Wednesday, August 19, 2026
By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on November 9, 2025
Fourteen houses have fallen into the Atlantic Ocean on the north end of Buxton since the end of summer, and more will fall this winter said Brian Harris, President of the Buxton Civic Association.
“I think we’re halfway there. It’s going to be upward of 30,” he told the Voice.
The houses are a combination of second homes and investment properties. The most recently built house was completed in 2014 according to Dare County GIS, but most of them have been in place for more than 30 years, at a time when residents and property owners have told the Voice the beach was 100 or 150 yards wide.
At that time, there were three groins providing some protection for the north end of the village. Constructed in 1969 to protect the Naval base that occupied the land just to the north of Hatteras Lighthouse, the groins required constant maintenance, and after the lighthouse was moved 2,900 feet inland in 1999, maintenance on the groins stopped.
There has been a ban on constructing hardened structures to control beach erosion in place since the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) went into effect in 1985—and no attempt has been made to maintain the groins since that 1999 date. Although a 2012 law allowed four terminal groins to be built for inlet protection, the ban on hardened structures to control beach erosion remains in place.
There is an exception, however, allowing a groin that is less than 50 percent damaged to be repaired and Coastal Science and Engineering (CSE) engineers examined the southernmost groin, finding that although significantly damaged, it was still more than 50 percent intact.
Now Dare County is hoping that as part of an estimated $45 million shoreline preservation project, the groin will be repaired and hold sand in place on the north end of the village.
“We’re building a groin,” Dare County Manager Bobby Outten said. “Obviously, nothing’s been done there for a long time, and so you’ve got to do the work to get the permit. The key is it’s a repair, and therefore it’s exempt from the hardened structure ban.”
The project includes beach nourishment and groin repair. That area of Dare County just north of the Point where Buxton is located has been nourished twice in the past seven years, in 2018 and in 2022. Originally scheduled for 2027, Outten told the Dare County Commissioners last year that “erosion has occurred quicker in Buxton than we anticipated,” as reported by the Voice.
“The whole project down there has been estimated to be at $45 million, of which $5 million or so is the groin part of it, but we haven’t bid [the] final design yet,” Outten said.
Because the design of the project, permitting and the cost have not yet been finalized.
“I can’t tell you it’ll be March or May or June or whatever, but it will be as quickly as we can get them out there in the spring and as quickly as they can safely do it without stopping,” Outten said.
The design and permitting process is being handled by CSE. The beach nourishment and groin construction will be permitted separately, with permits issued by the North Carolina Department of Coastal Management (DCM). The National Park Service has also “received a special use application from Dare County to remove and replace the southernmost groin within Cape Hatteras National Seashore,” according to the CHNS website.
The Navy built the original three groins in the hope they would trap sand on the updrift or north side of the structures and widen and stabilize the beach. And a 1973 Buxton Beach Nourishment Project report written for Cape Hatteras National Seashore found that the groins and an initial beach nourishment for the 1973 project did not provide long-term protection for the shoreline. A key finding was that just after three years, only 10% of the sand used to nourish the Buxton beach would be left.
In the 1973 report, the authors described a consistent concern about the effectiveness of groins. The beach on the downdrift side of a groin is often starved for sand and scoured, creating an embayment, the study noted.
Interviewed by the Voice, Reide Corbett, Dean of the ECU Coastal Studies Institute Campus, expressed skepticism about the pending preservation project.
“By adding that groin to this project, you will likely be able to hold more sand for a little bit longer. Nobody knows exactly how long, and some of that’s going to depend on storms…and what the succession rate [of the storms] is,” he said. “Nobody knows the future. But look at the last two nourishment projects. They were slated for four to five years. Neither of them made it.”
Corbett noted that to date “there’s been no study to suggest whether it will or will not impact erosion downdrift of that groin…The shorelines during the 70s, 80s and 90s, they were retreating. The groins were there. Those shorelines in the same location were retreating an average of 10 to 15 feet per year,” he said.
Corbett also said that a discussion about Outer Banks community priorities would be important in deciding what steps to take in particularly vulnerable areas like Buxton.
“We need to make a decision on what it is we are protecting…and what’s the purpose. Is it that we want to protect those homes, or do we want to protect the recreation beach that we really enjoy? Do we want to protect the tourism industry that makes most of these villages possible,” he asked.
If the decision is to try to protect homes in an environment like the north end of Buxton, “the fact is, you might not have a tourism industry in another five years. People will be sick of going to a beach that doesn’t exist. It doesn’t have any width, it’s littered with septic systems, debris, wood, [and] nails, because that’s what it’s going to be,” he said.
Outten emphasized that the purpose for nourishment is to protect infrastructure.
“The primary purpose for spending that amount of money [$45 million] is to protect Highway 12 and the public infrastructure along the Highway 12 corridor, he said. “The ancillary benefits of that are that we protect the ocean property owner and that we create a beach for our economy.”
Comments
Currituck
As long as there is an ocean, there will be a beach. No need to spend other people’s money to save your home. Also, when the home falls into the ocean, cleanup your own mess with your own money.
Currituck.
SMH
45 mil for a temporary measure to protect the wealth of investors and second home owners? Dare county is definitely about greed. Yet they barely lift their hands for work force and affordable housing
this ain't workin'
Currituck hit the nail on the head. The Buxton beach was nourished in 2018 and again in 2022 to try to slow beach erosion. Less than 3 years after the 2022 nourishment the beach was in worse shape than it was before the 2022 nourishment.
We are now planning to spend $40 million to nourish the beach again in 2026. At this point we are spending over $10 million dollars a year to nourish this small stretch of beach and it is not working. At some point in the near future our total expenditures to nourish this beach will exceed the total value of all of the investment properties along this stretch of beach.
Hank M.
Instead of using hindsight based upon common knowledge of previous outcomes, and frankly arrogance to talk down to the common folk on how erosion mitigation efforts haven’t worked, how about our high-dollar, locally sited, so-called “Coastal Studies Institute” offer up an educated solution instead of always negatively opining from the side lines?
OBX Resident
In ‘Living with the Shore
The Beaches Are Moving:
The Drowning of America’s Shoreline’ published in 1983
By Wallace Kaufman; Orrin H. Pilkey Jr. they write (remember this is 1983 and written about the Outer Banks and Hatteras)
“Our beaches are eroding, sinking, washing out right under our houses, hotels, bridges; vacation dreamlands become nightmare scenes of futile revetments, fills, groins, what have you—all thrown up in a frantic defense against the natural system. The romantic desire to live on the seashore is in doomed conflict with an age-old pattern of beach migration.”
The greatest tragedy is that we continue to ignore the coastal processes discussed in 1983 as outlined in this book. In 1999 the groins were still solid and the lighthouse was moved because of erosion. Yet, we kept building houses in this zone. With or without groins the beaches will continue to move.
Al
When I built my home here on the Outer Banks, I had a bulkhead installed to protect my property. In doing so, I attempted to apply for a grant thru CAMA in order to have the bulkhead paid for by them (CAMA) which CAMA was kind enough to say no. So now, why are us taxpayers paying for beach nourishment or groins to protect an investment home built by someone who don’t even call Dare County home. Raise property taxes on all beach front properties to pay for this. They are sitting in their primary homes up north reaping all of the rewards and not paying anything. Stop wasting taxpayers money and just let the ocean take them. And the 1985 ban on constructing of hardened structures on the shoreline (that was written by Democrat Bassnight) needs to be reversed. That was the dumbest decision ever made. We are the only coastline along the Atlantic Ocean that has NO hardened structures and yet we continue to do beach nourishment at 45 million a pop. Maine, Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida ALL have hardened structures and never have to dredge or do beach nourishment. Wake up commissioners
primary purpose ?
Outten says, “The primary purpose for spending that amount of money [$45 million] is to protect Highway 12 and the public infrastructure along the Highway 12 corridor” and that protecting the property owners is just an ancillary benefit. This is a bunch of BS.
This short stretch of NC12 at the curve in Buxton gets overwash when we have a storm but no major damage, not nearly as bad as several other sections of NC12 that have major impacts. This stretch of NC12 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. This $45 million nourishment project is completely unrelated to any potential impacts on NC12. It is 100% all about protecting the short term rental property owners.
OBX Joe
I still have to understand why it is the County’s responsibility to clean up houses that were built in areas that were predicted 30-40 years ago to eventually become part of the ocean as beach erosion progressed. Maybe denying global warming/climate change is not an effective solution.
Houses built on the ocean side should be required to post a bond that transfers with the property as it is sold to fund cleanup costs if/when the house falls into the ocean. These houses belong to wealthy people after all and WE are cleaning up THEIR mess.
Part Time OBX'er
I can help save you $45m and time. Every time they take sand from off shore, Nature fills it back in…from the beaches that you just put it on. It’s not the nourishment that is useless, it’s where it’s being taken from. Dig a hole in the beach and wait days, weeks, months, and Nature will fill it back in with the surrounding sand. Therefore, in order to make nourishment work, they need to take the sand from somewhere else – the bay/sound side. Or even better, all the ferry channels. Pull all the sand from Oregon Inlet, then continue into the sound/bay and pump out the ferry channels straight across from Hatteras to Ocracoke. The more sand you take form offshore, the more dramatic every storm off the coast will effect the beaches – cause it’s pulling the sand back to where it belongs. The offshore sand is a buffer for the beach, therefore the more you take, the less effective it protects the beaches, so the ocean takes it back.
Greg
To put some historical perspective on this. There is no Oceanfront building allowed from Kitty Hawk Pier to Avalon pier. This area experienced a great deal of damage from Ocean over wash for decades. South Nags head is the same. Over wash in Nor Easters was a common occurrence . There are now fewer homes along this stretch than 50 years ago. Hurricane Isabel was the event that stopped the building. 14 years after Isabel the beach was nourished and no homes have fallen since.
Beach nourishment in Buxton is challenging due to the strong currents there. I will submit that Jetties are a build them and see if they work proposition. Rock is the only way to go.A semi permanent sand pumping arrangement such as was set up after the Feb 1973 storm by the Park Service would help. All in all this area is going to continue to overwash as it always has. Too much was built there.