
DATE: Sunday, September 21, 1997            TAG: 9709210102

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: OREGON INLET                      LENGTH:  203 lines

OREGON INLET, ADRIFT KILLED JETTY PROPOSAL LEAVES OPPOSING SIDES UNSURE OF SOLUTION.

Pit the livelihood and safety of thousands against possible erosion of the coastline and depletion of a huge fishery.

Pit watermen who daily risk their lives in treacherous currents against scientists who daily study the often bad effects of jetties on shorelines.

Throw opposing government agencies, lots of money, countless studies and bewildered citizens into the fray of divergent issues.

Oregon Inlet, the East Coast's most dynamic inlet, has physically moved faster than a resolution to the convoluted controversy that surrounds it.

The only passage to the Atlantic between Cape Henry, Va., and Cape Hatteras, the inlet has migrated about two miles south since a hurricane opened it on Sept. 7, 1846.

It is often called the most dangerous inlet on the East Coast, but it is vital to commercial and recreational fishing and boating. Constant dredging is the only thing keeping it navigable.

The latest chapter in the 27-year running battle of government and science, watermen and environmentalists, was played out in Raleigh late last month when a special provision to pave the way for a rock groin at the inlet's north side never made it into the state budget. The groin is considered a stopgap until longer and more expensive jetties can be built.

While jetty opponents applauded, frustrated watermen and local officials complained that they're back to square one.

``I got really down when it didn't go through,'' Moon Tillett, chairman of the Dare County Oregon Inlet and Waterways Commission, said. ``Now it looks like we're going to have to start over.''

Tillett, a native fisherman and fish dealer, is one of many who want the state, the federal government - someone, anyone - to build two jetties on the north andsouth sides of the inlet. The jetties, they contend, are essential to keep the inlet's channel navigable. Congress, in fact, authorized the twin jetties in 1970. But the U.S. Department of the Interior, owner of the land lining the inlet, has blocked their construction.

Others are equally convinced that proponents overestimate the benefit of jetties, to the point of being blinded to alternatives.

``Why don't they relax?,'' coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey said. ``Why don't they look at the facts? Stop thinking the jetties are the final solution and start looking for another solution - like dredging.''

The killed budget provision was linked to a proposed $100 million jetty project: a 2-mile-long north jetty and a 3,500-foot jetty that would attach to the existing half-mile-long south terminal groin. The project would include a sand-bypass system that would pump accumulated sand through a pipe from one side to the other to promote the movement of sand and prevent beach erosion.

Considering the project's history of proliferating studies and legislative paralysis, starting over may be the purgatory the inlet is doomed to - at least until Mother Nature takes the reins again.

Oregon Inlet is often called overstudied, but no one seems to be quite sure how many studies have been done or are in the works.

``I have no idea,'' said Bill Dennis, a Corps engineer who has worked on the Oregon Inlet project for years. ``Dozens of studies have been conducted.''

A $750,000 study by the Corps of Engineers detailing the latest cost-benefit estimates and the environmental and economic impact of the proposed jetty project is expected to be completed by January 1998. The last formal jetty design was done in 1990, Dennis said.

``The inlet continues to change, of course. We're trying to update the former plan to the current conditions.''

U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., told Congress in 1995 that the federal government had done 97 major studies and three environmental impact statements on the inlet since 1969.

Julie Hunkins, a state Department of Transportation planner in the planning and environmental branch, said she has ``literally boxes'' filled with Corps studies in her office. And Hunkins, who is working on the planned Bonner Bridge replacement, said she is familiar with at least 15 state Department of Transportation studies on the inlet.

Recent studies have included the former Coast Guard station near the inlet, coastal engineering, bridge types, archeological investigations, shipwrecks, sand travel, piping plovers and loggerhead turtles.

Dennis attributed the number of studies to the ``controversy of putting jetties in the National Seashore and the issues that have been raised by the Department of the Interior and the environmental organizations'' that necessitated some studies having to be done over again.

``Conditions of the inlet are changing. Rules change. Policies change,'' Dennis said. ``It's like if you were building a house you started in 1970.''

Carl Miller, a Corps engineer at the Duck research pier, has conducted a monitoring program at Oregon Inlet to study the impact of the terminal groin that DOT built in 1989 along the northern tip of Pea Island to stabilize the bridge abutments and protect N.C 12. Miller concluded that the groin helped fill in about 50 acres of land. The shoreline is also more stable than it was before the groin was built, he said.

As it has been for decades, the Corps regularly dredges the channel, maintaining it at 400-feet wide by 14-feet deep. The dredging, done according to need and weather, costs an average of $5.5 million a year.

But plans to replace Bonner Bridge, which spans the channel, with a new bridge design tailored to the inlet's unruly currents and idiosyncracies could kick the controversial jetties out of the debate. Some environmentalists say the replacement bridge is more accommodating to the inlet and would eliminate many of the problems that jetties or groins are designed to fix.

The proposed $100 million bridge could be built as soon as 2002, said Hunkins, if funds are allocated soon.

The new bridge will have stronger and deeper pilings, be more substantial in size and have bigger spans - one 180-foot wide and two 90-foot-wide wings on either side - which will allow easier access for boats.

``The bridge will be designed so that it will not be reliant on the twin jetties,'' Hunkins said. ``But it will be compatible with jetties if they are built in the future.''

Environmentalists and coastal engineers, meanwhile, also have lined up equally strong in opposition to the jetties, which they argue are expensive, pointless and damaging to the coastline.

``I don't believe anyone who reads and writes and listens can believe these jetties are needed on the Outer Banks,'' said Pilkey, a coastal geologist from Duke University. ``I think they've mired themselves so deeply in this, they can't get out.''

Over the years, as the channel creeped south, the north side has become a favorite fishing spot for anglers with 4-wheel drive vehicles.

And the Bonner Bridge, the link for Hatteras Island residents to the Dare County mainland, now arches over more sand than water.

Hence the problem, Pilkey said in a recent telephone interview. The inlet naturally moves south. But when the state built the Bonner bridge in 1962, movement could no longer be accommodated because the channel had to stay under the bridge's fixed span. Only dredging could keep the channel in one place. Talk of jetties as a solution evolved. And so began the drawn-out saga of the jetty project, Pilkey said.

``I think this is a juggernaut that has not slowed down in the slightest,'' Pilkey said. ``It's a many-headed dragon - cut off one and another appears.

``I believe it's beyond the point of being rational. It's become a holy cause.''

Pilkey, co-author of the 1996 book, ``The Corps and the Shore,'' has been one of the most vocal of the jetty naysayers and critic of the Corps.

But Pilkey has some powerful allies, including the U.S. Department of the Interior, the owner of the land the jetties and groin would have to be anchored to. Even though Congress authorized the project in 1970, the interior department has opposed the rock walls based in large part on the opinion of the Inman Panel, a group of coastal scientists who evaluated the inlet situation in the '70s and '80s. In four reports released between 1979 and 1991, the panel concluded that the Corps' information defending the jetties was flawed, including its claim that dredging alone was insufficient to keep the channel open.

``Without exception, they have found major flaws in every aspect of the Corps' plans,'' a group of North Carolina marine scientists and coastal geologists said in a May letter to state Speaker of the House Harold Brubaker. ``Even after nearly 20 years of scientific scrutiny, the large jetties have failed to gain support among the national scientific and engineering community.''

North Carolina's state and federal representatives, however, have almost unanimously backed the jetty plan.

``Congress must act soon,'' Helms said in testimony on the The Oregon Inlet Protection Act of 1997, which would transfer the federal land to the Corps. ``Too many lives have been lost; the continued existence of the Outer Banks is now in question because nothing has been allowed to be done to manage the flow of sand from one end of the coastal islands to the other. If much more time is wasted, the self-appointed environmentalists won't have to worry about turtles or birds on Cape Hatteras, because a few short years hence, Oregon Inlet will have disappeared.''

Another jetty proponent, Gov. Jim Hunt, has worked closely with U.S. Rep. Walter Jones Jr., R-3rd Dist., and state Sen. President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, a Dare County resident. Hunt last month said he will continue to support construction of jetties.

The Helms bill is pending in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and will likely be carried over to the 1998 session, said Wayne Bowles, Helms' legislative assistant.

With years of inaction on the jetties, questions center on what will happen if nothing is done. No one - for or against jetties - has suggested that the dredging stop. But some doubt it would be enough, with the rapid rate of shoaling and narrowing of the channel.

``Dredging is good as far as a band-aid approach,'' but it won't make the inlet safe, said Butch Midgett, an Outer Banks waterman. ``One storm like the Halloween storm, we could be closed off here all winter. It could be really life-threatening.''

Tillett agreed, saying weather can make or break channel passage by pulling sand in or out of the channel. Without the jetties, he said, it'll be a lot harder to keep the passage safe and passable.

``I don't think it will close the inlet completely,'' Tillett said, ``but I'm scared it will make our navigation channel where we can't go under the bridge.''

Even the Corps' engineer Dennis has doubts that the jetties will ever be approved.

``I'd be surprised if it was, given the history of the project,'' he said. And if it was, there's no guarantee that all necessary maintenance funds would be appropriated every year by Congress, although Dennis said much of those costs are provided in the initial costs.

With or without jetties, a sand-bypass system would do much to alleviate the shoaling problem at the inlet, which he called a sink for sand, Miller said.

``Yes, man has had problems with these inlets. Quite frankly, Mother Nature isn't very good at it either.''

Pilkey, the coastal geologist, said the Corps is under strong political pressure to approve the project ``and they're going to find the truth according to their own needs.''

Jetties could ruin the beaches within a generation or two, he warned.

``I guess more than anything, the armoring of the beautiful Outer Banks . . ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot

Oregon Inlet, the East Coast's most dynamic - and possibly most

dangerous - inlet...

Map

Graphic

KEEPING THE INLET OPEN

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]