Maintaining a sustained source of money for beach strand storm mitigation projects on Wrightsville, Carolina and Kure beaches will be the main topic of conversation during a Feb. 20 meeting of elected officials from New Hanover County’s three beach municipalities, the New Hanover County Commissioners, and the county’s local delegation in Raleigh and Washington.
The beach municipalities gather for breakfast meetings several times each year to discuss local, state and federal issues specific to their communities. Like the challenges that could disrupt regularly scheduled beach renourishment, or coastal storm damage reduction projects, the main topic to be discussed during the Feb. 20 meeting, Wrightsville Beach Mayor Bill Blair said beach-specific issues are often complex with protracted solutions.
“The intent is for us to host these meetings so we can figure out how much work we’ve got to do to keep the beaches on the forefront,” Blair said. “This issue is really complicated and . . . it takes a long time to understand it, then learn the politics of it, then learn the funding and the cycles.”
Wrightsville Beach Town Manager Tim Owens, who set the meeting’s agenda, said renourishment was selected as the meeting’s focus following discussions with other beach town leaders.
“Coastal storm damage reduction is a topic we definitely all have in common,” Owens said. “Beach nourishment is really important to our region, to have healthy beaches and the protection and economic benefits they provide.”
Each beach town’s project, constructed every four years at Wrightsville Beach and every three years at Carolina and Kure Beach, faces unique challenges, but all three projects could be impacted by questions about the future of federal and state financial support.
Coastal storm damage reduction projects at Wrightsville, Carolina and Kure beaches are federally authorized, or eligible for federal monies to cover the cost of the projects, typically 65 percent of a roughly $8 million price tag. Generally, federal funds seem to be “drying up,” Owens said, and analyses of each project’s costs and benefits, which will soon be updated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, could leave the county’s beach towns less likely to be awarded federal funds when compared to more developed beaches like Myrtle Beach, S.C., or Virginia Beach, Va.
Federal authorization could end as soon as 2017 for Carolina Beach, although the county and the corps are working to secure a reauthorization through 2032. And while Wrightsville Beach is authorized through 2036, a total project cost limit imposed at the beginning of the project allows the federal government to spend only $12.4 million for the rest of the project, a contribution that will cover two more renourishments in 2018 and 2022.
The state has historically chipped in to cover half of the remaining 35 percent of each project’s cost with money from the Division of Water Resources, but without a federal match, the state is unlikely to continue that practice. Without federal and state assistance, the financial responsibility will be left to the county, the beach towns, and an earmarked portion of the county’s room occupancy tax collections.
U.S. Congressman David Rouzer, R-District 7, will outline efforts in Congress that could impact local coastal communities, followed by similar presentations from Rep. Rick Catlin, R-New Hanover; Rep. Ted Davis Jr., R-New Hanover; Rep. Susi Hamilton, D-New Hanover; and Sen. Michael Lee, R-District 9.
A topic he plans to address during the breakfast meeting, Catlin said he is working with legislative assistants to reinstate the North Carolina Coastal Caucus, a body of the coastal lawmakers in the N.C. General Assembly, to work as a team on issues like beach nourishment and inlet dredging.
County manager Chris Coudriet is expected to discuss challenges and accomplishments on a local level, followed by an update on the county’s coastal storm damage reduction and inlet dredging projects from shore protection coordinator Layton Bedsole.
The breakfast meeting, which begins at 8 a.m. at the Blockade Runner Beach Resort, is open to the public.
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