BEACHES OR BEDROOMS?
By JEFF SELINGO, Wilmington Morning Star
Published: 08/25/96
Lawsuits, possible loss of renourishment funds put pressure on N.C.'s
seawall ban
WILMINGTON, N.C. -- It's called Newjerseyization, and it's spreading. The label
was coined by coastal geologists to describe what happened to the beaches in the Garden
State. They washed away in front of walls built years ago to protect beachfront property.
In Virginia, Sandbridge no longer has a beach even at low tide. Bulkheads built
by residents for more than $38,000 each have fallen into the water at least twice since
1988.
Hawaii could soon lose the distinction of having the country's top-rated place
for sun and fun. Lanikai Beach homeowners are building bulkheads to protect their
million-dollar mansions on the Oahu Island beach that typically surfs atop the annual list
of best beaches.
In the decades to come, flocking to the country's best beaches will become more
``like looking at the bones of an animal'' because some won't exist anymore, predicts
University of Maryland geologist Stephen Leatherman, author of the annual best-beach list.
That's what North Carolina coastal officials are trying to prevent in their
difficult struggle to maintain an 11-year-old ban on hard structures on the beach.
But with federal money to replenish sand eroding as quickly as the Tar Heel
coast, supporters of the ban worry that influential coastal landowners will pressure state
officials into weakening the rule.
Desperate property owners trying to save their homes have pitched everything
from ``inlet migration barriers'' that are nothing more than seawalls to ``experimental
sand tubes.''
In the past six months, state regulators have rejected two different structures
proposed by Shell Island homeowners to save their nine-story resort, which hangs
perilously above approaching Mason Inlet at the north end of Wrightsville Beach.
Some have a difficult time understanding why state officials would allow a $22
million resort to slip into the Atlantic Ocean.
The answer: Approving one hardened structure would open the floodgates to other
requests, state regulators say.
Without the ban, they believe, the waves would lap against the manmade barriers
at high tide, leaving little room for sun lovers and damaging the state's $9 billion
tourism industry.
``We have to hold the line or else we're going to lose it all,'' said Gene
Tomlinson, chairman of the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission and an ardent supporter of
the rule.
Frustrated by the coastal commission's steadfast support of the ban, coastal
homeowners are beginning to take their case to the courts. There, judges have tended to
rule in favor of property owners and against the government.
Beaches or bedrooms?
For decades, the two sides peacefully coexisted, as going to the beach - and
building there - became part of the American culture. Now, more than 50 percent of the
U.S. population lives within 50 miles of the shore, on about 11 percent of the nation's
land. Helped by needed infrastructure like roads and sewer lines and by federally
subsidized flood insurance, the post-World War II expansion brought a crush of
construction that coastal geologists say was unwise.
Today, beach-related tourism is a $1.3 trillion industry. But it has come at a
tremendous cost to taxpayers to keep up the beaches. Mother Nature doesn't stand still.
Build a house, a boardwalk or even a seawall, and you have created a barrier to the
shoreline's natural movement.
In many coastal communities today, those barriers have become the beachfront,
creating the tug-of-war between public and private interests.
Understanding the economic and recreational worth of wide beaches, the public
wants to preserve the strand. But property owners want to protect their investment, even
at the risk of losing the beach.
No one has a solution to please both sides.
``It comes down to beaches or bedrooms,'' Dr. Leatherman said. Coastal
homeowners say they only want the right every other property owner has - to protect their
investment. Homeowners build fences to guard their property; why can't they build seawalls
to protect theirs?
``We were willing to take this risk when we built here, so let us help save that
risk,'' said Justin Hall, who owns rental property on North Topsail Beach. ``It's our
property.''
But advocates of the seawall ban say property owners everywhere are allowed to
protect or enhance their property only if it doesn't hurt neighbors. That's why most
communities have zoning laws, they argue.
``It's like speeding and having a wreck,'' said Roger Schecter, director of the
N.C. Division of Coastal Management. ``It's your responsibility to other drivers to
maintain a safe speed.''
Most coastal homeowners fail to see the larger picture - that the entire coast
is one large natural system of moving sand - when arguing that they need a hard structure
to protect a couple of hundred feet of beachfront.
``It's tunnel vision,'' said Bob Martin, an economic geologist at the University
of Texas at Austin. ``They're not looking at the cumulative effects, like how it impacts
someone miles away.''
Laws and water close in
Seawalls alone don't cause erosion. The coastline is already constantly moving,
coastal geologists and engineers agree.
Southeastern North Carolina is starving for sand. The contour of the coast makes
us more likely to have storms that steal sand from the beach and put less back. Coastal
geologists say the barrier islands - such as Pleasure Island, Wrightsville Beach and
Topsail Island - will continue to roll back until they fuse with the mainland.
In some places, that has already happened. A barrier island once existed off the
northern end of Carolina Beach, said Bill Cleary, an earth sciences professor at the
University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Erosion is amplified on the string of barrier islands by the dynamic movement of
inlets between the narrow strips of land.
Inlets remain fairly steady when large volumes of water are exchanged between
the sound and the ocean. But locally, inlets are shallow and sound areas blocked, leading
to dramatic movement. Mason Inlet, for example, moved more than 1,800 feet between 1984
and 1995 and now threatens to undermine the Shell Island Resort Hotel less than 200 feet
away.
And shifting inlets affect more than just the island tips bordering them.
``Inlets wag like the tail of a dog, affecting a large part of the shoreline on
both sides,'' Dr. Cleary said.
For decades, the federal government annually pumped $75 million into replacing
lost beach sand. Proponents say the projects save the government money in storm damage and
benefit the overall economy.
Critics say replacing sand only encourages more development and in some places
fails. Two days after a beach nourishment project was completed in Ocean City, Md. - at a
cost of more than $50 million - a storm hit the tourist resort, requiring another $10.8
million in sand.
Now, in an era of deficit reduction, many Washington lawmakers are looking at
that money as a subsidy to wealthy homeowners and tourist-rich beach towns.
In North Carolina, tough state coastal laws have kept the ocean at bay for many
homeowners. Rules passed in 1979 require buildings to be set certain distances from the
ocean or beach vegetation. The distances, referred to as setbacks, are 30 times the
average annual erosion rate.
About 39 percent of the Tar Heel coast is losing more than three feet a year, an
increase of 4 percent since the state last did an erosion survey in 1986. Based on the
current setback rules, there is a 97 percent chance that a structure built today will be
threatened in its 70-year lifetime, said Spencer Rogers, a coastal geologist with N.C. Sea
Grant, a state-federal research group.
So eventually, even those buildings that met the state rules are in trouble.
As the tide line advances, state officials fear that coastal homeowners
threatened by erosion will tell the courts they have no choice but to build a seawall.
Already the courts have agreed. In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court said that states
cannot prohibit coastal building without compensating the property owner.
Fooling with Mother Nature
Not all coastal geologists are against hard structures. In some very special
cases, a wall could protect property without harming the nearby shoreline.
Last year, when Bald Head Island applied for sand tubes, village officials said
their situation was unique because the island doesn't feed sand to any other beach. The
Coastal Resources Commission approved the project.
But if hardening projects don't have an impact on neighbors, they do have one on
coastal policy, Dr. Leatherman said.
``It opens Pandora's Box,'' Dr. Leatherman said. ``You let one person do it,
everyone wants to do it.''
Opening the box is what coastal preservation groups feared after state
regulators approved the Bald Head Island tubes.
So far, the commission hasn't been flooded with similar requests, but wait, warn
state officials.
``I expect more serious challenges in the next three to four years,'' Mr.
Schecter said.
To homeowners looking out their window at the approaching sea, a concrete wall
or tons of rock is as good as building more land.
Engineers, typically paid for by homeowners supporting hardened structures, say
seawalls don't contribute to the widening or narrowing of the beach because that's
something that happens anyway.
Coastal geologists disagree.
Besides establishing the back boundary of a moving beach, seawalls also slow the
natural movement of sand down the beach. Sand moves in different directions - drifting
southward along the shore, moving off shore in storms and coming back in waves. But when
sand moving south comes to an eroding beach in front of a wall, the sand is transported
offshore and out of the system, amplifying erosion in nearby areas.
``Anytime you interrupt natural movement of sand, you're going to have
problems,'' Dr. Cleary said.
Other critics, like Duke University professor Orrin Pilkey, have their own
reasons to oppose seawalls.
``They're ugly,'' Dr. Pilkey said. ``Everyone loves a beautiful unrestricted
beach.''
What to do?
The best solution, one Dr. Pilkey has advocated for years, is retreat - move
away from the coast and stop building near the water.
For that, the Duke professor has been criticized for not living in the ``real
world.''
Another controversial solution is relocation. Moving homes was once advocated by
the federal government when its flood insurance program paid homeowners to relocate,
banking on saving money in the long run by avoiding more costly claims later. But that
program, known as Upton-Jones, ended last year.
Coastal lawmakers still hope to save beach renourishment funds from President
Clinton's budget ax. The House and Senate must hammer out an agreement between two pieces
of legislation they passed this summer that would continue the Army Corps of Engineers
role in protecting beaches.
Many lawmakers, especially from landlocked states, have little sympathy for
people who build on eroding beaches and towns that collect taxes from tourists.
Using money collected from wealthy homeowners and tourists, the towns should pay
for their own beach renourishment, federal officials say.
But those lawmakers don't see the ``national significance'' of projects that
help the No. 1 tourist destination in the country, said Howard Marlowe, a Washington
lobbyist for a coalition of coastal states.
``We repave roads. Why not replace sand?'' Mr. Marlowe said. ``Public beaches
are the one place where all economic classes meet.''
But, like roadbuilding, the cost of beach renourishment is rising.
Sand is a depleting resource as it moves further offshore, and what used to cost
27 cents a cubic meter now could cost upwards of $5 a cubic meter.
Plans to pour 5 million cubic yards of sand on 25 miles of Myrtle Beach this
fall will cost $54 million, 65 percent of which is paid for by the federal taxpayers.
Running out of options, private property owners and coastal homeowner groups say
they'll again fight coastal rules all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court as ``takings''
cases. Such cases have become popular recently as landowners fight tougher environmental
laws by demanding compensation for their property. And courts recently have agreed with
property owners.
``We feel the rule is a good rule, but we want to keep it out of court because
we're afraid we'll lose,'' said Alison Davis, spokesman for the N.C. Division of Coastal
Management.
As more people move to the coast and the coast moves closer to the people on a
collision course, geologists say states have little choice but to protect beaches for the
public and as a buffer against storms.
``You can't say the state is taking your property,'' Dr. Leatherman said. ``It's
God, and even a court can't stop that.''
Other Related Links:
Agency
Cites Growing Danger of Erosion Along U.S. Coasts
- In a report to Congress, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency said yesterday that a quarter or
more of houses within 500 feet of the United
States coast may be lost to erosion in the next 60
years, putting intolerable strain on the federal
Flood Insurance Program...
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