2-mile stretch of Ocean Isle Beach gets new sand
By Steve Jonessjones@thesunnews.com
Tom Barnes of Columbia was happy to see the sand piling up over the last few weeks in front of his oceanfront condominium near the east end of Ocean Isle Beach.
The sand was part of 510,000 cubic yards pumped from the nearby Shallotte River Inlet and being used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to renourish about two miles of the town's seven-mile beach. The project extends westward from Shallotte Boulevard to Tarboro Street, near the center of the island.
Barnes, president of the Sand Dwellers I homeowners association, said there was a time when he was worried that Building A, next to the one in which his condo is located, would fall victim to ocean erosion.
The Sand Dwellers is across Shallotte Boulevard from the east end, a tip of the island that has been battered by severe erosion and where oceanfront homes are buttressed by a line of sandbags.
In 2008, Tropical Storm Hanna took out about 20 feet of Shallotte Boulevard and buckled the portion of Second Street that separated the condominiums from the beach. The damaged section of Second Street was not rebuilt after the storm, and now a single-lane dirt access road stands between the complex and a new, seagrass-planted dune created behind sandbags that protected the area before renourishment.
The damage heightened the pressure on the renourished portion of the island. Severe erosion crept hundreds of feet westward from Shallotte Boulevard and forced some homeowners in the renourishment area to use sandbags to protect their homes.
The current renourishment cost $5.1 million, said Susan Clizbe, public information officer for the Corps' Wilmington, N.C., office. The federal government will pay for $3.2 million of that and the remaining $1.9 million is split between the state and Ocean Isle Beach.
Clizbe said the sand was spread over nearly two miles of beach to a height of six feet and a width of up to 250 feet.
Debbie Smith, mayor of Ocean Isle Beach, said she worries about the continuation of renourishment funding from state and federal governments, particularly in today's economic climate.
She said the town set aside $750,000 from accommodations and property taxes in the current fiscal year for renourishment and will put more into the fund from the town's new budget. She said the town plans to raise the accommodations tax from 3 percent to 5 percent in the next fiscal year and that at least some of the additional revenue will go into the beach renourishment fund.
She said the town collects about $900,000 a year from the 3 percent tax. In addition, she said the town collects and sends to the state each year more than double that amount in sales taxes visitors pay for accommodations. The state also gets a share of sales taxes from money visitors spend on other things during their stay in Brunswick County.
Barnes agrees with Smith that a terminal groin at the east end of the island would help the renourishment area as well as the west end, which did not meet the cost-benefit ratio to qualify for the Corps' 50-year beach renourishment program.
A bill in the state legislature would allow for the construction of terminal groins, structures shorter and lower than jetties. The groins are designed to hold sand in high-erosion areas, such as the east end, while still allowing sand to pass through them to other areas of the beach or to neighboring strands like Holden Beach, across the Shallotte Inlet from Ocean Isle Beach.
Much of Ocean Isle Beach got an initial renourishment in 2001 under the Corps' program, Smith said. About a mile of the beach near the east end has gotten sand twice since then, she said.
But she believes that a terminal groin would benefit the renourished areas by providing a buffer area from erosion and extending the life of renourishment projects.