CD: It seems like it might also just change the character of Hatteras Island to make it more like Ocracoke.

MO: That’s absolutely what it would do. It would make it more like Ocracoke. And a lot of people like Ocracoke a lot.

You know, I'm involved in a long term project that looks at how to think about how we're really going to plan for the next generation or two on the Outer Banks and there's a really interesting map that a fellow named Stan Riggs who is a geologist at Eastern Carolina University -- that represents what the Outer Banks might look like in the next generation -- which is the next 25 to 40 years.

It's an interesting map because he makes certain assumptions about things like sea level rise, cyclical storm occurrence and impacts, and the map that he has is quite striking because on it, basically Buxton is an island and north of about Salvo, it's open ocean up to about Whalebone Junction. Actually he predicts the island disappearing where the new inlet is that is between Hatteras and Buxton. But the really interesting part of that map also is that if you know the western side of the sound, about 2/3 of Hyde County is gone for two factors: one is sea level rise but the second is that once the Outer Banks start to breach in major ways, it becomes not so much a question of the Outer Banks with inlets in them, but really a relatively open embayment with some offshore islands. That basically is what that system is going to turn into .

CD: I know parts of the sound are very shallow, but you'd still end up with a major wind or swell event inundating the inland areas.

MO: Right, it would come right across and right on through what used to be the Outer Banks. Now it would reduce somewhat because there would be bars and shoals out there, but a lot more wave energy would transfer to the western sound.

There would be other changes as well. You'd predict fisheries would change entirely in that area. A lot of the species that require muddy, low energy environments, like oysters, would migrate well back up into the sound. Clams would do alright, but you would expect that some of the more medium sized coastal pelagics -- your bluefish and spanish mackerel would use the system with more frequency. It's kind of unclear what would happen to fish like red drum, that use the sound in different ways.

CD: So you'd see fish like pelagics much more in the sound.

MO: Much more than they are now, because again, it wouldn't be a sound, it would be an open embayment.

CD: I'd also think you'd get good fish hatchery areas to the west just because of the amount of dead wood and places for hatchlings to hide. Is that reasonable?

MO: Yeah, that's right.

CD: In the last decade there have been so many big storms that have hit North Carolina, but this one, Isabel, seems to have been a harbinger of maybe some serious change along the Outer Banks. It's not a handful of shorefront property owners, it's now grand scale change of the whole island system.

MO: Yeah, this is what we're thinking. And there's quite a bit of controversy about this. Some think that the islands will just keep migrating towards the land, and then others think major portions will erode away. It's hard to predict now.

CD: I would imagine there is a lot of resistance to allowing the channel on Hatteras to stay open and then also just to allow these natural processes to occur.

MO: That's right. The state's official position is that they're going to rebuild the road and fill the breach as they call it. They look at it as a road that's been damaged and are not viewing this as a natural phenomenon that needs to take its course. So their intent is to fill in the inlet.

The Senator Mark Basnight, president pro tem of the Senate is from Manteo. He's made it clear that he thinks the maintenance of a certain level of economic activity and growth is something we ought to have.

CD: I lived in South Carolina after hurricane Hugo and you had breaches in Garden City and Pawleys Island that were fairly easy to fix. They were filled quickly. Is this breach so wide that some people in the environmental community are taking a really hard look at this?

MO: My colleague Orrin Pilkey raised this very point. Part of the reason for keeping this thing named a breach instead of an inlet is in fact the ease of going through with what they're considering emergency action. So there will not be much or any environmental assessment. From their perspective they're just putting it back the way it was.

CD: Have they started filling?

MO: Well, they were going to start a week ago but they realized that the plan they developed wasn't going to work. So they had to make alterations for where to dredge and how to get the materials to the site.

CD: Where are they going to get the sand to fill it?

MO: The current plan is to get it out of the sound. And the ferry channel is filled in quite a bit -- so they may take some of the dredge material out of there as well. The problem they've got is that it's not like it's 25 feet deep for all 1700 feet. But they're driving 35 foot boats through it now, there are dolphins coming in and out, fish migrating. It's functioning as a real inlet at this point. So the problem is going to be, can they fill it up faster than the natural flow through is going to carve it out. Presumably you throw enough dollars at it, you can do it.

It's interesting to note. When it broke through before in the 1933 storm, they actually started to build a bridge and the old pilings are exposed now. But it actually filled in mostly by itself the last time it breached. It could conceivably do that again.

CD: It's tough to appreciate how much of Hatteras has been damaged and eroded through the years unless you go to places where two and three rows of houses have actually been lost. It's amazing. What does that tell you about the mentality that allowed these places to be built in the first place? Or was it just a case of, 'well, we didn't know'.

MO: There are two time sectors here. Before the 1970's, there really wasn't a plan. People got to do what they wanted out there. After the 70's and creation of the Coastal Resources Commission, there was established this formal policy of retreat. That we're not going to harden the shoreline. We actually have one of the strongest policies of any state -- as opposed to California which has no policy -- and that's why you're having all that crap being thrown all over the beaches out there.

So they also created a setback system. For private residences, it's generally 30 times the annual erosion rate. But if you built a house in the 70's with a setback that was 30 times the erosion rate, the ocean is now at your door. So those regulations were not a permanent fix. And I really believe that most home buyers don't understand that. They think 'my house was built under state regulations to protect my house'. And I'd say, well, yeah for 30 years.

Some people were keenly aware of this. Others weren't. North Carolina is what's called a 'buyer beware state'. Now that means that homeowners are not required to be informed of things like geological hazards. Now if you have to get a mortgage, your bank or insurance company will tell you that you're building in a flood plain or hazard area. But the seller doesn't have to tell you that. The other thing that's happened is that we've subsidized bad behavior with things like the National Flood Insurance Program.

CD: We did an alert on Surfermag.com awhile back about the Oregon Inlet Bridge. The headline was "Save Pea Island" and in some ways that seemed an odd campaign on the surfers part because they're saying we're not going to be able get to Pea Island to go surfing if this causeway is built. And Pea Island has some damn fine surf, but all anybody has to do is to take a drive along that area and see how much damage keeping that road on the duneline has caused.

MO: That's an interesting problem because if in fact they did proceed with this causeway what they would probably do would be to abandon portions of highway 12. Now that would make access more difficult, not impossible, but you just might not be able to drive your car all the way up there on a road. There are a lot of questions. Would they maintain parts of the road? Would they abandon the whole thing? If the paved roads abandoned, would they still have a sand roadway? All these are questions the National Parks Service will have to answer.

CD: And folks have four wheel drive for that sort of thing anyway.

MO: Right.

CD: Well, say the inlet gets filled in. Is it just a matter of time before it's opened back up again?

MO: I think so. Especially when you consider sea level rise. Sea level rise and global warming would cause the land to get lower and you'd probably also see an increase in storm activity over this area so you'd predict more of a problem.

CD: I guess this would go to both the surfers and fishermen -- say you end up with a new island out there at Hatteras. The more intrepid and hardcore might get higher rewards in terms of fish or surf, because it would be less crowded.

MO: This system, the Albemarle, and Pamlico system that goes with the Outer Banks, is a wonderful system. And it's relatively unaltered by humans. I mean half of North Carolina's 360 mile shoreline is in protected status -- either National Park, State Park or Estuarine Research Preserve. So we're going to have a great natural environment. Now as long as we can avoid the hardening issue, we're going to have a productive environment for waves and fish. It might be in a different configuration with different access challenges.

The other question becomes what to do about what we and Surfrider have now decided to call 'beach fill' instead of 'beach renourishment'. What a lot of people don’t realize is that a lot of beaches people go to are nourished beaches. Florida has made it a state policy and it's kind of an open question here. In many cases where you have a developed shoreline and chronic erosion, if you do nothing, you have a very thin beach where the water's up against the development. Even if the first row of houses falls in, the second row is right behind it.

So nourishment or fill, does provide a beach. Now it has some economic cost and environmental impact to fish and surf breaks. So the tradeoffs in the big picture are unclear with beach fill, but it's certainly going to become more pervasive before it stops.

That's a huge variable here. People are not going to stop wanting beach fill. The challenge is, can we develop criteria to say where is it acceptable and when? Now there is currently an approved plan to fill the beach north of Whalebone Junction at Kitty Hawk and Nags Head. My presumption is that they would not do that in the National Seashore, but somebody may even come up with that proposal at some point.

EXTERNAL LINKS:

Discuss this on the Surfermag.com Bulletin Board.

Putting Hatteras Back Together -- From the Virgina Pilot Newspaper

Panel may suggest review of policies for growing coast -- Wilmington, NC Star Newspaper.
The head of the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission thinks the time has come to review the way the state manages the coast.

The Duke University Marine Laboratory