How N.C. mistreats its beaches

This isn't really a local issue, and it's probably a copyright violation to copy the article here. But I want to preserve this article as it gets to the same problems the Smith Level Road task force has encountered with DOT. "Engineering" approaches to beach management and road management arrive at different ends than resource management approaches. With apologies to all my engineering friends, we need to stop letting engineers make these management decisions.

Article published Jul 22, 2007
Pilkey: How N.C. mistreats its beaches

At a recent international conference in Australia, I met a South African coastal management official from Capetown who excitedly reported the outcome of a move by his government. In December 2001, recreational driving on beaches was halted throughout South Africa. It proved to be a wise environmental decision.

Almost immediately after the ban, surveys indicated that the numbers of a variety of beach nesting and beach feeding birds increased. Critters living in the beach sand also recovered quickly, and surf zone fishing seemed to be improving in tandem with the recovery of the near-shore ecosystem.

But what excited this young man the most was the return of the leopards. Tracks began to appear on some remote beaches. Finally, a beach hiker reported seeing one of these shy creatures bounding along the swash line.

North Carolina has every reason to be envious of this beach success story at the far-away southern tip of Africa. Here we seem to be going in the opposite direction.

We have grown to accept our beaches as engineering projects not much different from highways. Driving is allowed on many North Carolina beaches, including the Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras national seashores. Even on wild Shackleford Bank, the park service sends a four-wheeler daily up and down the beach to "check things out."

Politicians argue back and forth about funding and about how much sand to use in nourishment projects without a thought about the devastating impact of pumping in new sand on the fauna and flora. The loss of the beach critters is a blow to birds and offshore fish alike.

Bulldozing of sand from the lower to the upper beach, also a death-dealing process to the beach ecosystem, is routinely done in many communities, including those on Topsail Island, Bogue Banks, Holden Beach, Nags Head and Kitty Hawk.

Beach-raking carried out frequently in Myrtle Beach and Virginia Beach and occasionally in a number of smaller North Carolina communities, such as Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach, is as deadly a killer as bulldozing.

Also, a number of North Carolina communities inexplicably don't clean up their beaches as houses and roads collapse into the retreating shorelines. Asphalt chunks abound on Ocean Isle as they do elsewhere on the Outer Banks.

Hundreds of sand bag seawalls line the beaches. Some, such as those in South Nags Head, extend to the mid-tide line.

There is some good news on the sandbag front. The N.C. Coastal Resources Commission has begun taking steps toward removing them. Time will tell if the CRC can withstand a storm of protests.

But the biggest travesty to beaches in North Carolina is our beach nourishment program. We have put more poor quality material on beaches than any other East Coast state. Fist-sized cobbles abound on Oak Island. Sharp shell gravel is found in the intertidal zone of portions of Pine Knoll Shores and Emerald Isle. Hardened mud chunks crop out in Atlantic Beach, and construction debris is found on Holden Beach.

Why do we treat our beaches with such contempt? The primary reason is the political power of beach front property owners anxious to preserve their property.

The reason we have bad beach nourishment material is an ineffective state agency that manages our beaches and an inept federal agency -- the Wilmington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- which has approved all the bad quality beach nourishment projects.

Local governments, with their tiny number of year-round voter-residents, usually don't help much with their focus on development.

The state of North Carolina is about to come up with a new beach and inlet management plan. Let's hope it doesn't accept the status quo that our beaches are simply engineering projects to keep a wealthy few happy.

Let's hope that the consultant group will recognize the treasured, even sacred nature of North Carolinas beaches.

Let's hope the plan will take the long view: that it will recognize that the sea level is rising and that it will work to preserve the beaches for our great-grandchildren.

Orrin Pilkey is director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Duke University.

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