THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9409250091
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
Oregon Inlet is affected by the rise and fall of politics as well as the fierce tides that surge through it.
This week, Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. began using his personal Democratic influence to win Clinton administration approval for two huge jetties that Dare County supporters have sought to stabilize the inlet for 30-years.
On Wednesday, Hunt will send a pair of his top trouble-shooters to Washington on a carefully orchestrated mission to salvage the long-delayed breakwaters.
Environmentalist pressure on the U.S. Interior Department has repeatedly blocked permits that would allow the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build the $97 million jetties on Interior Department land at each side of the treacherous channel through the Outer Banks.
``But we believe the jetties are environmentally sound. And we'll confer first with the Army Engineers to obtain up-to-date information about the benefits as well as the latest information about the impact of the jetties,'' said Wayne McDevitt, director of intergovernmental relations for Hunt and one of the two Oregon Inlet emissaries.
McDevitt will be accompanied by J. Bradley Wilson, Hunt's general counsel and one of the governor's most influential advisers.
Several of Hunt's strategists are known to feel that in this election year, the buffeted Clinton administration is likely to consider Democratic party quid pro quos - particularly when they come from a party leader with Hunt's certified clout.
Present efforts to get the jetties started might help U.S. Rep. H. Martin Lancaster, D-Goldsboro, who is in a difficult November re-election fight in the 3rd District where Oregon Inlet is located.
``And Clinton doesn't want to be a one-term president in 1996,'' said a Hunt friend, who asked not to be identified.
Last week, Wilson and McDevitt were at the center of much activity in Raleigh and on the Outer Banks as the Hunt administration moved to strengthen its tactical position on the jetties.
Following an unpublicized meeting in Wanchese last week between members of the Governor's Oregon Inlet Committee and Dare County officials, a major policy change was made in the jetty campaign.
``We finally convinced everyone that this should be a state effort, rather than a local Dare County effort,'' said Robert G. Williams, a Dare County commissioner who is chairman of the Dare County Waterway Commission.
``The playing field will be leveled now that the state has the initiative,'' Williams added Friday.
Williams is a retired Coast Guard commander who was one of the first directors of the Wanchese Seafood Industrial Park.
The $9 million fish-processing installation was planned and built during Hunt's two earlier administrations, when it appeared that an all-weather Oregon Inlet with channel-stabilizing jetties would make Wanchese one of the largest commercial fishing ports on the East Coast.
But when the Interior Department heeded environmentalists and blocked the jetties, the seafood park became a ghost installation that has attracted few trawlers because the dangerous channel is often impassable due to storm-shoaling. Dozens of fishing boats and more than 20-lives have been lost at the inlet since mid-century.
Neither McDevitt or Wilson would discuss how they hoped to persuade the White House and the Interior Department to reverse position on the jetties.
But Hunt's Democrats may get some Republican help.
GOP Sen. Jesse Helms, North Carolina's senior legislator in Washington, has long supported the breakwaters. In the past, he has joined in bipartisan efforts to get them constructed.
In 1993, Helms introduced Senate legislation that would allow the breakwaters to be built by directing the Interior Department to give the Corps of Engineers ``a small parcel of land . . . in order to begin work on a project begun by Congress in 1970.''
Helms' bill would have permitted the corps to anchor the jetties on the sandy islands north and south of the inlet - the same land that the Interior Department denied to the corps because of environmentalist pressure.
Helms' land-transfer plan never became law. But an aide to the senator said Friday that Helms would continue efforts to break the jetty deadlock.
Wayne Boyles, Helms' legislative assistant, released figures showing that from 1975 through 1993 it has cost the Army Corps $65,391,172 to keep the Oregon Inlet channel open by nearly continuous dredging. Winter storms and frequent Cape Hatteras northeasters cause the channel to shoal and shift. The corps, by law, is required to keep open a 14-foot deep passage through the Inlet.
Helms, in Senate debate, has pointed out that the dredging cost in a few years will equal the cost of building the jetties. The corps claims that the ``stabilization'' of the inlet by the breakwaters will materially reduce dredging requirements.
North Carolina Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, is another jetty advocate. Last week, the Roanoke Island native said any successful new initiative for the jetties will ``probably have to come from Congress.''
Basnight added bluntly that he ``didn't have much faith'' in either White House or Interior Department help for the jetties.
``If Congress directs the Engineers to build the jetties on Interior Department land - as it should have in 1970 - then the jetties will be built,'' Basnight said.
After the Wanchese meeting of Dare County and Raleigh officials last week, Hunt sent word to the N.E. North Carolina Economic Development Commission that he would ``go to see President Clinton'' if that would get the jetties built.
The commission quickly approved a $25,000 appropriation to help provide the Oregon Inlet cost-benefits research that Hunt and state Department of Commerce officials want to support their latest efforts to win jetty approval. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
The Bonner Bridge spans North Carolina's Oregon Inlet, where jetties
are proposed to stabilize the passage's banks.
[This photo appeared in the North Carolina version of this story
only]
by CNB