New study suggests ways to preserve NC 12 in Ocracoke

By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on September 11, 2025

By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice

As the ocean continues to overwash the north end of Ocracoke Island making, access to the Ocracoke Ferry Dock increasingly difficult and expensive, a study produced by academics from UNC Chapel Hill, NC State, ECU and Duke with input from elected officials and federal and state employees was presented at the Ocracoke Community Center on Sept. 10. The room was filled with about 60 audience members.

A key finding of the study concluded that the current strategy of attempting to stabilize the shoreline with sand dunes will inevitably lead to a narrowing, and ultimate drowning of the north end of Ocracoke. However, if the natural process of allowing ocean overwash to occur is allowed, the north end of the island will likely move landward and stay above sea level.

In introductory remarks, Superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore Dave Hallac said, “This has been a super collaborative project. I really want to thank the North Carolina Ferry Division, Highway Division, Hyde County and Tideland Electric Membership Cooperative. Everybody had a hand in saying what was important to them, what their questions were, the alternatives they thought were important to examine.”

Presented by Dr. Laura Moore, Associate Chair of Research at the UNC Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, and Dr. Katherine Anarde, Assistant Professor in the NC State Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, the study looked at three strategies for maintaining a transportation corridor from the Ocracoke ferry dock on the north end of the island to the village of Ocracoke.

The three strategies included the current efforts to stabilize the shoreline and hold the ocean back, implementing beach nourishment, and allowing the natural barrier island processes to take place. The models showed results over 25, 50 and 100-year periods, and the model that was used—known as CASCADE—has been tested against historic trends and shown to be remarkably accurate, according to information provided by Anarde.

Moore, speaking first, described the project as a tool “to evaluate the effects of different possible management strategies on the Ocracoke landscape.”

The study did not make recommendations, but it presented information that policy makers could use in understanding “the connections between the short-term decisions that we need to make to manage our coastal areas and the outcomes which will, we hope, support the process here at Ocracoke, but also in other areas throughout the Outer Banks,” Moore said.

The models showed that over an extended period of time, the current strategy of building and rebuilding dunes will fail. The failure, however, is not because the ocean will continue to overwash to road. But as noted by the presenters, because sea level (SLR) rise occurs on the soundside as well as the ocean, the island, north of the Pony Pens, will continue to narrow until there will no longer be enough land to support a road.

“The backside is drowning from sea level rise, and the island is narrower and narrower,” was Anarde’s description.

Moore pointed out that barrier islands are created by SLR. “Sea level has been slowly rising for the last many millennia,” she said. “It is actually the process of storms taking sand from the shore in the front of an island and putting it on top of the island that created the [barrier] islands in the first place.”

Although SLR is occurring at rates faster than have ever been recorded, the rising ocean waters are not the primary reason for the frequent flooding of the road, Moore explained. She told the audience that by stopping the natural process of overwash in an attempt to protect infrastructure, “we’re starving the landscape behind the infrastructure of the sand that’s needed to build elevation and keep up with the [rising] sea level.”

In the modeling, the only scenario that would create enough land mass to support a road would be to allow the natural process of overwash to occur. “This transfer of sand from the front to the top and the back side of islands is a critical process that allows natural barrier islands to keep up with sea level rise on developed barrier islands,” Moore said.

In 50 years, according to the study, the status quo model of stabilizing the shoreline sections of the north end where the road now exists could cause it to narrow to the point that it would not be able to support a road. It would be near-constantly flooded much sooner.  Conversely, without maintenance of the road the island would migrate somewhat to the west but remain above sea level.

The modeling for beach nourishment showed that soundside inundation would narrow the island to the point where a road could not be sustained over time. However, the modeling suggested for at least 10 to 20 years, the island would be wide enough to support a road.

The modeling for the nourishment alternative was based on maintaining a consistent beach width and did not use the typical periodic three-to-five year nourishment cycles that occur on northern Dare County beaches.

“Whenever the beach gets narrower than 30 meters, the model will build it back out. And so a beach width of 30 meters is maintained,” Anarde explained.

During a question and answer session at the meeting, someone asked, “If we’re saying, ‘what do we got to do to get through the next 10 years while we develop all these long-term plans,’ does this not say beach nourishment is more effective than the status quo?”

Anarde noted the study as presented looked at long-term projections, but added that “there’s another step after this that could be looked at, which addresses your question. What if you nourish for 10 years…That’s something that we would need to look at.”

After the presentation, Dr. Reide Corbett, Dean of the ECU Coastal Studies Institute Campus, told the Voice that using beach nourishment to develop a long-term solution had been done at the S Curves just north of Rodanthe while plans for the Jug Handle Bridge were developed.

Asked if nourishing at the S Curves was a valid comparison, Corbett said, “We have to think about what the processes, the drivers, are in Ocracoke to see if it is viable. Does it buy you enough time to think it through? Is it worth the investment?”

A woman at the Sept. 10 event who identified herself as a resident of Raleigh asked, “What [support] can we get from our [state] representatives.?”

Representative Keith Kidwell (R), who represents Hyde County, was asked to respond. After saying, “I think we need to have a presentation in Raleigh on this,” he added that, “We also need to look at how we’re going to address the situation, because what I’m hearing here today is there’s virtually no hope.”

Kidwell’s answer produced a strong response from Anarde.

“I would argue that this is not hopeless, that knowledge is power, and that through exercises like this and conversations like this, we start to understand what are the ingredients that are changing our landscape, and what are things that we’re doing that are counterproductive,” she said.