Friday, August 28, 2026
By Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice on August 28, 2026
As the NC Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) works to adopt rules governing the use of hardened shoreline structures, it rejected efforts to back legislation removing the ban on such structures at its meeting this week.
During the CRC’s Aug. 26-27 meeting in Manteo, Commissioner Joe Hollowell made a motion, seconded by Commissioner Jordan Hennessy, to support Senate Bill 1009. The measure, entitled “Repeal Hardened Structure Ban,” is in committee in the NC Senate.
North Carolina currently bans hardened structures for shoreline management, although under certain circumstances—temporary use of sandbags and groins in place before the 1984 ban was enacted—hardened structures are allowed. There are also exceptions for jetties that protect inlets and groins for the protection of historic structures.
The Hollowell motion on SB 1009 failed by a 6-4 margin, with three members abstaining. In voicing her opposition, CRC Chair Renee Cahoon said “I don’t think this body is qualified to go in preemptively to a legislative committee and endorse something for the whole Senate to consider.”
Commissioner Steve Shuttleworth added that the CRC “was tasked to interpret what the law was and how the rules need to be enforced. We’re not here to set law individually.”
A broader motion offered by Hennessy to support hardened oceanfront structures, failed by an 8-4 margin, with one abstention.
The meeting featured two days of presentations from the CRC Science Panel, including its final report, “Effects of Hard Structures on Sandy, Open-Ocean Coastlines.” The Outer Banks Voice – CRC panel report recommends ‘cautious approach’ to use of hardened structures
The Science Panel’s report recommends that North Carolina maintain “a cautious approach to any expansion of the use of hardened structures.” It also recommended “avoiding authorization of projects for which evaluations reveal that adverse effects cannot be mitigated sufficiently to make the tradeoffs acceptable.”
Despite the hardened structures ban in North Carolina, sandbags are permitted on a temporary basis. But Science Panel Chair Laura Moore told the committee that “sandbags, in our report, we classify as a seawall…They rarely are temporary. They rarely are removed, and they do the same thing as a rock wall.”
As hardened structures resting on the beach, seawalls cause a complete loss of beach immediately in front of them and a significant loss on the downdrift side, as noted by Science Panel member Spencer Rogers. He cited a seawall in Gaveston, Texas, explaining that “in the middle of the wall, there’s no beach.” On the downdrift side, the picture he displayed showed a severely eroded beach.
Among its list of the adverse effects from seawalls, the Science Panel also cited “accelerated erosion of adjacent dune areas during storm events on both sides of the structure.”
When Hennessy stated that “they use some that are called trap bags, which they actually do put concrete in the bags and put them out there on the shoreline,” Commissioner D.R. Bryan responded by asking “are you suggesting that we put concrete in a sandbag even though the law says it should be a sandbag.”
In her comments to the committee, Moore emphasized that what the Science Panel reported was well-known fact. “I will perhaps close by saying that none of this is new science,” she said. “What we provided is an overview of what really has been largely known for decades about the way that hardened structures function on open ocean coastlines.”
In its conclusion, the Science Panel called attention to attempts to legislatively remove the state’s ban on hardened structures, stating that “expanding the use of hard structures in North Carolina would be a move counter to a broader trend among jurisdictions that have gained long-term experience with hardened structures and are now placing stronger limits on their use.”
That point of view was buttressed by Dan Govoni, the Division of Coastal Management Section Chief. In his presentation, Govoni looked at the hardened structure regulations in almost every coastal state, reporting that “the take-home is that every state is moving away from hardened structures, but there’s not a complete ban.”
Recorded meetings are available on the NCDEQ YouTube livestream page.
