Four Dare towns plan for 2027 beach nourishment

By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on August 1, 2026

Graph showing the savings to the various towns based on six or seven year intervals between projects.
(Credit: Coastal Protection Engineering)

One option would extend the interval between projects

Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice

As Kill Devil Hills, Kitty Hawk, Southern Shores and Ducks prepare for their 2027 beach nourishment projects, monitoring of the beaches by Coastal Protection Engineering (CEP) shows that the last such project—in 2022—has held up surprisingly well.

Based on observations provided to Duck, Southern Shores and Kitty Hawk, CPE Senior Project Manager Ken Willson suggested the towns can consider a six- or seven-year period between projects instead of the traditional five-year interval.

Dates for the nourishment projects have not yet been announced—typically they begin in May and continue into September—and the contractors have not been selected for this next round. If the towns go forward with the current 5-year maintenance plan, the project cost will be $42.5 million. The 6-year plan will cost $43.9 million and the 7-year plan $45.4 million.

Willson has not presented his findings to Kill Devil Hills to date, but at his July 6 presentation to the Kitty Hawk Town Council, he said that “Kill Devil Hills is close to where you guys are.” The 1.8 miles of nourished beach in the Duck project area are not performing as well as the other towns, although they are meeting the design criteria for the project

The savings that towns would realize come from the cost of mobilizing the equipment and personnel for a nourishment project. The cost of bringing the equipment to the work site is the same whether it’s for one town or four. The towns share in that cost, with the cost to each based on the amount of sand that is pumped onto the beach.

Dare County shares 50% of the cost of nourishment with the towns overall, and based on the figures Willson provided, a six-year interval between projects would reduce the cost of nourishment by around $1.2 million per year. If the towns opt wait for seven years between projects, the savings would be about $2 million per year.

According to Duck Mayor Monical Thibodeau, there have been discussions among the communities about whether to schedule the next round of nourishment in 2033 or 2034.

“The town managers, they’re all discussing it. I know [Duck Town Manager Drew Havens] has made our position known,” she said. “We’re holding our breath that the six-year number will be the number they settle on. Seven is a holding-your-breath type of thing. If we have to, we have to, because we have to go with the group.”

For the projects to last for six or seven years, Duck will have to pump between 16% and 31.5% more sand onto their beach than the current five-year project calls for. The town would still see a savings per year with either a six-or seven-year span, but the upfront cost would be significantly higher.

After confirming that Kitty Hawk has been discussing whether to extend the time between nourishment projects, Kitty Hawk Town Manager Melody Clopton added that “our beach has been performing very well and the models they have done for us [indicate] we could probably do the planned five-year project, and it would last for six years.”

In his presentations to the towns, Willson discussed the trends that have emerged on the nourished beach since the 2022 project was completed. The trends that have emerged, Willson said during his July 7 Southern Shores presentation, are “kind of unexpected. We don’t typically see that in a lot of the projects.”

In that meeting, Willson presented six years of beach monitoring of the town’s beaches. Southern Shores Mayor Elizabeth Morey questioned whether that was sufficient, telling Willson that “you can’t argue that six years is a trend when you’re talking about the beach. You really need to look seriously [at] long-term erosion rates, and unfortunately, we don’t have very good data for Southern Shores.”

In an interview with the Voice, Morey explained that “when people talk about trends my first question is, what data are you basing that on? I mean, you have to have the numbers to back that up to be able to say that something’s a trend…if you have a long- term erosional trend, then you’re going lose some beach.”

Asked by the Voice what may explain an accretion of sand volume over 7.5 to 8.0 miles from Kill Devil Hills to Southern Shores, Willson said that Kitty Hawk may be “benefiting from sand placed south and north of them,” in Southern Shores and Kill Devil Hills. He also added that “there are some offshore features that are likely influencing the different volumetric change rates along these areas.”

Dare County officials contacted for this story did not respond.