DATE: Thursday, March 20, 1997              TAG: 9703200332

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: MURFREESBORO                      LENGTH:   70 lines

ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP IS ASKED TO TACKLE INLET SILTING PROBLEM

With several million dollars worth of land-based good works already in progress, the Northeast Economic Partnership was asked Wednesday to help solve the silting problem at Oregon Inlet.

Ray Hollowell, a Dare County member of the pump-priming panel, distributed a petition from commercial fishing interests urging the Economic Partnership to help break the deadlock that has prevented construction of the Oregon Inlet jetties.

For more than 20 years the Army Corps of Engineers and virtually all of the East Coast commercial fishing interests that use the unjettied ocean passage through the Outer Banks have fought environmental opposition to the mile-long breakwaters.

The legal maneuver that still blocks the jetties came during the Bush administration when the Secretary of the Interior refused to allow the engineers to anchor the jetties to the north and south shores of Oregon Inlet. The Interior Department has control of the beaches where the breakwaters would end.

The petition to the Economic Partners, who held their March meeting Wednesday at Chowan College in Murfreesboro, was signed by Willie R. Etheridge Jr., of Wanchese, who is president of the Oregon Inlet Users Association.

Etheridge, in a note to Jimmy Dixon, the Pasquotank County commissioner who is chairman of the Northeast Economic Development Partnership, outlined several new legal moves that he said would allow the engineers to build on the north and south shores of the frequently tumultuous inlet.In a separate petition to Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., who has in the past supported the commercial fishermen who use the inlet, Etheridge urged the governor to:

`` . . . obtain the lands necessary for the Oregon Inlet stabilization project which should include invoking the State's rights of condemnation to protect its transportation corridor within the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.''

Etheridge also urged Hunt to tell the state Department of Transportation to ``immediately begin on an emergency basis the construction of a north terminal groin as already designated by the Corps of Engineers as the beginning of the north jetty at Oregon Inlet.''

The south side of Oregon Inlet is already protected by a groin built by the Transportation Department to cut down erosion that threatened the concrete pilings that support the Oregon Inlet bridge that carries state route 12 to Hatteras Island.

Dixon distributed Etheridge's petition and said the partners would study the Oregon Inlet files between now and the April meeting.

Only George ``Buffy'' Warner, a Partner from Ocracoke, commented on the proposal to rejuvenate the Oregon Inlet jetty proposal.

``I'm not sure it's such a good idea,'' Warner said.

In the letter to Dixon and the economic partnership, Etheridge said ``stabilization of Oregon Inlet has been documented and redocumented to generate many millions of additional dollars in northeastern North Carolina.''

Meanwhile, only one of the 15 members of the economic partnership was missing when the meeting convened in the President's Dining Room at Chowan College. Many of the partners had to drive more than 100-miles through pouring rain to reach Murfreesboro.

Dixon, at last month's meeting, announced that consistently tardy or absent members would be identified in letters to their sponsors in state government.

Only Troy Mayo, from Hyde County didn't show up, Dixon said. Mayo reportedly notified the Partners several days ago that he had a previous engagement.

In other business, the Partners decided to hire Russell Twiford's law firm to represent the pump-primers. Twiford is a prominent North Carolina attorney with offices in Elizabeth City and Manteo. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic

OREGON INLET JETTIES

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]

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