THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509170050
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OREGON INLET LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
With a 200-foot-long dredge and miles of spidery pipeline, a Maryland company is preparing to clear what local watermen call the East Coast's most dangerous inlet.
Workers at Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co. plan to begin pumping sand out of Oregon Inlet this week.
By Oct. 15, the company is scheduled to increase the channel's depth by up to five feet - to an average of 14 feet.
To do so, workers must remove 250,000 cubic yards of sediment from the ocean's floor - enough sand to fill 41,670 dump trucks.
That sand will be pumped up to three miles south of the inlet, onto a mile-long stretch of Pea Island beach. Department of Transportation officials hope the additional sediment will protect N.C. Route 12 from encroaching erosion. The project's $2.1 million price tag is funded entirely by federal tax dollars.
``Our contractor already is on site. He'll begin work as soon as that pipeline is completely installed. It depends on the weather, really,'' said Tom Bishop, an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers from his Wilmington office Friday. ``Rough seas and recent hurricanes have caused trouble out there for the past two weeks.''
The only outlet to the sea in the 140 miles between Cape Henry, in Virginia Beach, and Hatteras Inlet, Oregon Inlet lies between Nags Head and Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. It is the primary passage for commercial and recreational fishing boats based along the northern Outer Banks. But in recent years, the channel has shoaled so much that many deep-draw vessels have not been able to get to sea.
Since 1960, at least 25 lives and an equal number of boats have been lost at Oregon Inlet. This winter, watermen were only able to use the channel at high tide, during daylight hours, because its depth shallowed from 12 feet to an average of 10 feet. It has gotten even worse since then.
Sports charter boats based at the inlet have missed at least seven days of fishing in the past month because the inlet has been in such bad shape. The ocean and other weather-related factors were fine for fishing those days, Oregon Inlet Fishing Center Manager Satch Smith said. But the channel itself was just too dangerous to navigate.
``One lost day of fishing means this center and the charter boats here lose about $250,000 in gross sales,'' Smith said Friday. ``The bar has been so bad lately, waves sometimes break right over the boats. Dredging will certainly help the current situation. But it needs to be done on an annual basis.''
The Corps of Engineers did not dredge the inlet at all in 1994.
The channel was last cleared in August 1993. The previous summer, officials contracted with Great Lakes Dredge to remove 850,000 cubic yards of sand from the channel. That $2.9 million job represented the largest single dredging project ever to occur at Oregon Inlet.
Six months ago, Dare County commissioners requested emergency measures to clear the channel beneath the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge after commercial fishermen complained about the dangerous shoaling conditions.
But money will not be available for the dredge contract until Oct. 1, said Glenn Boone, the acting chief of operations at the Corps of Engineers' technical and support branch.
``We didn't have the funds to clear that inlet earlier. We couldn't have paid for this project,'' Boone said. ``We're using about $500,000 from the fiscal 1995 budget. But we had to postpone this work until the 1996 money became available in time to pay for the rest of it.''
Plans call for a 5,200-foot-long section of Oregon Inlet to be dredged 400 feet wide and at least 14 feet deep. Clearing will be done only on the east side of Bonner Bridge, Bishop said. A second, smaller, side-casting dredge is scheduled to deepen other areas of the inlet in late October.
``About 15 people will be working on the project,'' said Boone. ``The dredge uses a water pump to suction sediment out of the inlet, off the ocean's floor - just like a vacuum cleaner pulls dirt out of the carpets on your floor. The sand is then hydraulically pumped back onto the beach through a 30-inch-diameter pipeline. It's not a beach nourishment project. But the disposal area will be graded. And the beach should actually widen some.''
Robert Williams, who heads the Oregon Inlet and Waterways Commission, said the upcoming dredge project ``is really gonna help.''
``That inlet has been choked,'' Williams said Friday from his Manteo marine shop. ``Right now, Oregon Inlet is very, very treacherous. Two boats bumped bottom out there last week heading to sea. Then, they didn't know if they'd be able to get back in.
``It's wonderful that they're finally going to dredge out there,'' Williams said. ``We really need to keep that channel clear.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
DREW C. WILSON/Staff
The only outlet to the sea between Cape Henry and Hatteras Inlet,
Oregon Inlet lies between Nags Head and Pea Island National Wildlife
Refuge.
Map
STAFF
by CNB