The rising tide: Who will lead?

An important conversation took place tonight at the NC Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill. Good people coming together to do good work to preserve one of the world’s most cherished resources: North Carolina’s 5000 miles of beach front and estuarine shoreline.

In case you haven't been paying attention, the coast of North Carolina is a big deal. According to Stanley Riggs, the international expert in coastal management in the Geology Department at ECU, roughly $2.25 billion in direct dollars related coastal tourism flow into our state every year. That money - and our beaches themselves - are at risk.

Why? Because the sea level is rising. Riggs says that by 2025, if not sooner, we will have a tourist industry that’s swirling down the toilet because of stranded houses, septic tanks, demolished roads, gas leaks, and worse ... the result of storms and hurricanes that are absolutely certain to hit our shores. Twenty thousand years ago, the North Carolina shoreline was 60 miles out to sea. The level has risen 140 feet in that time. It's getting higher ... and we're seeing the impacts every day.

Right now, more than 120 miles of beachfront are angling for sand nourishment. More than 300 sand-bagged buildings are already in the ocean. Because of past nourishment activities and the misguided use of terminal groins, there’s no more sand out there for naturally nourishing the beach. We're in a tail-spin, and every action we take to fight the ocean makes things worse.

Most of the outer banks disappeared around a thousand years ago. They will disappear again. The only questions are how much money we will spend and how much environmental damage we will do in the meantime?

Senator Basnight, for all his environmental credentials, has flip-flopped on the issue, pressured by wealthy constituents to change his tune and support another terminal groin "experiment." The legislation he is backing is tantamount to a war against the ocean, built on lies just as George Bush's war in Iraq was built on lies. Bush used falsified intelligence to persuade Congress to go along with his imperialist venture. Basnight's legislation uses falsified science to make terminal groins seem harmless and useful. They are not. Terminal groins do not perform as advertised. Their down-coast unintended consequences should be fought with every weapon available to those who value North Carolina's environment and public beaches.

Fortunately, Speaker Hackney appears to oppose the legislation, which has been referred to at least three House committees. We can only hope it never sees the light of day.

In the meantime, the budget crisis presents a unique opportunity for North Carolina to get its act together. But who will lead? Perhaps Governor Perdue will step up and fulfill her promise as an environmental governor. For starters, it won't cost a thing. She could simply follow Governor Hunt's example and convene a Coastal Futures Task Force to take a comprehensive look at how the natural beaches of North Carolina can be preserved for future generations. Getting the right group of scientists, economists, property owners, insurers, etc., would be a welcome break from the ad hoc approaches that we've seen again and again in recent years. We can't count on Joe Hackney to stop terminal groins forever.

Governor? No one else is taking this problem seriously. Maybe it's time for you to do just that. Because you can be sure of one thing: We're going to have hurricanes on your watch ... and someone is going to have to make decisions about how we respond in the aftermath. Will those decisions be ineffective band-aids ... or will they be forward-looking solutions informed by reality?

What we are currently doing on the coast is insane. Highway maintenance at Pea Island alone has cost more than $10 million over the past 20 years. And that's just a drop in the bucket compared to what we're looking at with increase storm activity and rising sea levels.

Coastal Federation
Audubon NC
NC Conservation Network
Sierra Club NC
Southern Environmental Law Center