Tides, tears, taxes: South Nags Head beaches gone SENTINEL STAFF

DARYL LAW | SENTINEL Nags Head Town Manager Cliff Ogburn looks over a row of oceanfront summer vacation homes on Sea Gull Drive in South Nags Head that were damaged during the nor’easter on Nov. 12-13. There are currently 25 houses along the oceanfront in the area that violate the town’s nuisance ordinance.

With sections of South Nags Head in tatters from the nor’easter storm – aka Nor’Ida – on Nov. 12-13, during the Nags Head Board of Commissioners meeting on Dec. 2, a collection of property owners pleaded with the board to start beach nourishment immediately.

According to Cliff Ogburn, Nags Head town manager, a total of 25 properties are in violation of the town’s nuisance ordinance in certain sections of this popular oceanfront community. They are either damaged beyond repair, a public safety threat and/or standing out on the beach, which is public property. An entire row of houses along what used to be Sea Gull Drive are now on the beach and the road, for the most part, is gone.

To complicate matters, many of the houses have giant sandbags protecting them, but some of those who spoke during public comment pointed out that those same sand bags only create more erosion in adjacent areas.

Sandbags are another issue entirely. Legislation passed this year by the General Assembly imposes a moratorium on sandbag removal until Sept. 1, 2010, according to Michelle Walker, public information officer for the Division of Coastal Management in Raleigh.

For the last two years, state coastal regulators have tried to get exposed sandbags with expired permits removed, Walker said.

Since 2000, the huge bags have been permitted for up to five years as a temporary erosion-control measure to protect imminently threatened structures in towns where they are actively pursuing beach nourishment, she said.  But, in 2008, when the various towns had not started their beach nourishment projects, the Coastal Resources Commission elected not to extend the temporay use of sandbags, Walker said. “They said, ‘Okay, after eight years the odds are you’re not going to do it [beach nourishment],’” she said.

The state coastal regulators are currently looking at removing sandbags from all of the 117 structures in Dare County, most of which are in South Nags Head, Walker said. The regulators say sandbags violate the state’s position of no hardening of the coast, which was adopted as law in 1985 as part the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) of 1974, she said. One area where they’ve seemed to outlive their usefulness is near a house at the end of Surfside Drive in South Nags Head. There’s a long, tall wall of sandbags running away from the cottage back towards where the road used to end. Ogburn said it looked like a river on both sides of the sand bag wall during the nor’ easter.

Neither sandbags or beach nourishment are new issues for South Nags Head or the town commissioners, but both are complicated. To pursue beach nourishment, the town needs tens of millions of dollars, federal permits and time to get it all done. The town’s latest beach nourishment project draft included in the November meeting packet lists the total cost at $32.8 million. They hope to get most of the money, $24 million, from general obligation bonds. A general obligation bond is a common type of municipal bond that is secured by a state or local government’s pledge to use legally available resources, including tax revenues, to repay bond holders, according to Kim Kenny, finance officer for Nags Head.

And chances are in Nags Head, oceanfront property owners will pay the highest taxes to help pay for beach nourishment, she said. The last time they put it vote in the town in April 2007, oceanfront property owners would have paid 75 percent of the cost and the rest of the town only 25 percent, Kenny said. The citizens voted “no” to beach nourishment at that time, she said.

In addition to the $24 million, the town plans to ask Dare County for $8 million and Nags Head will contribute $825,000 from its general fund, according to the town’s recent ordinance. During the meeting last week, the commissioners decided to deal with the ordinance at their next monthly meeting.

Ogburn said they may get the CAMA permit needed for the project in March, but that doesn’t answer the funding problem, he said.

In the meantime, all of those cottages present a public safety hazard for beach-goers. In addition, if they do fall into the ocean, parts of the houses sometimes wash into or onto another person’s property.

In addition, some of the citizens at the meeting questioned if it was safe for children to play on the beach in those areas.

The town’s board of commissioners passed a resolution Nov. 18 asking that other North Carolina towns and counties join with Nags Head in asking that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) support flood insurance claims for damages to structures suffering gradual coastal erosion.

Indian Beach and Caswell Beach have done the same thing, Ogburn said.

“The county just did it today,” Ogburn said Monday about the Dare County Board of Commissioners adopting the ordinance Dec. 7.

Part of the ordinance says it all: “There would be a strong incentive for property owners to remove their endangered oceanfront structures in a much more expeditious and safe manner if the NFIP supported flood insurance claims as soon as a structure became uninhabitable.”

As it stands now, the federal flood insurance pays $250,000 after it falls into the ocean and only $30,000 if the town condemns it and the owner tears it down, Ogburn said.

But the definition for “flood” in the National Flood Insurance Act of 1968 doesn’t match up with the situation in South Nags Head where tides, storms and flooding come and go.

According to Fletcher Willey of the The Willey Agency insurance company in Nags Head, adjusters have to follow the letter of the law and sometimes, things just don’t match up.

“Flood, as used in flood insurance polices, means a general and temporary condition of partial or complete inundation of two or more acres of normally dry land area or of two or more properties at least one of which is your property from overflow of inland or tidal waters ….”

Every policy uses the word “flood,” Willey said.

And there are other problems stemming from houses on the edge of the sea.

In the last storm, one house fell in and part of it drifted down the beach until it found a cut in the dunes. It washed down the street and was “dumped in a lady’s yard,” Ogburn said. She bears the cost of clean up because she didn’t want to wait for outside help.

Oliver was the first of many to speak about the sand situation during the meeting.

First he complimented the town’s public works department for cleaning up much of the sand other other mess the storm made along N.C. 12 and other roads before Thanksgiving weekend.

But if something isn’t done soon to help the beaches, he’s afraid people will simply stop vacationing in there.

“More and more people are not coming back,” Oliver said. “We’re done a poor job maintaining [the beach].

“It took years to build this town,” he said. “Our backs are against the wall.

“I’m proud of this town,” Oliver said. “We need to uphold our reputation as a world class resort.”

Next up to voice her concerns was former Nags Head commissioner Jeanne Acree.

She quickly explained that losing houses means loss of revenue for the town in many different ways.

“We don’t have Ford Motor Company or IBM to give us revenue,” Acree said. “It starts with rental houses and the money they spend.

“We need a beach,” she said. “They come here because we’ve got the beach.”

Plain and simple, the town needs money for beach nourishment, Acree said.

“It will save the beach, save the houses, save the revenue,” she said.

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