The Hatteras Island coastal nourishment project, just north of Groin near the lighthouse’s original location, is shown in a screenshot from the March 10 Dare County video update.
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Significant consequential events are currently underway in North Carolina that could change the management of the state’s increasingly degraded Atlantic coast.
The state Coastal Resources Commission’s scientific committee is finalizing its analysis of coastal erosion control structures, and a report is expected to be submitted to the commission in June. The 10-person advisory committee’s study is intended to inform policymakers of options, but some fear or hope it could be the first step toward lifting the state’s longstanding ban on shoreline hardened structures.
“Alarms are sounding in almost every oceanfront county,” State Coastal Management Director Tancred Miller said at a commission meeting in Atlantic Beach in November, citing the threat of accelerating coastal erosion. “Nutrition costs continue to rise, and many of these projects have painfully short lifespans. Infrastructure is becoming increasingly vulnerable, and some communities are very concerned.”
Since September 2025, in the village of Buxton on Hatteras Island, on a vast stretch of unexplored beach known as Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and Cape Point, 19 vacant beachfront homes have collapsed into the waves. In addition to the beach nutrient project this summer, Dare County plans to restore the only salvageable groin in the 57-year-old groin field to extend the life of the project.
In response to calls from Dare and Hyde counties for more options for erosion control, the agency asked the Coastal Resources Commission last winter to review the structures.
“We must approach these challenges with generosity, innovation and balanced pragmatism,” Miller urged. “We need to take a critical look at past and current practices, embrace what continues to be successful, and replace practices that no longer work.”
But even the draft summary, titled “Report on the effects of rigid structures on sandy open ocean coastlines” submitted by the Scientific Committee at its February committee meeting, reveals the complexities involved in redirecting, intercepting, deflecting, buffering and absorbing open ocean forces energized by strong winds, with strong onshore and countercurrents feeding sand to beaches here and depleting beaches.
“We’ve broken this down into two categories depending on how erosion control measures work. Essentially all erosion control approaches fall into two categories,” CRC Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told the committee. “One is the structures and approaches that trap the sand, and the other is the structures that really strengthen the shoreline.”
While the report provides details on barriers and techniques, she said it provides information about the impact of each option rather than offering remedies. It also includes comparisons with coastal restoration methods such as nutrient supplementation and living shorelines.
Erosion has been a reality for centuries along North Carolina’s 320 miles of coastline, but the Coastal Resources Commission, the 13-member body that sets the state’s coastal policy, took steps to protect the beaches before coastal development and tourism took off.
In 1985, after studying the subshore erosional effects of seawalls, bulkheads, piers, and sandbags, the commission established a policy prohibiting permanently hardened structures on shore. Sandbags were allowed as temporary structures.
The ban was upheld in court in 2000 and codified into law by the North Carolina General Assembly three years later. And in 2011, legislation was passed that allows for the installation of a limited number of terminal groins, barriers that trap sand near coves and at the edges of islands. However, many of the prohibitions remain the law of the country. Environmentalists and countless coastal scientists believe limits on hard structures are in place to protect the state’s coastal wildlife and beautiful natural beaches, which are visited by millions of tourists each year. But critics say the ban will limit the country’s ability to protect coastlines, private property, public property and infrastructure.
Moore said there is no magic one-size-fits-all formula for dealing with erosion, and many factors need to be weighed.
“There are approaches and strategies that can move the erosion problem to another adjacent location or, in some cases, slow the progression of the problem,” said Moore, a professor of coastal geomorphology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “It allows us more time to make larger adjustments that are likely to be needed in the future.”
As sea levels have risen as a result of climate change and Atlantic storms have intensified in recent decades, coastal erosion on the state’s barrier islands is occurring faster and more dramatically, especially along the high-energy Outer Banks coastline, with erosion rates in some places as severe as an average of 14 feet per year, among the highest on the East Coast. Dozens of beachfront homes on eroded beaches were crushed and eroded by the surging waves, falling into the sea. At the same time, the Outer Banks’ coves and waterways are filling with sediment, clogging waterways that were until recently navigable.
However, coasts as a whole are experiencing varying degrees of change and increasingly destructive conditions, increasing pressure to find ways to prevent or reduce damage in different locations with different conditions.
“I would say most of North Carolina’s coastline is a barrier or is acting like a barrier,” Moore told Coastal Review. “Certainly northern subsidence is a factor that increases the rate of relative sea level rise a little bit more. But there’s also the relationship between the shape and orientation of the coastline, the angle of wave entry and wave energy, how they drive the sediment transport gradient on the coast, the amount of sand coming into a stretch of the coast versus the amount of sand going out. Also, a very big factor is how often the coast has been nourished in the past.”
Moore said the final report will focus on sand capture and shoreline strengthening structures. But it will also look at other widely used erosion control tactics, from avoidance through setbacks and relocation, to trapping sand with fences and beach plants, to building beaches with sand nourishment and dunes.
He said the document’s two-category design focuses on the functionality of the structure, “because there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of approaches to coastal erosion management, and they all basically fall into two buckets.” What a panel of volunteer scientists cannot do is analyze each approach, she added.
“What we’re trying to do is provide a better and clearer explanation of how the structure works and what its impacts are,” Moore said.
Mr. Moore emphasized that the scientific committee’s mandate is to provide an assessment of shoreline structures. But she understands that people feel an urgency to find a “solution” rather than a variety of options.
“We’re not offering recommendations, but we want to emphasize discussing the trade-offs. I think that’s very important, because whether an approach has benefits or harms depends on the perspective and goals of the beholder,” she said. “We certainly know that efforts are underway to repeal the ban, and again, it’s not our job to say whether that should or shouldn’t happen. It’s our job to consider how these different approaches to mitigating erosion work and clearly explain what the trade-offs are.”
Next article in the series: How are the reinforcement structures currently installed on North Carolina beaches working?
