Wide dunes and quick-to-form shoals suggest how sand erodes and accretes on beaches and in inlets, but results of the county’s first shoreline mapping surveys will provide the data to prove it.
Survey results will be presented during a Nov. 12 Wilmington-New Hanover Port, Waterway and Beach Commission meeting by a coastal engineer from Raleigh-based Moffatt & Nichol.
The firm studied cross-sections of the strand on Wrightsville Beach, Masonboro Island, Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and around the Fort Fisher State Park March through May 2014. The first report will compare collected data to one year of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers records on sand placement and movement on New Hanover County beaches.
The surveys will also track sand movement in county inlets, although no historical data exists to compare to the first year of results.
Layton Bedsole, county shore protection coordinator, said the surveys will be useful over time. The surveys will be conducted every year, ultimately providing enough data to show how sand moves naturally and in response to big storms and coastal storm damage reduction projects, or renourishment.
“If you’re going to manage the coast, you need to monitor annually. Otherwise, you know what you’re doing. You just don’t know why you’re doing it,” Bedsole said.
The surveys are required by project agreements outlined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which performs renourishment on the county’s three federally authorized projects at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach.
Wrightsville Beach Town Manager Tim Owens said new understanding of the sand’s behavior will be useful as beach towns continue to discuss different funding scenarios for renourishment and dredging if federal or state contributions are lost.
“These projects are very expensive, and the more we have to put our money in the game, the more important it is to know where the sand’s going, how it’s moving, how it’s reacting in the environment,” Owens said.
New Hanover County Commissioners approved use of $150,000 from the county’s room occupancy tax coffers to fund the first batch of surveys in July 2013. The project required an additional $50,000, allocated in February, to review Corps records. Subsequent surveys will cost $150,000.
The Nov. 12, PWBC meeting will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the New Hanover County Government Center finance department conference room.
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