THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 12, 1994 TAG: 9410120442
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WANCHESE LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
The next battle in the 24-year fight to build rock jetties around Oregon Inlet will not be political, financial or even regional.
It will be a rhetorical conflict - a war of words and facts.
Before asking Congress to appropriate millions of dollars for the controversial construction project, local and state leaders decided Tuesday that they have to convince environmentalists that the hardened structures will enhance - rather than harm - nature.
``We've got to broaden the entire scope of the Oregon Inlet jetties project,'' Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robert V. ``Bobby'' Owens Jr. told members of the Governor's Office at a Tuesday morning meeting. ``We've got to emphasize the recreational, transportational and environmental benefits this project will bring to the region. We need to change our focus from the fishing aspects.
``We need to sell this as an environmentally sound project.''
Wayne McDevitt agreed. Director of North Carolina's Inter-Governmental Relations Office and Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.'s right-hand man, McDevitt addressed about 15 appointed and elected officials at the Wanchese Seafood Industrial Park on Tuesday.
The group - which included the local Oregon Inlet Waterways Commission - met to set strategies for proceeding in pushing the jetty project through federal hoops.
``Our job in getting these jetties built will be so much easier if we can embrace the environmental community and they embrace us,'' McDevitt said. ``This is a very controversial issue in the national environmentalist circles. Probably one of their top three fights.
``We want to get to the point where we can ask Congress for federal funds,'' McDevitt said. ``We need to address the environmental concerns to do that.''
Engineers estimate that the two 1.5 mile-long jetties will cost about $97 million. Even if the project is completed, some dredging will have to continue to keep the channel clear. Environmentalists worry that hardening the constantly shifting inlet will harm beaches elsewhere on the Outer Banks.
``Our principle concern is that the jetties would increase erosion down-drift of their construction,'' Sierra Club spokesman Bill Holman said earlier this month. Based in Raleigh, Holman lobbies for the nation's oldest environmental conservation organization.
``We're afraid that Pea Island, which already has severe erosion problems, might face even more if the jetties are built,'' Holman said. ``We're also concerned that the jetties might not work - at all.''
McDevitt said such concerns are unfounded - and need to be dispelled. Besides keeping the inlet open, he said, jetties could actually build beach at Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. The rock structures also will help protect the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge over Oregon Inlet - and Hatteras Island's $100 million annual tourist economy.
``We've got to embrace, educate, and inform these folks,'' McDevitt said of environmentalists. ``We've got to move them away from active opposition to this project.''
Hunt's chief legal adviser, J. Bradley Wilson, agreed. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce ``Babbitt has good and valid reasons to oppose the jetties project,'' said Wilson. ``But there are also many good and solid reasons to build them. We just have to show the environmentalists that the reasons to build the jetties are better than the reasons against it,'' Wilson said.
In 1970, Congress authorized construction of two rock jetties on either end of Oregon Inlet. The primary route from the Outer Banks to the Atlantic Ocean, Oregon Inlet has shoaled so much during the past 50 years that sand had built up in the channel. Dozens of million-dollar fishing boats have sunk or been grounded. At least eight watermen have drowned.
Millions of dollars have been spent studying the jetties proposal. Dozens of environmental impact assessments, economic feasibility reports and other issues have been reviewed. In the meantime, the federal government spends more than $8 million a year dredging the channel to keep it passable.
Late last month, Hunt promised to personally travel to Washington to meet with the president and push the waterway stabilization project. The Northeastern North Carolina Economic Development Council earmarked $25,000 to update a four-year-old economic impact study on the jetties. And area leaders said the long-awaited project is beginning to gain momentum.
``We're further along than we've ever been with these jetties,'' McDevitt said Tuesday. ``At least we're coming with a united voice out of North Carolina now.
``You folks've been running this marathon for a long, long time,'' McDevitt told the local inlet officials. ``But we've got to continue to cross all of these hurdles - because we know we're going to get to the point where we'll really be able to sprint to the finish line one day.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
``We've got to broaden the entire scope of the Oregon Inlet jetties
project,'' Dare County Board of Commis-sioners Chairman Robert V.
``Bobby'' Owens Jr. told members of the Governor's Office at a
Tuesday morning meeting. The inlet is shown here from about 3,000
feet looking southeast.
by CNB