What’s going on, everybody? If Emerald Isle and the Crystal Coast are your favorite beach destinations, this article is for you! Hi, everybody! My name is Denis, and I help people interested in living or vacationing on the Outer Banks learn more about what’s happening in Emerald Isle and along the Crystal Coast.
Cape Lookout National Seashore Park and the Cape Lookout lighthouse are in the news because work is about to commence on saving both from falling into the ocean. The work will also make it safer for visitors to reach the seashore and lighthouse in the way possible–by boat. As I record this video, Next Generation Logistics, the company contracted for the work, is staging dredging equipment near the Cape Lookout visitor’s center on Harkers Island. The company plans to stage 5,000 feet of pipe, roughly the length of 17 football fields, at any given time. It has 10-inch and 18-inch pipes to handle the volume of sand it is moving. The dredging will make the channels from Harkers Island to the federally protected barrier island, the main public access to Cape Lookout, safer and more accessible. The dredged sand will be used for beach nourishment to protect Cape Lookout Lighthouse and nearby historic structures from constant sound side erosion. Dredging will start this week. When completed and opened back up, the channel will be 7-9 feet deep and 100 feet wide and accessible to commercial boats and deep draft vessels. It will be the cat’s meow as far as getting back and forth between Harkers Island and the lighthouse.
The sand dredged while repairing the channel will be placed on the interior or sound side beach next to the lighthouse complex, where the passenger ferry docks. The Light Keepers Quarters and the summer kitchen are between the lighthouse and the shoreline. By the way, no keeper ever called it a lighthouse. It was always a light. The summer kitchen right now is right at the high-tide line, and the Keepers Quarters is about 30 feet from the high-tide line. It will take 38,000 cubic yards of sand, roughly equivalent to 1300 dump truck loads for those doing the math, and it will stretch some 400 yards in front of the lighthouse complex. Any remaining sand will be added to create an open-water island called Sandbag Island to provide habitat for nesting shore birds. If funding becomes available, the next phase will be to put in a living shoreline to hold the sand in place. The deadline to finish the work is April 1st because of marine wildlife protection. Once dredging starts, it will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Preserving our coast is paramount to those of us in Carteret County. This project not only ensures the safety and accessibility of our waterways but also reaffirms our commitment to the environment. We are proud to partner with the National Park Service and the State of North Carolina to undertake this project, ensuring that the Cape Lookout National Seashore remains a natural treasure for generations. Getting to this place was not easy. Getting this project off the ground took seven years. Carteret County worked with the State of North Carolina, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Park Service to procure $6.9 million dollars. Once funding was in place, the next step was to get through the environmental assessment process. The environmental assessment was put out for public comment to give state and federal agencies, organizations, and the public a chance to weigh in on the project. The finding of no significant impact was released in September 2023, and the contract with Next Generation Logistics was signed last November. Seven years, and all the while, the channels private and commercial boats used to take vacationers and anglers between Harkers Island and the lighthouse kept filling in, and it's been getting worse in recent years.
Why have our infrastructure projects become so painfully slow and expensive? How is it that despite 100 years of engineering advances, the same project now takes five times as long? Did we just forget how to build things? Better safety isn’t the answer. After all, countries like Germany and Canada build new infrastructure much faster and cheaper than we do. And they do it without a body count. Maybe they don’t have to factor in environmental concerns. Maybe protecting the planet is all worth it in the United States. But here’s the crazy part. Nothing about the National Environmental Protection Agency actually requires that. All you have to do is identify environmental issues. There’s nothing that forces you to do anything about them.
Thanks for making Emerald Isle Vacation Home Specialist your first read of the day. As always, I appreciate you clicking on this article. Do me a favor, subscribe, and drop an email address in the comments below. I’ll send you my e-book, “Live Where You Vacation,” which is all about the North Carolina Outer Banks, Bogue Banks, Emerald Isle, the Crystal Coast, and Down East. Be safe and have fun, and I will see you next week. Thank you so much.
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