THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 18, 1995 TAG: 9509180066
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
With a 200-foot-long dredge and miles of spidery pipeline, a Maryland company is preparing to clear what local watermen call the East Coast's most dangerous inlet.
Workers at Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. plan to begin pumping sand out of Oregon Inlet this week.
By Oct. 15, the company is scheduled to increase the channel's depth by up to five feet - to an average of 14 feet.
To do so, workers must remove 250,000 cubic yards of sediment from the ocean's floor - enough sand to fill 41,670 dump trucks.
That sand will be pumped up to three miles south of the inlet, onto a mile-long stretch of Pea Island beach. Department of Transportation officials hope the added sediment will protect N.C. Route 12 from encroaching erosion. The project's $2.1 million price tag is funded entirely by federal tax dollars.
``Our contractor already is on site. He'll begin work as soon as that pipeline is completely installed. It depends on the weather, really,'' said Tom Bishop, an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers from his Wilmington office Friday.
The only outlet to the sea in the 140 miles between Cape Henry, in Virginia Beach, and Hatteras Inlet, Oregon Inlet lies between Nags Head and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. It is the primary passage for commercial and recreational fishing boats based along the northern Outer Banks. But in recent years, the channel has shoaled so much that many deep-draw vessels have not been able to get to sea.
Since 1960, at least 25 lives and an equal number of boats have been lost at Oregon Inlet. This winter, watermen were only able to use the channel at high tide, during daylight hours, because its depth shallowed from 12 feet to an average of 10 feet. It has gotten even worse since then.
Sports charter boats based at the inlet have missed at least seven days of fishing in the past month because the inlet has been in such bad shape. The ocean and other weather-related factors were fine for fishing those days, Oregon Inlet Fishing Center Manager Satch Smith said. But the channel itself was just too dangerous to navigate.
``One lost day of fishing means this center and the charter boats here lose about $250,000 in gross sales,'' Smith said Friday.
``The bar has been so bad lately, waves sometimes break right over the boats. Dredging will certainly help the current situation. But it needs to be done on an annual basis.''
The Corps of Engineers did not dredge the inlet at all in 1994.
The channel was last cleared in August 1993. by CNB