. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. 10m the Haiboi By Caria B. Burgess When the Army Corps of Engineers offered the people of Atlantic Beach about 5 million cubic yards of free sand, who were they to look a gift horse in the mouth? The Morehead City harbor needed deepening and a nearby dredge disposal island would soon be filled up. The corps needed to get rid of the sand, and the town didn't mind having it. True, the annual rate of erosion along this portion of Bogue Banks is below the state average of 2 to 3 feet per year. But with an
. Coast watch. Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology. 10m the Haiboi By Caria B. Burgess When the Army Corps of Engineers offered the people of Atlantic Beach about 5 million cubic yards of free sand, who were they to look a gift horse in the mouth? The Morehead City harbor needed deepening and a nearby dredge disposal island would soon be filled up. The corps needed to get rid of the sand, and the town didn't mind having it. True, the annual rate of erosion along this portion of Bogue Banks is below the state average of 2 to 3 feet per year. But with an estimated 90 percent of shorelines characterized as eroding, how could an additional buffer of storm protection and a wider beach hurt? The project began in mid-October, over eleventh-hour objections by the Marine Fisheries Commission. Local fishermen were alarmed by a university researcher's warning that the material piled onto the intertidal beach would bury mole crabs and coquina clams, which are food for such commercial and recreational species as pompano, sea mullet and juvenile flounder. The commission asked that the project be delayed until December to lessen the impact on fall fishing and to keep from interfering with a study it was conducting on the impacts of commercial stop-net mullet fishing on recreational catches. But with the contracts let with private dredging companies and the mechanical equipment set to begin, the cost of postponing the project would have. Dredge spoil disposal setup at The Circle. exceeded $190,000 a day, says Atlantic Beach Town Planner Bruce Payne. The corps had a small window of opportunity in which to work, says Payne, having to dance around fall fishing season and still be done before spring turtle nesting and tourist season. And regardless of the timing, Payne says the benefits of the beach fill — which would have cost the town about $20 million to initiate on its own — outweighed any cost to fishermen. After all, the sou
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