By Connie Leinbach
The Hyde County commissioners have asked federal and state authorities to take immediate action to ensure sustainable access to and from Ocracoke.
The commissioners at their Wednesday night meeting approved a resolution seeking immediate help with repairing and shoring up NC 12 at the north end, for money to dredge and continue dredging in the Hatteras Inlet and for NCDOT to immediately begin planning a road relocation/elevation project.
The action is being called the Ocracoke Resilient Infrastructure Initiative, said Hyde County Manager Kris Noble, and comes in the wake of NC12 having been closed due to overwash for seven days starting on March 22 as well as continued delays in dredging the inlet.
“This is a big ask,” Noble said in the meeting, “but I feel we’re never going to get it if we don’t ask.”
The NC12 closure, according to the resolution, created “life safety issues, hindering emergency medical services, preventing the commerce of goods and services, delaying the U.S mail and other parcel delivery services, preventing the delivery of medicines and other critical needs of the Ocracoke community and preventing visitors from traveling to one of the top destination spots in the state of North Carolina on a holiday weekend thereby reducing visitor spending for the village, the county and the state.”
The resolution, which will be sent to state and federal representatives, NCDOT, the Ferry Division and other partners, asks for the continued work on refilling sandbags along a 7,000-foot section of NC12 where the ocean recently breached.
It also asks to immediately follow that with a beach nourishment project to protect the roadway from ocean overwash with compatible dredged material.
Noble said that when the pipeline dredge was in the Sloop Channel last fall, there was not enough money to pump the spoil onto the north end of Ocracoke.
“Commissioner Randal Mathews and I believe that had that project come to fruition we would have never seen this kind of breach,” she said about the March breach.
She said she and Mathews have been working on this tirelessly for the last two weeks.
“Randal (was) getting up early and going to the hot spot area, going after each high tide,” she said.
Mathews said Noble has worked to contact all of the representatives and officials for this resolution.
Finally, the resolution asks NCDOT to invest in ferries that will be able to dock at all Ocracoke ferry ramps if need be, specifically “to ensure (the docks) are compatible with all ferries within the fleet to allow a more flexible and resilient ferry fleet that can provide transportation to all ferry terminals located on the island and at destination facilities.”
Currently, the types of ferries from Hatteras are smaller than the boats that dock at the Silver Lake harbor dock.
While Hatteras-class ferries did travel from Hatteras to Silver Lake for a few months after Hurricane Dorian in the fall of 2019, they are not built for the higher ramps. Noble said the ferry dock modification contract has already been let but she and Mathews included it in the resolution to keep the project on track.
“This is the official road map for the short-term solutions that we think are practical,” Mathews said on Friday. “And we’re going to press NCDOT for a long-term solution.”
He noted that Hurricane Isabel in September 2003 did major damage to NC12 and that the effort to mitigate the road problems should have begun then.
“In the spring of 2004 after Isabel we were without a road after Isabel,” he said. “Isabel was a wakeup call and we’re 20 years behind the curve.”
In addition to the resolution, Noble said that U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy (R-District 3), who represents Hyde County, has proposed a Community Funding Project for 2025 to fund dredging of the Rollinson and Sloop channels and anything in the federally authorized area in an amount of $7.08 million and to dredge access to Silver Lake Harbor in the amount of $3.37 million.
The larger amount for Rollinson would be enough to dredge and pump the spoil onto the Ocracoke beach, Noble said.
As for the appropriation for Silver Lake is not actually for the harbor but for Big Foot Slough, through which the Pamlico Sound ferries pass, and which has had continued shoaling problems. Mathews and Noble are working to make Nine Foot Slough, a nearby natural channel, which is possibly more sustainable, as the federally authorized channel for these ferries to traverse.
“The permits are very, very close to being completed,” she said, adding that she asked for this funding to be used in either slough.
The letter to Murphy also asks for funding to survey and dredge Far Creek, located in Engelhard, and which is a federally authorized channel with an authorized depth of 12 feet to enable the mainland commercial fishing fleet to continue to use the Far Creek Channel to access the Pamlico Sound and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.
Mathews also noted that, owing to state legislation that Noble got introduced and passed, Hyde is exempt from having to fund a local match when applying for money from the Shallow Draft Fund, which provides the state’s share of the costs associated with dredging projects in state waters.
The commissioners also approved a memorandum of understanding with Dare County to enable the “Miss Katie” dredge in Sloop Channel, which is the S-curve-type bend in the Hatteras ferry route.
Among the economic talking points in the resolution are as follows:
- Reliable transportation must be provided to not only the 900 year-round residents of Ocracoke, but the tourist population – which swells to 10,000 in summer months.
- Ocracoke Island’s travel and tourism economic impact is important to the state of North Carolina with total visitor spending in Hyde County in 2022 valued at $58.31 million with a spending growth rate of 9.6% from 2021 to 2022 according to a study prepared for Visit North Carolina by Tourism Economics titled “The Economic Impact of Travel on North Carolina Counties.”
- That study further showed Hyde County ranking fourth regionally in total visitor spending, accounting for $58.31 million in spending, growing by 9.6 percent, 376 jobs, $13.6 million labor income, $1.9 million state taxes, $2.5 million local taxes, and tax savings per resident of $985.23.
