For the third time in five years, a sea turtle nesting record at Cape Hatteras National Seashore has been broken.
For the third time in five years, a sea turtle nesting record at Cape Hatteras National Seashore (Seashore) has been broken.
Check out the newest National Marine Sanctuary
ESSEX, MASSACHUSETTS — Should North Shore communities consider buying their own regional dredging equipment or outsource the work to a private company?
Vineyard Wind plans to build its 800-megawatt project (in yellow) 15 miles south of Martha's Vineyard.
A country that refuses to confront these changes, that shrugs off the planning and preparation needed, and certainly does not have the desire — or, at this moment, the capacity — to absorb those costs is making a choice to put millions of its residents in harm’s way.
The Edgartown conservation commission, in a 5-1 vote, has denied a permit for cables that would pass through the Muskeget Channel.
North Carolina - Oak Island, Caswell Beach, and Holden Beach could join in a collaborative study of beachfront erosion, making use of recently-approved federal funds available in a disaster relief act.
NOAA today officially designated its first new national marine sanctuary since 2000, aiming to preserve the remains of more than 100 World War I-era steamships and vessels on an 18-square-mile stretch of the Potomac River coast.
There isn’t much left of the former Borough of Island Beach half a century after its official dissolution in 1965 as an Ocean County municipality incorporated just 32 years earlier.
When the Conowingo Dam opened to fanfare nearly a century ago, the massive wall of concrete and steel began its job harnessing water power in northern Maryland. It also quietly provided a side benefit: trapping sediment and silt before it could flow miles downstream and pollute the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary.
Nantucket is a resilient community. Historically, we have weathered many storms and come back; the great fire of 1846, the end of the whaling industry, and countless hurricanes, a sewer main break.
The company that manages the railroad on Virginia's Eastern Shore notified government officials earlier this month that it will petition to abandon the line from Hallwood south to Cape Charles.
Hopper dredger Liberty Island has returned to Nags Head and is hard at work nourishing the beach in the vicinity of the submerged pipeline near the Epstein public beach.
ANNAPOLIS, MD – The Maryland Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday announced the awarding of $30.9 million in grants to local communities to implement projects that will restore local waterways, increase climate resilience, and develop the next generation of environmental stewards.
The Dredge Liberty Island left for Norfolk on Tuesday evening for repairs and is expected to return to work on the Nags Head beach renourishment project Thursday morning.
The Atlantic Reefmaker is a wave-breaking technology used in inlets, but not oceanfronts. After receiving $5 million from the legislature last year, the Resource Institute proposed using the technology — sold by one of its primary contractors — for hurricane resilience. North Topsail Beach, Surf City and Topsail Beach officials have objected to both the Reefmaker and the Resource Institute, the latter of which they say has little expertise in coastal projects.
Realtor.com says barrier island offers great combination of affordability and sun-and-sand options
Putting up walls to protect the seven cities from rising sea levels would cost the region more than $4.6 billion, according to a nationwide study released Thursday.
In North Carolina, the beach to the dune line is considered public property and anyone can use it. Access, however, is not a public right. That roads in the Sand Dollar Shores HOA such as Sea Breeze or Plover are public and maintained by the state is not at issue. Hovey’s contention is that in 1983, when the developers granted the easement for the roads to the state, that easement went to the beach. It did not end at a cul-de-sac or at an oceanfront property.
The Calvert County commissioners directed staff June 11 to make arrangements for the transfer of properties the county had acquired to eliminate long-term risk to people and property from shoreline and cliff erosion in Calvert.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Although not even officially summer, the city of Virginia Beach and Norfolk District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are already preparing for winter.
Wrightsville Beach and other New Hanover County beaches rocked by Hurricane Florence last fall have spent much of the spring recuperating and preparing for the upcoming summer season. And with hotels and other rentals reopening for the new season, this summer is one that many rentals still are hopeful will be even larger than last year.
SAGAMORE BEACH — Owners of four houses in the Sagamore Highlands are trying for a second time to slow the cliff erosion that threatens their homes.
A mild 2018-19 winter resulted in a surprising boost for blue crabs, according to a survey.
When anticipated fireworks over a beach access issue failed to materialize during the June 5 Duck Town Council meeting, the only storm in Duck last Wednesday night was from falling rain outside.
NAGS HEAD, NC (AP) - North Carolina's highest court has agreed with another appeals court that oceanfront property owners can get compensated when a municipality takes their land temporarily for upkeep of public beaches.
During this spring's fish migration season, 81 northern snakeheads attempted to swim up the Susquehanna River through the Conowingo Dam, a “dramatic increase” in the invasive species, state natural resources officials said.
North Carolina - The town of Duck is caught in the middle of a social media uproar after the arrest of a local business owner seeking to put a spotlight on the lack of public beach access.
A lawsuit filed by property owners on the Currituck Outer Banks contends that the county has misspent $60 million in occupancy tax proceeds since 2004 on projects and services that did little or nothing to promote or expand tourism.
Problems with a pipe feeding sand from offshore mean there’s been a shift in operations on the Nags Head beach renourishment project.
DUCK — If there is one philosophy uniting the long string of communities along the Outer Banks, it is that their beaches should be open and free. And accessible.
Two catastrophic hurricanes hit North Carolina between 2016 and 2018. These storms and the devastation they caused prompted Governor Cooper to initiate a comprehensive assessment of the state’s vulnerability to climate change and the increasing frequency and magnitude of disasters that are resulting.
Representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were in Wachapreague on Tuesday to answer questions and solicit comments from the public about a proposal to use dredge spoils to build up nearby marshland.
A pair of dredges are now working on Nags Head’s $42.7 million beach renourishment project on opposite ends of town, which is currently projected to be completed around Labor Day.
A town on North Carolina's Outer Banks is warning beachgoers that trying to walk to its public beaches could get you arrested for trespassing.
CNT continues to follow this story out of NC. Will the City act to improve the public's access? Will Surfrider step into the battle? We will be watching how this situation plays out.
Unusually warm water, storm paths leave forecasters worried. Six-month Atlantic season starts Saturday, ends in November
When Bob Hovey's confrontation with foul-mouthed homeowners went viral, Duck’s whole public image was put under scrutiny.
“To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering,” conservationist Aldo Leopold’s advised.
This article was updated on Wednesday, May 28 to include new statements from the Department of Environmental Protection.
Storms supercharged by climate change pose a dire threat to river towns. After two catastrophic floods, tiny Ellicott City faces a critical decision: Rebuild, or retreat?
Nags Head’s $42.7 million beach renourishment project moved into its next phase as contractors started pumping and moving sand along the northern end of town. But work off South Nags Head has ground to a halt temporarily.
Sea turtle nesting has begun on the Outer Banks. On Wednesday morning, the first nest north of Hatteras was found in Nags Head, according to the Network for Endangered Sea Turtles.
The 14,000 TEU Evergreen Triton arrived Friday at the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore, setting a new record as the largest container ship to ever visit Maryland. The Neopanamax ship was able to call at Baltimore thanks to the port's recent dredging work.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - The Virginia Beach Oceanfront is getting some renourishment.
The $42.7 million Nags Head beach renourishment project is moving steadily forward thanks to good weather, and with a bit of good luck could be finished well before the end of the summer season.
DARE COUNTY, North Carolina - After a long history of false starts and dashed hopes in the quest to ensure the navigability of Dare County’s Oregon and Hatteras inlets, real progress seems at hand.
In this study, two 50 m segments of dune on an intermediate beach were monitored monthly with a terrestrial lidar scanner. Topographic changes and vegetation coverage were quantified at high spatial resolution (0.1 m in the alongshore and cross-shore dimensions) and used to investigate dune response to a series of major tropical and extratropical storm events.
CURRITUCK COUNTY, North Carolina — A Corolla civic group has filed suit against Currituck County, challenging more than $40 million the county has spent in occupancy tax revenue on projects and services since 2004.
CARTERET COUNTY — At noon Saturday, environmentalists at Fort Macon State Park in Atlantic Beach and at Bogue Inlet Fishing Pier in Emerald Isle joined hands in a gesture of opposition to offshore oil and gas exploration and support for protecting the coastal environment.
KITTY HAWK, N.C. (WAVY) - Bigger dunes, sand fences and vegetation are all part of keeping the beach, and NC Highway 12 in Kitty Hawk near the Black Pelican, from washing away, again.
Dune restoration project reaches closeout with 300,000 new plants installed
ATLANTIC BEACH, N.C. (WNCT) - The town of Atlantic Beach has lowered the number of time visitors can park at designated zones.
North Carolina can’t seem to stop promoting risky development on our fragile barrier islands.
CHARLESTON, SC — In a court filing late Thursday, the federal government said it is “simply evaluating all its options,” when it comes to its drilling plan, appearing to soften previous comments from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt that an Alaska court decision had put on hold the Trump administration’s push to open the Atlantic Ocean and other waters to offshore oil rigs.
NORWALK — In the less than three months Anthony Carr has been on the job as the city’s chief of public works and operations, one main issue has taken center stage — flooding.
Dominion Energy will begin construction on the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project in the coming weeks, the Virginia-based energy company’s chairman, president, and chief executive officer Thomas F. Farrell said.
This year’s 190 million spawning females doesn’t reach that “healthy” level, but it’s still 29% above last year and the fifth largest number since the survey began.
Oysters got attention from lawmakers this year in both Maryland and Virginia, but the issue sparked bitter debates in Annapolis.
KINGSTON, R.I. - May 6, 2019 - Researchers at the University of Rhode Island who analyzed AirBnB rental data before and after construction of the Block Island Wind Farm have found that, contrary to some concerns, the turbines have increased tourism on the island.
KURE BEACH, North Carolina - Beach renourishment in Kure Beach was completed April 29th. The project began earlier this year to pump sand on the beach front in Carolina Beach and Kure Beach. Crews working for Weeks Marine, Incorporated completed the $21-million project. The Carolina Beach portion was completed earlier this year.
After lasting nearly four years longer than expected, Nags Head’s rebuilt beach is getting another shot of sand.
CARTERET COUNTY — More than seven months after Hurricane Florence, local governments are still awaiting the bulk of reimbursement funds for debris cleanup and other immediate recovery efforts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Houston, it was the petrochemical plants. In North Carolina, it was the hog farms. In both places, churning floodwaters caused by recent storms were turned into a toxic stew that endangered local water resources and public health.
KURE BEACH - A $17.4 M project that began earlier this year to pump sand on the beach front in Carolina Beach and Kure Beach is nearing completion.
SURF CITY, NC (WECT) - Work to rebuild sand dunes damaged during Hurricane Florence came to a stop in Surf City.
Washington is announcing a goal of retrofitting or removing all of its flood-prone buildings by 2050, the first major U.S. city to set such a policy. City sets goal for 2050 as threat from climate change worsens. Challenges include new housing, addressing federal buildings
After holding up nearly four years longer than expected, Nags Head’s rebuilt beach will get another shot of sand, with offshore dredging scheduled to start Wednesday.
WACHAPREAGUE, Va. — The tide is high, but this seaside town is holding on.
NORFOLK - Six new concepts to fight sea level rise and climate change will be coming to Hampton Roads after the state recently announced $1.5 million in grants to a half-dozen companies.
The Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) allows any state with a coastal management programs approved by NOAA to review all federal and federally permitted activities that have the potential to impact the state’s coastal resources. This “consistency review” process is a critical component of the CZMA, but the ANPR requests suggestions for altering this well-established process and proposes limiting the ability of states to defend their consistency determinations.
It’s official- there won’t be a trophy rockfish season in Virginia this spring. Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) has voted unanimously to enact an emergency closure because of worrisome new research about the striped bass population on the Bay.
A general permit for marsh sills, a type of “living shoreline,” is now available to people in coastal North Carolina who want to stabilize estuarine shorelines.
In 2018, sewer lines across Greensboro released more than 3.5 million gallons of untreated sewage onto roads and into waterways.
A “cool looking” act of nature is being credited with transforming beaches at the Outer Banks into something resembling a moonscape, including “unusually large sand pedestals.” Adding to the oddity: The pedestals featured wind-cut “light and dark patterns” that resembled layers of a cake.
On September 14, 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall on the North Carolina coast before idling in place for days. As it moved westward across the state at only 2-3 MPH, the sluggish storm saturated the Carolinas with an average 17.5” of rainfall—and close to 36” in some areas.
By a narrow 3-2 vote, Southern Shores Town Council at its April 2 meetings gave preliminary approval to limiting septic capacity for all new Southern Shores homes and capping the overnight occupancy for any vacation rental property at 14 persons.
In 2018 and again during the recent legislative session, the General Assembly passed significant legislation regarding the management of oysters (“Maryland General Assembly overrides Hogan’s veto of oyster sanctuaries bill,” April 8).
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company (GLDD) finished working eastward from the submerged pipeline landing at 8th Street on Saturday (April 6), and is now working westward from 8th Street, informs the Carteret County Shore Protection Office.
A new study of Virginia's barrier islands off the coast of the Eastern Shore provides a fundamental understanding of how barrier islands will change in the near future amid a warming climate, sea-level rise and storm events such as hurricanes and nor'easters.
NORFOLK, Va. – Norfolk District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a five-year services contract to U.S. Facilities Inc. for operations and maintenance of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway’s locks and bridges.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Renourishment to Sandbridge Beach and dunes are soon to come after an agreement was authorized to use of up to 2.2 million cubic yards of sand from federal waters.
Anapolis, MD – The efforts of the many partners of the Chesapeake Bay Program to restore the nation’s largest estuary continue to yield promising results. The partnership’s annual science-based snapshot, Bay Barometer: Health and Restoration in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed 2017 – 2018 reports encouraging signs of resilience throughout the ecosystem and continues to build upon our high standards of science and data by tracking new indicators of environmental health.
The fortunes of the Resource Institute could continue to dwindle, as the towns of Topsail Beach and Surf City are asking their lawmaker for tax dollars originally appropriated to the controversial nonprofit.
Flooding, the costliest and most common disaster in the United States, leaves no part of the country untouched: from nor’easters along the coast of Maine, to king tides in Florida, to overflowing rivers in Nebraska, to mudslides in California.
State environmental officials ruled Monday that Duke Energy must dig up all of the coal ash submerged near the Belews Creek Steam Station for disposal in a lined landfill or for possible recycling.
Beach engineer Chris Gibson expected some of the newly arrived sand to be pushed back out to sea during the spring northeaster season, but said it’s all a part of the symbiotic relationship between beach nourishment work and “Mother Nature."
It didn't take long for the county to announce they would be working with the Army Corps of Engineers to begin an emergency dredging project of the inlet.
BOGUE BANKS — The $20.1 million beach nourishment stalled a bit late last week because of bad weather and sea conditions, but it’s still on track for completion well ahead of schedule.
Well over half of the Chesapeake Bay still is polluted, but experts say water quality has improved significantly — and, in fact, is now the best they’ve ever measured.
Work under the Post Florence Renourishment project continues to progress eastward towards the Summer Winds (Indian Beach), informs the Carteret County Shore Protection Office.
Contractors will begin deploying equipment any day now and re-nourishment of the beach in Nags Head is expected to start by the end of April.
The Chesapeake Bay shoreline — rife with inlets, necks, and tributaries both large and small — stretches 11,885 miles, longer than the entire west coast of the U.S.
Visits to National Park System sites across the country were down in 2018 versus 2017, but the Cape Hatteras National Seashore was one of the notable exceptions of the park system’s 418 units, with the highest recorded visitation since 2003.
NORFOLK, VA - Can Virginia make money off sea level rise? The very idea sounds backwards — usually frequent flooding from bigger and more destructive storms is costly. Remember Hurricane Florence? One study showed a direct hit could have cost the region $5 billion of its gross domestic product in just three months.
WILMINGTON, N.C. – When the long-standing state ban was lifted on terminal groins, a handful of beach towns jumped at the chance to build a case for why a hardened erosion-control structure would be their best line of defense against losing sand.
As entire islands disappear in Chesapeake Bay, the oyster is enlisted as a first line of climate defense. In Sudden Spring: Stories of Adaptation in a Climate-Changed South, Rick Van Noy shows what communities are doing to become more climate-resilient and to survive environmental challenges. Here, he tours Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Virginia Beach, where entire islands are disappearing because of rising sea levels. He finds that, in the shadow of the nearby naval base, the best defense against the effects of climate change may come from an unexpected source: the humble oyster.
The Massachusetts Port Authority announced that $35 million has been secured to help fund the ongoing Boston Harbor Dredging Project. The project is approximately 30 percent complete, and this funding will enable the project to continue on schedule.
Copyright © 2019 CNT/ASPN
