Carteret County Shore Protection Office Manager Ryan Davenport told the county beach commission Monday the county is working with the state to increase the amount of money it can keep in its beach nourishment reserve fund.
The board held its regular monthly session in the Emerald Isle Board of Commissioners’ meeting room.
The beach nourishment fund gets 50 percent of the county’s 6 percent tax on accommodations – hotels, motels, condominiums, cottages, etc. – with the rest of that revenue going to the tourism development authority to promote visitation.
Davenport said that at the end of last August, the last official tally, the beach fund stood at about $21 million, but millions of dollars have flowed into the fund since then.
Currently, the legislation that created the beach commission limits the total in that fund to $30 million.
Davenport told the panel the county is seeking to double that cap to $60 million.
He said he is working with state Sen. Norman Sanderson, who represents the county in the General Assembly, and feels good about the chance of getting approval.
At a previous commission meeting Davenport said, $30 million isn’t really that much of a reserve when you’re talking about beach nourishment projects that cost multiple millions of dollars each. Between 2019 and 2021, after Hurricane Florence in September 2018 removed millions of cubic yards of sand from Bogue Banks, the county spent close to $85 million on a three-phase nourishment project that put millions of cubic yards back, from Atlantic Beach through Emerald Isle.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency eventually reimbursed much of that money.
“FEMA was very good to us,” Davenport said.
But he said in that meeting, no one knows if FEMA will do the same again.
As things sit now, there are only two dredging/nourishment projects on the table, both this winter and both relatively small. One is at Homer’s Point in Indian Beach, with sand dredged there set to go on an erosion hot spot near a free-parking county beach access facility in that town. The other is a Bogue Inlet dredging project, with the sand to be placed on the strand in western Emerald Isle.
Combined, those probably will probably cost the county less than half a million dollars – grants will help pay the cost – so those won’t significantly reduce the reserve fund.
Monday, Davenport said the county is working to get data on sand samples to the state Division of Coastal Management so the Homer’s Point project can proceed.
Source: Carolina Coast Online
