While Homes Fall Into Sea, Senators Introduce a Bill That Could Make It Worse

North Carolina’s world-renowned natural ocean beaches and barrier islands are under attack. A group of coastal Republican Senators has filed legislation which would repeal North Carolina’s decades-long prohibition against “hardening” oceanfront beaches with seawalls, jetties, groins and other hard structures.

“Repealing our state’s ban on ‘beach hardening’ would turn our incomparable Outer Banks into another cheap knockoff of the jetty-riddled Jersey Shore,” said NCLCV Executive Director Carrie Clark. “We made a smart move over forty years ago to keep our beautiful sandy beaches natural for our shore birds and sea creatures to live and our people to love and enjoy. Today those natural beaches and barrier islands fuel a tourism economy that turns neighboring states green with envy. Losing those natural jewels now would be the dumbest move imaginable, environmentally and economically.”

“We’ve prohibited hardened shoreline structures, which include everything from sea walls, groins to jetties, since the early 1980s and really that’s because the science and experience have shown that they worsen erosion and damage the neighboring beaches,” said Kerri Allen of the NC Coastal Federation (NCCF). “We’ve long been viewed as a national leader in coastal management because of this decision.” 

The proposed legislation, Senate Bill 1009 (Repeal Hardened Structure Ban), would reverse the ban on new beach hardening structures (calling them “erosion control structures”), and instead direct the Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) to propose rules for regulating them. Those rules would require consideration of property supposedly protected by the structures, as well as “mitigation” measures to limit adverse impacts. 

Hardened Structures, Bandaid Over Bullet Wound

Coastal geologists and authors like North Carolina’s own Stanley Riggs and Orrin Pilkey have extensively documented and explained the processes at work at the sea/land interface along sandy barrier islands like North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Case studies confirm the damage from hardened structures as attempts for erosion control. 

Additionally, structures like rocky groins and jetties which extend out into or beyond the wave zone don’t add more sand to the oceanfront system. They just catch sand moving along the beachfront in longshore currents, building it up temporarily in front of some structures while starving the sandy beach on the down-current side of the structure, worsening erosion there. 

Structures like seawalls which run along the shore in front of buildings also don’t stop the beach from receding after storms or longer term as sea level rises. The beach simply shrinks and ultimately disappears, leaving a building sitting for a while longer behind a wall battered and ultimately undermined by direct wave action. Meanwhile, the beach is gone, and all its environmental, recreational, and economic value has gone with it.

Better Options

North Carolina does not need to resort to ineffective hardened structures when addressing coastal erosion. Instead, we can support the natural role of valuable ecosystems by investing in the conservation and expansion of marshes, native plants, and oyster reefs which diffuse wave energy and provide structure for sediment retention. These solutions not only work, they benefit the broader coastal environment.

Take Action!

Concerned citizens who love North Carolina’s sandy beaches and barrier islands can help save this unique natural resource for all of us today and generations to come. Contact your legislators now and ask them to help save our shore!