Kill Devil Hills wants federal payback for sand

Kill Devil Hills has become a player in the quest for money to rebuild Dare County’s beaches.

Mayor Ray Sturza and consultants for the town offered a different approach to beach nourishment on Tuesday, one that would shift a large part of the financial responsibility back to the federal government.

“We’re not prepared to let Uncle Sam off the hook,” Sturza told the Dare County Shoreline Management Commission, which is made of county and town representatives with a stake in beach nourishment.

In essence, Kills Devil Hills proposes using a section of the law that allows localities to seek reimbursement from the federal government after sand has been pumped onto beaches with severe erosion and significant development. The catch is that the town will have to find money to put up front until it is reimbursed.

The Kill Devil Hills plan is a departure from the one proposed by Nags Head, which decided to strike out on its own after a beach nourishment project authorized by Congress never received full federal funding.

It also complicates negotiations over how to carve up the county’s Shoreline Management Fund, which is made up of 1 percent of the occupancy tax collections.

Nags Head wants $20 million from the fund, which is now projected to stand at $22 million. Kill Devil Hills has asked for $10 million but will probably need to spend as much as $18 million before it is reimbursed by the federal government. So there would not be enough money to go around.

Numerous questions were introduced during Tuesday’s session, including why the Kill Devil Hills project would cost almost twice as much per cubic yard of sand as Nags Head’s. The Nags Head project is expected to cost $36 million for 10 miles of beach, while Kill Devil Hills’ is projected to come in at $26.7 million for 2.7 miles.

Representatives with Coastal Planning and Engineering of Wilmington, which put the projections together for Kill Devil Hills, said the numbers were preliminary and deliberately high to create a comfort zone for further study.

Among other things, costs are complicated by the weight of the sand and where it will come from.

Under a section of the Water Resources Development Act , Kill Devil Hills could be reimbursed for 65 percent of the total cost from the federal government and the rest would come from the state and local governments after the project is completed.

The Coastal Planning and Engineering representatives said that federal reimbursement took about two years for a project that they developed in Florida.

Sturza presented his plan after Nags Head Mayor Bob Oakes provided a recap of the presentation he made to the Dare County Board of Commissioners on Monday.

Oakes asked if a joint project could net some savings. He was told that might be possible if beach dredging and pumping could be done over a 12-month period.

“It seems like we get more sand if we all mobilize at the same time,” Oakes said.

Nags Head is still waiting to see if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is willing to wave restrictions during the spring, summer and fall, when the work would pose more of a threat to marine life. The winter months, however, are considered dangerous and more likely to complicate the work.

Nags Head is farther along in its planning than the other towns. Oakes said that a 1 percent increase in the 5-cent occupancy tax would easily replenish the money the town would receive from the shoreline management fund. The first five years of the increase, however, would go toward retiring a $16 million loan that the town will need for the balance of its $36 million project.

Subsequent maintenance would be funded by a special assessment on oceanfront property.

The Shoreline Management Commission will meet again at 3 p.m. Tuesday.

 

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