.

That means, Kana said, that if you’re standing at Surfside today, and then return in 10 years, the beach can be expected to have retreated about 50 feet.

Maybe. Maybe not, said Dorothea Ames, research associate in the geology department at East Carolina University.

“The average really hides the reality of a situation,” she said. “That will not tell a person what they can expect in 10 years or even 20 years.”

Research has shown that beaches erode and accrete at vastly different rates even during the same storm. In a study on Core Banks, for instance, one spot on the beach eroded 270 feet in one year, and another place on the same beach gained 130 feet.

People must realize, Ames said, that the annual erosion rate is a mathematical conclusion that doesn’t reflect how the beach in front of their house will actually respond in a storm. “The average usually never happens,” she said.

In the unfunded federal project, the corps had planned to use about 8 million cubic yards to nourish the Nags Head section, with periodic renourishment planned at about three-year intervals. The beach would be designed to be 150 feet to 250 feet wide initially. After it is “adjusted” by wind and waves, it would be 50 feet wide.

So does that mean Nags Head’s project — with almost half that amount of sand — won’t last? That depends on how you look at it, said Charles “Pete” Peterson, marine science professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“Beach nourishment is intended to fail,” he said. “What it is is a sacrificial beach.” It comes down to the willingness to pay — and keep paying. “Beach nourishment is continuing to feed the monster, rather than slaying the monster.”

Nourishment projects, on average, last about five years, with huge variance, Peterson said. One beach still had pipeline on it from a nourishment project when a storm wiped it all away.

After Hurricane Emily in 1993, sand was pumped onto the beach from the Pamlico Sound to protect N.C. 12 just north of Buxton on Hatteras Island. In the early 1970s, sand from the sound was used to rebuild Buxton’s eroded beaches.

Under Federal Emergency Management Agency rules, a beach is eligible for permanent repair if it had been engineered to certain specifications and maintained with periodic re nourishment, and it is necessary to protect improved property from an immediate threat. The federal share is typically 75 percent.

Sea-level rise is likely to require putting more material on the beach more frequently. And Outer Banks waves, as well as sediment transport from north to south, Peterson said, are the highest on the East Coast.

“So you are looking at a very unstable system, and we all know that,” he said. “Outer Bankers who have lived there for generations know it’s not for the meek.”

But Peterson said that studies of the inlet filled after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 showed that coquina clams and mole crabs have returned to the area where sand had been pumped. The key to recovery of nourished beaches is natural sand transport and compatible material — two factors in Nags Head’s favor.

Andrew Coburn, research faculty and associate director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, said that it’s good that Nags Head is planning to pay for the project itself, rather than taxpayers elsewhere footing the bill. But he has doubts about its success.

Intense wave action is only one of the challenges. By steepening the shore face by nourishing, he said, the rate of erosion would only be increased.

Coburn, a former colleague of controversial anti-nourishment scientist Orrin Pilkey, said that it would make more sense to look long term and deal with the buildings rather than try to stop a migrating shoreline.

“They may be able to get away with a nourishment or two or three, but eventually, they’re going to run out of sand,” he said.

“If you remove those properties proactively — prior to them becoming a hazard and a nuisance, you’re not going to have an ugly beach.”

Yet beach nourishment has been effective at Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach, where projects were first built in 1965, said Spencer Rogers, specialist in coastal processes for North Carolina Sea Grant. Funded by a room tax, the projects have been maintained successfully since 1980.

Those bigger projects provide impressive hurricane protection, unlike the small ones like Nags Head is proposing. Erosion protection is possible with smaller projects, but it’s hard to predict to what degree. At the least, he said, it would buy time.

“Sometimes, you just have to go in and see how it works,” Rogers said. “We’re still in that phase in most of the state.”

Nags Head’s project makes sense in light of the lack of federal funds, said Harry Simmons, president of the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association.

Pine Knoll Shores, Indian Beach and Emerald Isle, he said, also decided to construct locally funded projects after county voters declined.

Despite the federal government’s stinginess with nourishment funds, Simmons said, Congress is still willing to write checks for beach restoration projects.

“I think it’s a very real possibility,” he said. “It’s just a matter of staying the course.”

— Reach Catherine Kozak at (252) 441-1711 or cate.kozak@pilotonline.com. HOW TO REACH USTo subscribe to The Virginian-Pilot, call (252) 338-8123 in Elizabeth City and (252) 441-3628 on the Outer Banks.To submit a news item or story suggestion, call (252) 338-2590 in Elizabeth City and (252) 441-1620 on the Outer Banks.For advertising, call (252) 338-1872 in Elizabeth City and (252) 441-1620 on the Outer Banks.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.

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