DATE: Wednesday, August 27, 1997            TAG: 9708270576

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 

SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RALEIGH                           LENGTH:   81 lines

OREGON INLET FUNDING LEFT OUT OF STATE BUDGET

A budget provision that was intended to forestall closure of beleaguered Oregon Inlet did not make it into the final state budget bill Tuesday, a spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, D-Dare, said.

The measure, which would have provided $400,000 toward an Oregon Inlet stabilization project, was killed by the House of Representatives after the Republican-controlled body refused to include the appropriation in the state spending plan.

``It's a dead issue because the (state budget) bill is done,'' Basnight's legal counsel, Norma Ware, said. ``The House simply would not agree to include it. They were absolutely opposed to it in committee.''

The bill, however, was put in cold storage rather than tossed completely. Ware said the provision was added to study legislation - which will allow the matter to be revived next summer. Otherwise, Ware said, the measure could not come up again for another two years.

``That makes it eligible for consideration in the short session if there would be a bill introduced in the budget bill,'' Ware said.

Dare County officials contend that a rock groin, or shortened jetty, on the north side of the inlet would prevent it from shoaling until more expensive and larger jetties can be built. The channel is the only passage to the Atlantic between Hatteras and Virginia. Officials and watermen say it is narrowing rapidly and would create economic hardship and dangerous conditions if it closed.

Shortly after Basnight inserted the special provision in the Senate version of the budget in May, environmentalists and coastal engineers voiced strong opposition.

Half of the proposed $400,000 funding for the project was for design and planning of a proposed $21 million, half-mile terminal groin on the north side of the inlet. The other half was to be used for engineering and legal staff to condemn federal land lining the inlet.

``The thing that caused the most problem for this proposal was the judicial review provision,'' said Molly Diggins, state director of the North Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club.

The provision ordered issuing construction permits and did not allow state agencies and courts to accept challenges.``I don't think people realized the impact until it started getting media attention'' after the Senate included it in its budget, Diggins said.

Enviromentalists also rejected the need for the groin in the first place. Nineteen representatives from state and national organizations signed opposition letters in May addressed to Speaker of the House Harold Brubaker.

``The experts on Oregon Inlet are coastal geologists,'' Diggins said. ``And the fact that not one coastal geologist could confirm that the inlet is closing made legislators wary of putting money in a solution that the experts aren't supporting.''

But Bob Peele, coordinator for the Dare County Oregon Inlet Waterways Commission, said the emergency provision was caught in a web of political power plays.

``I thought we were through with the horse trading,'' he said. ``I thought we had made the point strong enough that they realized how important it was.''

The commission has told officials that the channel has lost more than 100 feet on both sides since last December and that the shoaling rate has escalated in the last two years.

``It seems like they knew what they were doing in the very beginning,'' Peele said of the House's rejection of the measure.

Despite inaction on the special provision, Peele said that he expects his contract with the state to be renewed. He said he was told Tuesday that money for his position ``has been found.'' Peele contracted with the state commerce department for nine months in May 1996 to act as inlet liaison. He was paid $39,996. His contract was later renewed for six months and expired Aug. 14.

Dare County Republican Party Chairman George Embrey said he was disappointed that the Oregon Inlet bill was not restored in budget conferences.

``Senator Basnight did not even insist that the Oregon Inlet issue be brought up to the highest level in the North Carolina House and Senate negotiations, where he would have been personally involved,'' Embrey said in a prepared statement. ``We urge Governor Hunt to take emergency action without waiting for the legislature.''

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues to dredge Oregon Inlet at an average annual cost of $5.3 million, said Corps spokesman Homer Perkins. A $750,000 study updating the economic impact and cost estimate of a proposed Oregon Inlet jetty project will be released in January 1998. Earlier projections estimated that two mile-long jetties would cost about $100 million.

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