Question about South Nags Head beaches

I am home owner in South Nags Head as well and it truly breaks my heart to see the peoples dreams fall in the ocean. In your recent response to Mr Edwards you referred to the amount of sand and other issues needed to nourish our PUBLIC BEACHES. Do your comments indicate that you do not fully support South Nags Head nourishment because we are the ones that need it most . Can you please clarify your position. Do you support the nourishment plans that have taken 7years to engineer and get approved by all the necessary parties or do want to start from scratch. Thanks for providing this forum and for answering our questions. It would seem that if funding is the only issue remaining we could find some way to put out the fire before it burns down any more homes and dreams.

I support the nourishment plan that has been developed for Nags Head as a local project, with counsel from Dr. Tim Kana. This plan provides approximately 10 years worth of sand (based on the actual erosion rates of a previous ten year period that includes Hurricane Isabel).

When we are successful in funding a nourishment project, it will be critical to monitor the erosion and compare it to our expectations. I mentioned South Nags Head as a problem area because its rate of erosion has historically been greater than three times the erosion rate in the northern end of Nags Head. It's important to note that about three times the amount of sand per linear foot is scheduled to be used in South Nags Head because it has about three times the erosion rate. After the project is done, we can judge the success or failure by how long the sand stays in the system. I think it is realistic to acknowledge that there may be some areas that it is not feasible to protect. We just don't have the actual information to make a good decision until we try nourishment as a solution. We also need to compare the cost of retreat in the problem areas with the cost of nourishment to make a rational decision. Just to be clear, I strongly believe that nourishment is our best option, we need to have a backup plan for strategic retreat, and sandbags are the worst possible scenario, since they destroy the public beach.

I hope this provides the clarification you requested. Please feel free to follow up with additonal questions or helpful information.