Last Monday, at the monthly meeting of the Carteret County Beach Commission Nicole Vanderbecke presented some good news about the County’s key economic engine. A member of the County’s beach engineering firm, Moffitt & Nichol, she said that Bogue Banks beaches are in good shape, nowhere near erosion levels that would “trigger” the need for beach nourishment. Her firm’s opinion was based on a March survey of Bogue Banks, Shackleford Banks and Bear Island beaches by Geodynamics of Newport. This survey is done every spring, and provides a baseline so the county will know how much sand, if any, is lost during hurricanes that impact the Crystal Coast in the summer and fall. After a named, major storm, such as Florence in 2018, another survey typically is commissioned and the loss numbers can form the basis for a request for money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This was the case in 2018 when hurricane Florence devastated the Crystal Coast and eastern North Carolina. Survey data enabled Carteret County and the several Bogue Banks Beach towns of Atlantic Beach, Pine Knoll Shores, Indian Beach and Emerald Isle to request and receive funds from FEMA for beach nourishment projects that covered the entire 26 mile long island. The scale of this project was enormous as Hurricane Florence removed about 3.6 million cubic yards of beach and sand. Three nourishment projects, that’s right three, added about 5 million cubic yards of sand over three winters, from 2019 to 2021 and cost roughly $60 million, almost all of it from FEMA. That’s how big a deal these annual surveys are and that’s how big a deal the good news is, too.
Vanderbecke told the beach commission that while erosion is a constant force, several conditions mitigated that erosion in 2022 and they explain why Bogue Banks beaches are in such good condition as we head into the height of the hurricane season in early September. The first is that the 2021 hurricane season only slightly impacted Bogue Banks and the Crystal Coast. What erosion there was came not from hurricanes but from nor’easters and other storms that create big, strong waves during the winter and early spring. But, because Bogue Banks is uniquely situated as the only Outer Banks island with south facing beaches, its geography mitigated beach erosion from hard hitting and long lingering nor’ easters.
This same geography, south facing beaches, has the potential to add sand to Bogue Banks beaches during the spring and summer. Usually around April, the prevailing winds shift from the northeast to the southwest. These southwest winds carry a lot of sand and that sand is deposited on the beaches. Vanderburke said that there has likely been some accretion, or gradual build up of sand, this year since the survey was done in March. And, looking out my window at the beach in my ‘backyard’ I would agree.
Vanderbecke said there were, as always, some erosion hot spots – places where more sand was lost – on Bogue Banks between last year’s survey and the March 2022 survey. Atlantic Beach always has a higher erosion rate than most of Bogue Banks, and that was the case this year, too. That’s one reason Atlantic Beach for decades has had an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to get beach nourishment about every three years. Another hot spot is the eastern half of Emerald Isle, along the numbered streets, although Vanderbecke said that was alleviated somewhat by a new nourishment strategy in that area during the last project there in 2020 The best news, she said,on the erosion front is that the survey showed that most of the sand lost in the past year is not far offshore, so it’s still “in the system” and could return to the beach, given proper conditions. In some cases, she noted, hurricanes result in accretion of the beaches.
Elsewhere, Vanderburke reported that erosion along Shackleford Banks, across Beaufort Inlet from Atlantic Beach was following a long term trend. Erosion continues unabated with some erosion on the eastern half but major erosion along the western end of the island. Some of that area is already under water. Bear Island in Onslow County, across Bogue Inlet from Emerald Isle, also experienced erosion between the last survey and this year’s but also had some accretion on its eastern end. As for Bogue Inlet itself, Vanderbecke said it continued to migrate east this year, toward the beach at The Point in Emerald Isle. In 2005, when very expensive homes at The Point were seriously threatened by erosion, Emerald Isle and the state of North Carolina paid $11.4 million to relocate Bogue Inlet Channel farther from the rapidly eroding western tip of Bogue Banks. The project involved a dike that blocked the existing channel so water would have to flow into the new channel that was dredged. The 710,000 cubic yards of dredged sand was piped to shore as nourishment for 4.5 miles of beach in western Emerald Isle. Experts at the time thought they might need to repeat the process in 15 years, which would have been 2020. That wasn’t the case, so the move has “outlived” expectations. But Vanderbecke told commissioners the migrating inlet has moved far enough east in recent years that it might soon be time to at least “start the conversation” about relocating it again.
Finally, Vanderbecke also noted that the dunes along the Bogue Banks beaches – the last line of defense for oceanfront homes and businesses during storms – are in good shape, as is most of the vegetation planted on them after the 2019, 2020 and 2021 nourishment projects. Because these dunes hold such significance, Beach commissioners suggested the 2023 Geodynamics survey included a more detailed look at the volume and location of the dunes. To learn more about the status and health of the beaches on Bogue Banks and the Crystal Coast, please go to my website, www.EmeraldIsleHomesforSaleNC.com and sign up for my blog. Ready to buy or sell? Call me at 919-308-2292. Explore the video tab for my weekly uploads to my YouTube channel. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and receive free donuts at my Flip Flops Donut shop. Text your email address to 919-308-2292 and subscribe to my newsletter. My book, "Live Where You Vacation" is available on Amazon.com or at Kindle.
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