| 01 March 2009
In a time of rising sea level, we must take a long-term view of our beach management.
North Carolina’s beaches face a lot of problems, including overdevelopment, rising sea level, rapid erosion rates, and a paucity of beach-compatible sand for beach replenishment. But the biggest threat to our beaches may be coastal engineering consultants.
Most of the decisions regarding beach management along the North Carolina coast are guided by consultants. They include the Wilmington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who,in effect, are hired by individual communities.
The universal problem with coastal engineering consultants is that they are selling a product: coastal engineering. They make money when the projects are accepted. If they don’t find the truth according to their clients needs, they are out of business. The Corps’ situation stems from the fact that Congress requires it to have projects (rather than a fixed annual budget), in order to survive.
SF Editor's note - writing about North Carolina's beaches, Dr. Pilkey has a lot to say to interest Floridians, in this editorial that compares the states.In other words, when it comes to coastal engineering consultants, the bottom line is the bottom line. As a result, objective science and engineering are often forced to take a back seat to profit.
This might not be too bad, if all coastal engineering projects turned out as well as the consultants claim. Time and again, after a beach has been nourished or a jetty emplaced, the project is inevitably declared a great success, regardless of the actual outcome.
By consistently downplaying — and even denying — the role of beach engineering in the degradation of the nation’s beaches, the coastal engineering profession has sidetracked a much-needed societal debate about the wisdom of holding ocean shorelines in place.
For instance, North Carolina is allowing widespread mining of its inlets (including Oregon, Bogue, North Topsail, Carolina Beach, Lockwood Folly and Shallotte) for beach sand. Inlet sand is the best quality and cheapest beach sand around, although a heavy environmental price is paid for its use because mining halts transfer of sand from island to island and causes erosion on adjacent beaches.
The Wilmington District of the Corps and the consulting companies hired by N.C. coastal communities claim that removing sand from inlets does not create erosion problems on adjacent beaches. Yet, a January 2009 document written by the same coastal engineering company that mined Bogue Inlet and proposes to do the same at New River Inlet (North Topsail Beach) stated the following: “Erosion problems at Barefoot Beach (FL) are caused by the same processes of other inlets along the Florida Coast. A dredged navigation channel traps sediment that otherwise would bypass to the beach…”
This company obviously recognized the hazard of inlet mining in Florida, but sings a different tune in North Carolina. Why?
About the Author
Dr. Orrin Pilkey is James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Geology and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Duke University. Among his many books are “A Celebration of the World’s Barrier Islands,” “Living by the Rules of the Sea,” and “The Corps and the Shore.”
For 40-odd years, Dr. Pilkey has been the pillar of scientific integrity and a foil to the coastal engineering industry that is shot through with conflicts of interests, intellectual corruption and moral bankruptcy. As a teacher, Dr. Pilkey has trained many of the experts working today to restore sanity and integrity to coastal management.
He consults pro bono for many conservation groups fighting unsustainable coastal construction and engineering around the world. Dr. Pilkey donated a great deal of his time to the Surfrider and Snook foundations on the Lake Worth/Reach 8 lawsuit, and his expertise helped tremendously in forming a legal strategy.
Terry Gibson, Fishing Editor
Outdoor Life Magazine
Member, Snook Foundation Advisory Council
The N.C. Coastal Resources Commission, the state’s coastal rule-making and enforcement body, has a science advisory panel that could expertly address the designs of coastal engineering consultants, as well as many other critical coastal issues. Except the Corps and employees of coastal engineering consultants are represented on this panel, which causes a direct conflict of interest and precludes any chance for objectivity.
There is unanimous agreement among N.C. coastal geologists that mining of inlets, and groin or jetty emplacement, will likely create more problems than they solve. But our message is viewed by developers and politicians as negative, one that stands in the way of progress.
There is no doubt that coastal engineering consultants (and the Corps) are threatening the future of North Carolina’s beaches. In a time of rising sea level, we must take a long-term view of our beach management. A reliance on coastal engineering will only bring us the same problems we see in Florida and New Jersey, where coastal engineers reign supreme, and where shorelines were engineered bit by bit, community by community. The result — thousands of high-rises placed immediately next to still-eroding shorelines.
In North Carolina, we must put beaches first. We need to respond flexibly to retreating shorelines. We can not put the coastal system solely into the hands of coastal engineers whose proclamations concerning costs, impacts and life spans should be viewed with as much skepticism as that of a used car salesperson.
In the future, beach nourishment sand must be taken only from sites that won’t make the problem worse. And proposed appointees to advisory panels must be vetted to assure impartiality.
It’s time for the state to step up and take control of our coast. The future of our beaches depends on it.
