Nags Head Home Owners Get Reprieve From State on Sandbags
Targeted sandbags in N.C. can stay until 2010
The sandbags won’t have to go, after all, at least not for a year.
Legislation signed by Gov. Bev Perdue this month imposes a moratorium on sandbag removal until Sept. 1, 2010.
The same bill also directs the state Coastal Resources Commission to study terminal groins, or jetties – which have been banned in North Carolina since 1985 – as erosion control devices at inlets and isolated sections of the coast that have their own sand sources.
The bill bears significant potential for South Nags Head, which has the largest number of exposed sandbags targeted for removal in the state and a stretch of beach with a high erosion rate, Nags Head Mayor Renee Cahoon said.
“We’re anxious to see what the study shows about it being helpful to Nags Head,” she said.
Cahoon said a terminal groin – a rock wall that traps sand – could possibly stem beach erosion while preventing shoaling in Oregon Inlet, a few miles south.
“We’d like to see one in South Nags Head,” she said. “It could kill two birds with one stone.”
Nags Head is still pursuing permits for a beach nourishment project, Cahoon said. Proponents of the yet-unfunded town project say nourishment would widen the beaches and alleviate the need for the sandbags for erosion control.
For the past two years, state coastal regulators have been working on getting exposed sandbags with expired permits removed. The huge bags are permitted for up to five years as a temporary erosion-control measure to protect an imminently threatened structure, but some have been in place since the 1980s. If the bags are covered with natural vegetation, the state said, they could stay. All others with expired permits had to be taken out after May 1, 2008.
Of the 370 structures in the state permitted to have sandbags, the bags at 149 are subject to removal. Of those, 117 are in Dare County – mostly in South Nags Head.
But affected property owners protested that their houses would be doomed without the sandbags and appealed to state lawmakers and town officials for help.
In part, the legislation is responding to those concerns, said Mack Paul, a partner with law firm K&L Gates in Raleigh who has represented dozens of the property owners. But it is also recognizing the complex concerns that coastal policy must confront, he said.
“Instead of continuing to react to the symptoms – like the sandbag issue – I think a number of folks realize it is important to address the underlying causes,” he said.
Paul said the legislation allows breathing room to continue discussions on tough challenges such as funding beach nourishment, and for coastal regulators to devise better rules for sandbags. Rather than putting time limits on permits, for instance, he said sandbag rules could focus on maintenance, size and condition.
