Before Nags Head widened its shoreline in 2011, large stretches of the beach were a sad sight. Years of battering from tropical storms, hurricanes and nor’easters had taken a heavy toll, especially in South Nags Head. Dunes were destroyed or diminished, exposing the septic pipes, electrical wires and ventilation ducts that were formerly underground for old beach homes. Canvas sand bags, often ripped apart, were strewn about on the beach and in the surf. Damaged and destroyed houses littered the sand as empty and collapsed carcasses of once-prized beachfront cottages.

Starting in late May 2011, sand was pumped from a compatible offshore source through pipes. The sand was placed on the beach in four sections, based on the erosion rate. The entire project was completed by late October, making the beach so wide that beachgoers actually started complaining, good-naturedly about the long walk from the beach access to the ocean.

Today, even after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, Nags Head’s beaches are clean and wide. “We had a lot of sand that came off the beach and into the street, but the beach itself was fine,” said Cliff Ogburn, town manager for Nags Head.

Ogburn said that sand that had been washed off the beach had landed in front of the outer sandbar and within the shoreline system. In contrast to impacts from other storms, he said, there was no infrastructure damage or construction debris after the storm. He sees it as an illustration of the tremendous value beach nourishment has been to his popular resort town.

“The project is doing exactly what we had hoped,” he said. “It’s doing exactly what the engineer said it would.” In fact, the project was so successful that the panel of coastal managers and scientists from the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association named Nags Head a 2013 “Best Restored Beach.”

As a resort town with 2,700 year-round residents, hundreds of thousands of seasonal visitors and $641,888,900 worth of oceanfront property, Nags Head, like other Outer Banks communities, regards its beaches as essential to the economy. With a north-facing shoreline, South Nags Head has suffered severe erosion from repeated storms. In recent years, beachfront roads have been swallowed by the ocean and numerous homes were destroyed or stranded in the surf.

With a long shoreline and increasingly severe erosion, Nags Head officials have long promoted the necessity of nourishment to maintain the beauty of the shorefront. Some town residents, however, were skeptical that the project would last.

But so far, the nourishment has performed impressively.

A December 2011 report from Columbia, S.C. firm Coastal Science & Engineering said that the 4,615,126 cubic yards of sand put on the 10 miles of beach, not only was still in the project area after Hurricane Irene  – which had slammed the Outer Banks that same August – but there was 3 percent more sand than before the storm. And there was a bonus for surfers: underwater sandbars built up further off the beach and made for much improved conditions for wave-riding.

Ogburn said the town plans to “renourish the renourishment” when the beach has lost 50 percent of the sand, but no sooner than six years after the initial project.

The financial side of nourishment

Although some object to the environmental impacts of a nourished beach, the biggest issue with residents in most beach communities is the high cost. Not only is the upfront expense in the millions, the need for continual maintenance is often viewed as a fiscal noose. If citizens are willing to pay a lot of money – repeatedly – to keep their beaches wide, coastal scientists agree that beach nourishment can be effective. There is common ground: oceanfront property owners should bear much of the cost since their property benefits the most.

The robust sand transport characteristic of the Outer Banks also fosters quick ecological recovery for the sea-life environment.

But one risk is that a bad storm, or a series of storms, can wipe out a sand replenishment project in one season. Another is that increasing sea-level rise is likely to require putting more material on the beach more frequently. That’s added to the fact that the Outer Banks has the most energetic waves on the East Coast.

Of course, the benefit is that tourists, the lifeblood of the Outer Banks economy, will keep coming for the beautiful beaches and that the infrastructure along the beach and nearby roads will be protected from storm-driven waves and overwash.

Nags Head nourishment was originally part of a proposed 14.2-mile federal project that was supposed to have been constructed in the mid-2000s by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But beyond an initial $500,000 for preliminary work, Congress never got around to funding the actual construction. Ten miles of the project was planned in Nags Head and the remainder was in Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk.  The three-phase initial berm construction had been estimated at $72 million, to be followed by beach re-nourishment every three years for 50 years, bringing the total cost estimate to $1.6 billion which was to be funded with municipal, county, state and federal dollars.  In 2007, with no sign of Congressional funds, Nags Head gave up on the federal project and decided to pursue its own beach nourishment project.

Nags Head paid for its $37 million project with an $18 million revenue bond that will be covered over six years with proceeds from a one percent increase to the occupancy tax that will generate about $2 million a year. The town will be able to use that revenue to pay back $10 million of the bond in five years. The remainder will be paid back through a tax increase. The Nags Head Board of Commissioners adopted a town-wide property tax increase of two cents and a tax increase of 16 cents for 10 miles of beach from Bonnett Street southward. Engineering costs will be paid with $1 million from the town’s general fund.

Another $18 million in cash was provided from the Dare County Shoreline Nourishment Fund. The fund will replenish about $3.5 million a year from the one percent occupancy tax it currently receives from visiting renters.

While other towns on the OBX play the waiting game

Both Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills were also part of the unfunded federal project that Nags Head was waiting for, so proactive measures are being taken by different municipalities. Encouraged by the apparent success of Nags Head’s project, Dare County contracted with the same company that Nags Head used for nourishment on Hatteras Island. Also, the state Department of Transportation, working with the Army Corps, is planning a temporary nourishment project in Rodanthe. In July, Dare County approved an additional one percent occupancy tax to help fund future beach nourishment projects, bringing tax on accommodations to the maximum six percent, with two percent of that for the shoreline fund. Before the increase, Dare County had generated about $3.5 million for the fund.

Duck recently passed stricter ordinances on oceanfront pools and decks in anticipation of beach nourishment. Chris Layton, Duck’s town manager, said that the town, which has about 500 year-round residents, expects to have a contract by August to develop a permit application and engineering for a nourishment project. Most of the town’s beaches south of the Army Corps of Engineers Research pier are stable, he said, but starting about 1,000 yards north of the pier for about two miles, an estimated 150 feet of beach has been lost over the last 15 years. Another 20 feet of beach were lost during Hurricane Sandy and 14 pools were damaged or destroyed. Roughly 80 oceanfront homes are close to being threatened, Layton said.

“If you look at it, we estimate the project [will cost] about $15 million,” Layton said. “Our assessed value [of homes] is about $1.5 billion. So you’re looking at, essentially, a 1 percent investment that would stabilize our property values. It makes sense.”

Kitty Hawk is currently reviewing a draft assessment of a potential nourishment project for approximately three miles of its shoreline. Kitty Hawk Town Manager, John Stockton said that he expects that the report by Wilmington-based Coastal Planning and Engineering of North Carolina will likely be presented to the Town Council at its September meeting. If the council wants to pursue nourishment, it would develop municipal service districts that tax ocean front properties at a higher rate. Public hearings would be held for input on the districts. The goal of the assessment is to provide the town with the information on how to best manage its shoreline erosion and vulnerability to storm damage. With some of the worst beach erosion on the Outer Banks, Kitty Hawk over the years has lost dozens of oceanfront houses to storm damage.

“One of our major problems is overwash from major storm events,” Stockton said. “Then the overwash affects the properties between N.C. 12 and the highway and it also floods U.S. 158. Then when you have rain during the event, it just compounds the problems. We feel like beach nourishment would help with the overwash.”

Kill Devil Hills has studied doing its own project since 2009 and voted in June to fund $322,780 for preliminary work. The town recently signed their contract with Coastal Planning to design a $20 million beach nourishment project and submit the necessary permit applications, said Greg Loy, Kill Devil Hills planning director. Part of the initial work is determining an offshore source that has the right quality and quantity of sand. Loy said the project would be about 2.5 miles, from the area near Tanya Drive north to the Kitty Hawk line or the part of the beach with the most erosion. “If you look at it over the last 20 years, it’s gotten a lot worse,” Loy said. Beach nourishment would help in storm recovery and buy time to retreat, “if retreat is truly an option.”

The same consultant is working with Duck and Kill Devil Hills on development of their nourishment projects. Nags Head, Kill Devil Hills and the county are also working with another consultant on different parts of the project.

“There are a lot of joint things going on, a lot of discussion with the towns and the county for permitting, planning and perhaps even financing,” Layton said. “The whole idea is we want to work together to achieve some economy of scale.” ♦

Author: Catherine Kozak

Catherine Kozak has worked as a writer and reporter on the Outer Banks since 1995. She lives in Nags Head and enjoys running in the woods with her dog, Rosie.