Oakes takes plan to KDH
Nags Head Mayor Bob Oakes offered more details on his town’s beach nourishment plan Wednesday, telling the Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners that engineering data suggest the sand will stay put long enough to make the project worth trying.
Pending permitting and financing, the town plans to put down 4.6 million cubic yards of sand along a 10-mile stretch of beach.
Oakes provided a summary citing estimates that historic erosion rates of 275,000 cubic yards per year suggest the sand could last more than 14 years up to the dune line.
The summary further said that in a major storm, sand would be washed into the surf zone and eventually accrete back to the beach.
“The issue is that all of these things are somewhat theoretical,” Oakes said.
Beach nourishment has never been attempted along the northern Outer Banks on the scale proposed by Nags Head. But Oakes urged Kill Devil Hills to support the plan because “a successful project here will encourage future successes.”
Oakes has been campaigning intensely for over two weeks to convince Dare County and neighboring towns to support Nags Head’s efforts and free up a limited pool of money to get the work started. The plan has renewed debate on beach nourishment and perennial questions about its environmental and financial costs.
The public discussion in recent weeks, however, has centered largely on who should get how much of a $24 million county beach nourishment fund that is made up of 1 percent of the 5-cent occupancy tax paid by visiting renters.
Nags Head wants $20 million from the fund and another 1 percent added to the occupancy tax to help rebuild the pool of money and repay over five years a $16 million loan that would finance the balance of its $36 million plan.
Last week, Kill Devil Hills unveiled its own plan, which could cost as much as $27 million. Kill Devil Hills would need up to $18 million from the county fund, so there is not enough money to go around.
Oakes presented the Kill Devil Hills Board with a proposed resolution supporting Nags Head’s plan. Mayor Ray Sturza said his board would need time to consider the request but promised to put it on a future agenda.
“We wish you the greatest success,” Sturza said.
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newjake says:
I have a question for the engineers, say this thing went forward: What is the impact to surrounding beaches? It seems that it’s normal for the marine life to die off (and slowly come back) and also for the surf to no longer break, so it all become shore break.
Is this going to also affect the surfing and fishing for the rest of us?
Bob O says:
The Environmental Impact Statement is posted on the Town of Nags Head website, http://www.townofnagshead.net. There’s a tab on the right hand side of the home page labeled Beach Nourishment.
The benthic and invertebrate communities are discussed pretty thoroughly. Yesterday, the Town agreed to provide additional monitoring of the benthic community at the offshore borrow area. There has been premonitoring of these communities.
These critters are food for fish, so it’s important to understand how they come back after a disturbance.
I haven’t heard that the surf will no longer break. Why is that? Seems like sandbars are what causes the break. I can see it moving, but not going away.
newjake says:
On the break, there’s a lot of info: Surfer Mag and Surfrider report that as you pile the sand up and out, you no longer have the gradual deepening of the bar (which is what causes the break.)
You instead have a dropoff at water’s edge/nourishment zone into the deep water.
This causes the shorebreak, which you know sucks for surfing and body boarding, but it also affects swimming (especially for kids; you’ve been here years when we have no good bar or an onshore during high tide, it’s hazardous for short/old/weak people).
Your contractor’s diagrams (from the presentation) also demonstrated this. If you move the beach out, there is no way to bring up the whole of the Atlantic Ocean floor. And they can’t shape underwater sand with a dozer.
Instead of a gradually sloping beach profile, you will have a bulged-up profile with a dropoff.
If your town(s) do this, I’d like to know if there’s historical information about what happens to neighboring beaches as that foreign sand erodes up and down the coast.
We’ve had great, and I mean great, surfing here the last three summers, and the shallow bar is perfect for children — let’s keep that in mind, please.
Ray says:
NewJake,
The people who are pushing the hardest for beach nourishment could care less about what it does to our shoreline. They want sand on the beach and think it will save their investments. End of story. Unfortunately, what little debate there ever was among locals and elected officials about this, ended long ago. We can talk until we are blue in the face, they won’t listen. Give’em the money and they will pump sand all the way to Raleigh.
newjake says:
It’s all about education Ray, just getting people on the record with their positions.
Now say I’m a smart lawyer. And say I think nourishment is too much of a risk and motivated by RE greed, but those are opinions and worthless in court.
But legally, say the town(s) do find a way to fund and pump sand.
Now say I’m a neighbor town (or the Park Service/Pea Island/or the enviros who watch our every move) and have taken care of my beaches and really do not want dredges anywhere near my coast.
Couldn’t I, being a smart lawyer, sue to stop the project at the last minute, citing that the sand they pump will negatively affect my town/coastline?
Say I don’t want my fishing to die off.
Say I want my surfing to be good so I can attract visitors.
I could probably prove, prior to the project, that all that extra foreign sand running up and down the coast was likely to f— up my beaches unless they can guarantee it wouldn’t drift. And they can’t.
Anything they put there is going to end up in all our yards. Oceans are pretty dirty.
It’s basically the same law that prevents me from taking my garbage to Nags Head and letting it blow up and down their streets.
So, playing all the cards, if I was that lawyer, I’d want to make people aware of this danger now.
Later even, if BN fails, if it poisons the beach or screws up the sandbar and people drown, can I sue for damages from Nags Head? I don’t know, I’m no lawyer, but this whole thing has a lot of risk no one wants to talk about.
So I’m trying. Kudos to Mr. Oakes for engaging us, it’s a fascinating effort.