Can anything stop beachfront homes from collapsing on the Outer Banks? Plus, water resilience across North Carolina.

This is due south on WUNC News. I'm Jeff Tabiri. Erosion and rising seas can have a range of impacts. I remember when I was little, you would burn your bottom in your feet walking to the water. That's how much beach you had to go through. And now there's no beach. Rising waters, along with extreme weather and other changing variables, has led to dozens of homes along the outer banks falling into the ocean. And this issue is only likely to worsen. Everybody's terrified of losing their livelihoods, their homes, their investments, their retirement. A focus on climate change, transforming coastlines and buildings going down. DoSouth begins after the news.

From the American Tobacco Historic District in downtown Durham, this is due south on WUNC News. I'm Leonita Inge. This hour, water, and resilience on the North Carolina coast and beyond. We'll hear from reporters writing about the dramatic collapses of houses into the ocean on the outer banks. There goes. We'll explore the environmental causes and impacts of those collapses and how these clickable visuals just skim the surface of a deep lasting problem. But first, what does resilience actually mean and look like when it comes to water and water management in our state? Well, we turned to the Emerging Issues Forum, an event organized each year by North Carolina State University. This year's event called Future Forward Water was held in three different locations, Asheville, Winston-Salem, Moorhead City. It highlighted the specific water challenges of each region, as well as their interconnectedness. One of the speakers at the forum was Samantha Mosier. She's an associate professor in the department. of political science, an associate director of the Water Resources Center at East Carolina University. She joins me today on D-South from the College of Charleston, where she's taking part in yet another conference, this time on disaster resilience. Samantha, welcome to D-South. Thank you for having me. Well, what are you presenting and discussing at this conference? Definitely that relates to water and resilience. At this particular conference, I've done a couple of different things. So I had a poster that discussed a story map that maps out how different hurricanes within eastern North Carolina have impacted communities in very different ways and essentially change the trajectory of how they developed and how they interact with water and deal with flooding. I also did a lunch and learn. event where the discussion was looking at the semantics of resilience. So what does resilience actually mean? How do we unpack this concept that seems to be everywhere nowadays? Does it mean anything? And the answer is it does mean something, but it's... A pretty diverse term that can be tossed around and used nowadays. Oh, yes, I know. And you're focusing on, I guess, the southeast and the Caribbean when it comes to disaster resilient. So all I can think about are hurricanes and flooding. Yes. Flooding and hurricanes are a pretty good story of most coastal areas and of the southeast and the Caribbean. So talk to me about the different water issues facing the different regions of North Carolina. You know, when we check out, look at the mountains, and we're still talking about the flooding left by Helene and then the Piedmont region and even the east.

The Institute for Emerging Issues actually was, they did a very good job with pointing out that different regions of the state have different water-related concerns. So when they took the typical forum and divided into three different locations, it was to address those very different issues that appear. So there are some commonalities. Like we know that the state is growing in population. And with increasing population, that increases demand on water. We also know that we became a very attractive state for industry and including things like data centers. And there's a lot of questions about how those data centers are going to use our resources, including water, but also things like electricity and energy. And how do we manage those? So those are pretty consistent across the state. It's just. access to fresh water and how do we deal with, you know, growing industry and growing populations and that usage. But then each region does have their own unique set of challenges. So Helene indicated challenges on the western side of the state with these events that, you know, in the eastern part of the state, we frequently get. hurricanes, we have flooding issues. But on the western side of the state, Helene demonstrated some of those challenges with stormwater management, high rainfall events. How do you communicate about risk when it's time to evacuate when these occur? And then you have a lot of development in the Piedmont that taps that demand for water resources when you have population coming to the state because we're a good place to locate. In the east, we have all sorts of challenges. Everything from farming creates some problems with water quality issues. And growing population as well again. Growing population, definitely growing population on the coast. And so when you add in some of these weather events on top of growing population and straining some of our water systems, it's a very dynamic concern along a number of levels, is that we need freshwater, so we need to have water systems in place. We have to manage our sewage, so what happens with our wastewater, and then we have to have storm water management. And this has to happen pretty much anywhere that you have people living. And so if you live in a rural area, you may be on a well and a septic tank. But if you live in a city, you're going to probably be hooked into some type of public or private utility company. Well, how do all these regions and the impacts on these regions overlap? You know, can you talk about the issues and the needs that each region really needs to pay close attention to? That's a tough question. The overlap is the population is going to do a number. So I'm not going to say we have failing infrastructure across the board, but our infrastructure is in need of repair and it's in need of attention. So it doesn't matter if you live on the western side of the state and the central Piedmont. It doesn't matter if you live in eastern North Carolina. The infrastructure is stressed. And there's been decisions made and they were made at the...

to the best knowledge of that time, but we're needing to update stormwater management systems. We're needing to replace pipes that deliver clean water. And unless we have a certain level in investment and commitment, particularly from those that are able to make those decisions and enforce the necessary revenue collection to do so, our infrastructure is going to fall apart at some point. And we really need to focus on being able to repair, expand, and... do the best that we can with what we do have. You know, when I think of infrastructure and growth, it seems we have a lot of people, I guess, moving to areas, are growing and building where they shouldn't be. And that, to me, that's an overlap. That's from the Outer Banks area to the mountains. Yes. So in the mountains, you may take into a couple of trips out there, and you drive through some of these mountain sides. Like, how is that house sitting up there? And it's a tremendous risk when you have rainfall events that can contribute to landslides. And so we saw that during Haleen. You build on the side of a mountain. There is a risk that your house is going to slide down the mountain when it becomes unstable. So I want to turn to the word resilience that we've been mentioning over and over, that you spent a lot of time researching. So what is resilience when it comes to water and what does North Carolina water resilience look like? That is a difficult question to answer for a number of reasons, but I'll try to my best to unpack it. So resilience doesn't have like one singular definition that folks seem to grab onto. It's actually kind of all over the board. And so in some of the works that I've done, the keywords that always seem to pop up are things like capacity. ability, that phrase bouncing back, which may have positive or negative connotations. And if you take resilience and then you apply it to something like water, that's a system. And when you think about the system of water and you kind of put communities on top of it, well, the water system has to be able to replenish. to give people water. You need to be able to have clean water, which means you need to invest in ensuring that it can be used and consumed. And then you also need to be able to manage that water in such a way to prevent things like flooding. And so that resilient system of water means that you're not taking more than what is needed. You were learning to work within the confines of what we are given. But at the same time, knowing that from that natural perspective, you will have to do some type of management for your community to prevent it from flooding. Well, you have a background in political science. So, I mean, how do you convince government to see it this way? And I guess, as they say, do the right thing? And communicate it better to everyday people.

It's also pretty tough, right? I mean, I don't think it's a mystery to most folks at this point that politics is, it's pretty contentious and it can be very difficult to have those discussions and those conversations. One thing that I think. would be helpful to keep in mind is going back and looking at another term, which is sustainability. And I know that's not as popular of a term or, you know, an effort anymore, but they had three pillars in which we could actually focus our efforts on and try to see where we could find that ideal community. And it was, you know, you have to protect the environment because we live here and we don't have anywhere else to go. There's also the economic concern, and I know economic drivers are very large, a large concern, and everybody wants to live in that vibrant, bustling community that's healthy and people can go out to eat. You know, they can afford just to live, right? But then there's this other component of equity. And this one's often forgotten quite a bit. And you can think of it as like we have communities that are under-resourced. They don't necessarily have a lot of investment in them. And then there's that question on, is everybody having the same level of investment? And if you can take care of everyone, including those most in need, you're likely to have a very vibrant, healthy economy that works for everyone. And if your environment's healthy, you don't have to worry about things like getting sick because it actually reduces some of the potential harm that comes from being exposed to an unhealthy environment. Samantha Mosier is the Associate Director of the Water Resources Center at East Carolina University. Thanks for joining me. Thank you so much. Coming up, WUNC's Colin Campbell and two reporters with Roots on the Outer Banks will join Jeff Tiberi to talk about those dramatic beach house collapses on the coast and the larger issues of beach erosion. I'm Leonita Inge, and this is due south on WUNC News.

This is Duce South on WUNC News. I'm Jeff Tiberi. You've seen the images over the years of beach houses along the outer banks of North Carolina falling, collapsing dramatically, almost like jenga blocks, into the ocean. Later in the show, we're going to speak with two reporters with deep roots in those communities about the immediate and long-term impacts of beach erosion. Let us first turn to Main Street and C. This is a special series as part of the WUNC. Politics Podcast Umbrella telling stories of communities across North Carolina in the words of the people who live there. You're going to hear an excerpt now from a recent episode of Main Street NC reported by Colin Campbell, Capital Bureau Chief here at WUNC News. It's all about the Hatteras Island beachfront and the rapid erosion that has contributed to the collapse of about 20 houses since last fall. Piles of sandbags roughly three feet high line the beach between the buildings of the 70-year-old Outer Banks Motel and the Atlantic Ocean here in Buxton. Billy Dillon operates the motel with his 97-year-old mother, Carol, who's owned it since it first opened in 1955. He says it's getting harder to fight off the Atlantic Ocean from overtaking the property, as it has with about 20 beach houses a few blocks south of the motel. It's very expensive. I think we probably spent over 100 grand just last spring. And we need more just to kind of protect the property because we didn't have the sandbags. I mean... There's nothing to stop it. Dylan says his motel buildings are also protecting NC12, the highway that connects the outer banks. During storms and extreme high tides, ocean overwash floods the road in front of the motel. Despite a major beach re-nourishment project here in 2022, there was hardly any beach to sit on in front of the motel's outer buildings when I stayed there in January. And the Dillans were still working to repair broken stairs and walkways from last year's storms. Billy says the shifting sands of Hatteras Island are a constant battle. I mean, erosion has always been an issue as long as I can remember. Yeah. You know, I wasn't here in the 50s and 60s, but they talked like there was, you know, 500 feet of beach then. I'd never seen it that big. I remember when I was little, though, you know, you would burn your bottom of your feet walking to the water. That's how much beach you had to go through. And now there's no beach. The erosion is even worse on other portions of Buxton's oceanfront. Brian Harris with the Buxton Civic Association shows me where houses began to collapse last fall. More homes remain in the water, even at low tide. So the houses from here going north, I guess? Yeah, all 17 of them. Yeah. I mean, you see this one right here. It's missing five posts. None of the oceanfront homes have electricity right now. Yeah, so they're all cut off from utilities. Yeah, all the utilities, all electric, all septics, all been compromised. So they're moving on back. Like, move this one back right here. You can see the new post. That guy right there with the slanted roof, got moved back.

And there's four more that were getting moved back. But, I mean, there's two or three of them. They're in the ocean now. That's just, there's pointed over turn. Just a few days after my trip to Buxton, several more of the homes he pointed out fell into the ocean during a winter storm. One collapse was captured on video posted by the Island Free Press. There goes. Whoa. Buxton residents say the rapid erosion began at a former Navy facility used during the Cold War to monitor submarines. The Navy built three jetties to protect the site, but they weren't maintained after the Navy left in the 1980s. As the jetties deteriorated, beach erosion exposed some underground fuel storage tanks and leaked contamination into the sand and water. When the contamination was discovered in 2023, the Army Corps of Engineers closed the beach access and began a cleanup process that's still underway. But as they worked to clean up the mess, the beach continued to erode rapidly and began to claim houses last fall. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to repair the jetties later this year, and Dare County is planning a beach re-nourishment project, but the fix will be too late for many homes. And it won't necessarily be a long-term fix. Laura Moore is a UNC Chapel Hill professor who leads the university's coastal environmental change lab. There's the possibility that if the groins had been maintained or if more sand could have been placed more frequently, that erosion might have been slowed down. But there really is no way to permanently counter or offset the high rates of erosion that Buxton and Rodanthi are facing, unfortunately. There really is not a permanent solution to this type of situation. Instead, Moore says communities like Buxton will eventually have to reconsider where it puts homes and buildings. She thinks Hatteras Island is among the first of many beach communities that will experience this kind of erosion. Adapting our building, where we build and how we build, and relocating to less vulnerable areas will ultimately be, it's not a popular thing to say, but that's really ultimately. the only option we will have in the end. For now, life in Buxton for year-round residents and tourist goes on outside the damaged beach area. The famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is surrounded by scaffolding for a major restoration project, and the visitor's center is getting new landscaping and fencing. Its beach access at Cape Point remains open. Good morning. After walking around the lighthouse, I stopped for a treat at Buxton's popular orange blossom bakery and cafe. They're best known for a massive pastry called an apple ugly. So what exactly are the apple ugly? So the apple uglies, it's apple cinnamon sugar with a little bit of apple pie filling. We roll it up in a donut dough, deep fried, and dip it into sugar, and this is our chocolate. So that's just an apple ugly drizzled in chocolate. Okay. In the summertime, long lines form at the orange blossom every morning. But many Buxton businesses are worried that this summer could bring fewer tourists, both from having fewer oceanfront houses for rent and from national headlines about the collapsing houses that are causing some visitors to vacation elsewhere. Back at the Outer Banks Motel, Billy Dillon is concerned what the future holds for the family business, and he's already added 20 rental homes in the village inland from the beach. I'm worried about it, but I mean, we're just key.

We just keep moving forward and fighting to keep it going. That's all we can do. The Buxton Civic Association includes business owners, residents, and others fighting for the resources needed to combat the erosion. I sat down with its leaders to hear more about where things stand. Heather Jeanette is the president of the Buxton Civic Association and Brian Harris is the vice president of the Buxton Civic Association, both involved in all the issues here in the Buxton area. Thanks so much for speaking with me. Thanks for having us. Thanks for coming down. So to start off, tell me a little bit of how the Buxton Civic Association got started. And this is a fairly new organization for this community. The bucks and fuds was definitely brought this momentum. Certainly the catalyst. It was the catalyst for everything. Yeah, so the cleanup of the Navy site was sort of the main issue that brought people together. That was the kickoff. Yeah, absolutely. I had joked or, you know, haphazardly said to my husband for years, like maybe when our youngest gets in school, you know, I can't believe that we don't have this going on. And then. when all that was exposed and, you know, I live over here in the woods. I'm going to be honest that I was kind of unaware. And so Brian kind of lit the fire and said this has to happen now. And so we jumped in. Some of those are the challenges that this part of Dare County is totally unincorporated. So there's no mayor, there's no town council that you can go to as a sort of spokesperson, spokes vehicle for the community issues. Inside of a national park, too. So we're unincorporated village inside of a national park, which is definitely a rarity anywhere in the U.S. I don't think there's, I don't think there's any other national parks that actually hold villages inside the national parks. So it sometimes feels or felt like there was a very large kitchen with a lot of cooks that we couldn't really talk to. Yeah. Yeah, so there's not a central sort of point of contact when there's a problem to try to beat the person to the spear to kind of address the issue. No, yeah. Well, looking at the more recent erosion that caused the home collapses, what do you see as sort of the root causes of this erosion that started with the Navy facility and then it sort of moved up the beach to the residential areas over the last year? Yeah, the collapsing, the derogation of the jettys over the last 25 years since they moved the lighthouse. Definitely has played a big picture in all this. And they held their own just long enough. And then once you saw the big sections... collapsing failing it not only no longer did its job um it started to do damage because it instead of decreasing and holding sand it kind of was a bottleneck and accelerated the force at which it was moving in the other way and

increase the rate of erosion. You saw today where that line is just cut right through. I mean, the jetties, it's like the coastline has reformed basically as if they had never existed. So the coastline is straightened out. And that new coastline just happened as it go right through the heart of the bucks and ocean front. Yeah, so those houses were all built with the sort of assumption of the coastline being what it was as the result of the jetties. And then once you lose the jetties, then suddenly all that protection, all that sand starts to go. I mean, we lost 140 feet. of erosion you know and a lot of that the vertical erosion I didn't it wasn't even something I pointed it out on our on our walk today but there's certain spots where we lost 15 feet high a vertical you know yeah vertical erosion even with sea level rise, even with global warming. Nobody's saying that those things aren't happening, but that was not a natural rate. That was the result of, there was another factor. Another catalyst. Yeah, so this is sort of erosion that might have happened naturally over time because of the other factors, but happened much, much, much more rapidly. It was accelerated. Yeah. Yeah. So one, you do have these house collapses. How difficult does the debris clean up and how long does it typically take to get the beach back to a point where people can use it? I mean, you saw it this morning. Still not done. Yeah. It goes back to the cooks in the kitchen. Like, whose job is it? Is it the homeowner's job? Can you prove that that's their debris when you have seven fall at once? Is it the county's job? Let alone 15. Is it the park services job? Is it? Does DOT come in? And then how much of it now is sitting at that low tide mark in the ocean? We can't even get equipment really to it. We're going to have to build a beach to excavate underneath what's there. The jetties, I say a lot of the storm surge that we saw, a lot of the debris got pushed in back the farther. And back into the roads, but I mean, I think we'll be digging up forks and knives and silverware 100 years from now. They're going to be firing them. Yeah, because these houses are still. The lost colony of Buxton. All their contents a lot of times. It's not like someone's had the time to sort of strip out of the homeless. No, I mean, what were things that we saw? My kids were like, look, it's a chess set. You know, I think that it's missing just the queen or, you know. that's the contents of their pantry. Their refrigerators are not empty. I think that was the hardest part of watching the houses fall from here. It wasn't so much the houses living by the ocean. We know that stuff could happen any time. It was the fact that we knew that they were going to collapse and all the furniture, all the furnishings, all the windows, everything was still in there. Everything underneath the kitchen sink. I mean, everything in there is now in the ocean. The contractors, Barry Crom, he's moved to several of the houses. He's going to move four more, but there's only so much that we're going to be able to get. And these people, they catch a lot of flack for not being proactive. Why didn't you move it? Why didn't you empty it out? Why, you know?

Because the system's not set up to support that. Insurance is reactive. Not everybody who happens to own an ocean front home paid cash for it or doesn't still have a mortgage on it or isn't depending on the rental income. It wasn't just this easy thing to go clear it out or move it or, you know, take it down. in a controlled fashion because the resources don't support that. Yeah, for the folks that are moving it back, are they pretty much having to pay out of pocket and insurance is only paying out of pocket? They're all paying out of pocket. You know, insurance is not. There's no reimbursement. There's grants, but they're. Few and far between everything. They're mostly not applicable to here because they only allow you to move it to an area that's X flood zone or X amount above, you know, the sea level. And it turns out like our entire island is not that. So, and then that's if they're able to find a property, which is limited here. Can they pay for it? Do they have a mortgage on the home they had? Because are they going to be able to get a second one for the lot? It's a mess. Yeah, with the cleanup efforts, I know there's been some volunteer stuff that you've been involved in. Is that a piece of the puzzle? With volunteer crews coming out or at a certain point, you have so much debris, so many houses going down that there's just not manpower of people who are willing to just come out of the beach on their day off? I hope that never happens again. that many at once. Yeah. It's just... We didn't really have a choice but to get involved. You know, if it would have been one or two houses, I think the first house it fell, the owner took care of everything on their own. But when we had four or five, and it was just... And that was the same thing, you know, to give credit to the county, it's not necessarily their role either, but when you have an event that catastrophic where so many fall, you know, they did step in. They hired crews, they supplied, you know, the rollaway dumpsters. And that's not something I think that they would necessarily do if you see a single house fall. But in an event like we experienced twice this fall, everybody's kind of making it up as they go along and doing the best they can. So it was like Heather said, I hope it's something that we don't go through any time sooner ever again. And on the other side of the paid thing, the volunteer effort was amazing. Yeah. You know, when we coordinated the cleanup day as the Civic Association, that was the type of event that I wanted my kids to see that reminds you why you live here, why you go through this, why you take this gamble, why this community is what it is.

Colin Campbell reporting. That was part of an episode of his Main Street NC series from the WNC Politics Podcast, exploring stories from communities across our state. You can hear more wherever you download podcasts. Let's welcome in Colin now, Capital Bureau Chief here at WNC. And Colin, I do have to know how were the Apple uglies. They were very good. We took us a couple days to eat through those that massive that I did not need to buy two of those things. Okay. More serious, no, but one of the wonderful things about your reporting is we do get that, the literal flavors and then kind of also the cultural flavors as you travel across the state. I always enjoy that when I hear you're reporting. More seriously, of course. What has changed, if anything, as it pertains to the story of note since you did the bulk of your reporting for that episode? So I came down there in the end of... I went down there in the end of January and was there right ahead of one of the winter storms we had. So they were pointing out different houses that looked like they were sort of precariously in the surf. And then within a couple days of my having been down there, those houses collapsed into the ocean. So they've actually lost more houses in the last few weeks than when I was down there reporting this story. And they've had other issues with Highway 12 being closed for periods of time. Certainly been a rough winter for the folks out in Buxton, Hatteras Island. If you would, give us just a sense of the geography there. Beaches can vary a lot in our state. But for those who might not have been ever or in a while, what makes this area so susceptible to collapse? So if you're looking at a map of the outer banks, you see the big populated areas like Nag's Head, Kill Devil Hills, and then you drive south, and you're on this narrow spit of land, and you pass through Rodanthe, which is also pretty narrow. You get to Buxton, and that's where you have the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and the road turns more towards the west. So you've got this sort of curve in the coastline right there at Buxton, and this area seems to have some of the worst erosion of just about anywhere on the outer banks. Some of it... based on just the shifting sands of Hatteras Island. This is a very fragile barrier island, and some of it's this man-made issues like you heard about with the jetties that have deteriorated, the naval site that was on that property for a number of years. It just made it so much more sort of high-speed erosion than you see in a lot of other places. You... Talked with folks in this story. I almost had to like hit the back button to make sure I heard it right. People who are living in an unincorporated village within a national park. And you obviously get to this to some degree within the excerpt we just heard. But go next level if you would. What are some of the complications and challenges that arise from this unique situation?

It's definitely sort of a too many cooks in the kitchen situation for the residents there to try to get answers from the government. You know, they've got to deal with D.R. County government, and that's based, you know, a solid 45 minutes, hours drive away in the Mantio area. They've got to deal with the state, which, of course, they're pretty far from the state capital in Raleigh and the legislature where a lot of these decisions are being made. And then they've got to deal with D.C. with a bunch of different federal agencies, whether it's the Army Corps of Engineers that handles a lot of that, the National Park Service. So a big challenge for the local residents, local leaders down there is When they have a problem, who do they call? Who's really responsible for cleaning it up, fixing the mess? And there's just a lot of different agencies that they've got to kind of break through the red tape when they need that kind of answer. Colin Campbell is Capital Bureau Chief here at WUNC News. He's going to stick around. And on the other side, we're going to welcome in two additional voices, reporters, to add to our conversation about this beach house collapse issue and beach erosion along the North Carolina coast. Stay with us. I'm Jeff Tabiri. This is Douce.

Welcome back. It's due south on listeners supported WDUNC News. I'm Jeff Tiberi. We're going to continue our conversation now about the outer banks, beach erosion, and those houses that have collapsed into the ocean, spectacular images you've probably seen captured in dramatic form, video, and still photos over the last several months. Colin Campbell is with us, Capital Bureau Chief here at WNC News. He recently reported... A Main Street NC episode. It's part of the WUNC Politics Podcast Offerings. It's all about beachhouse collapse and coastal erosion along the Outer Banks. He's with us, and we've invited two other voices to join the conversation as well. Catherine Kozak has been a reporter and writer along the Outer Bank since 1995. She covers coastal issues for Coastal Review. And Zoe Kane is an intern at Down from D.C., a newsletter that examines how federal policy and decision-making impact North Carolinians. She's also a politics and journalism student at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. Zoe recently wrote a piece for Down from D.C. with the headline, The Clickable Catastrophe on the Coast. Zoe and Catherine, welcome to D. South. Thank you. Thank you. Catherine, you've been... reporting on this area for a long time now, can you give a brief overview here of the history of beach house collapses within the past decade or so? I think it's good to think of it. And from the time that I arrived here, that was in 95, until about, I think it was Hurricane Isabel in 2003 when things started changing. By Hurricane Irene in 2011, things got drastic. Before that, it was mainly, there were houses in Rodanthe that started. Basically, the beach started eroding there, and they started standing in the water, and every now and then a house in Rodanthi would collapse. And then over the years, there started being more of them. And then after these hurricanes, everything started getting different. Things like, for instance, Hatteras Inlet started shoaling, and the erosion rate started increasing. things just started changing. And people seem to think, the locals seem to think that those storms are probably the reason. But at the same time, climate change has been really been more evident with sea level rise and that's causing more erosion. And it's increasing the, maybe it's increasing the intensity of the currents, but certainly the intensity of storms. So there's been a lot more damage happening too. It started in Road Danty, and then recently it moved over to Buxton where these houses started falling. Zoe, this is, if I've got it right, this is home for you. You're a student at Wake Forest, but you know the coast well. You went home last fall amidst the news of some of these houses collapsing. Tell me what you remember and what you saw.

Yeah, so I've grown up in the Outer Banks my entire life. And I remember this past fall, we had heard of like the houses collapsing. And it's become really normal for us locals. And so when I heard that this fall, I was really thinking about it. And it's become an unusual trend recently. I think in the last five years, about 31 houses have fallen down. And so when I came back, I really, really wanted to see, you know, what the situation was. I think after all the news stories, you know, had come to a close, you think, okay, maybe there's been cleanup crews, the beach is clear, but that really, really wasn't the case. I mean, I went out on two separate occasions, and the beach is just littered with construction and yellow tape condoning things. And, I mean, there's glass, there's nails, there's open septic tanks. And it's a real hazard for beachgoers and for locals. I want to read just an excerpt from some of your reporting because this struck me. Nails, exposed wires and concrete from the once solid foundations were strewn from the beach access to the water. In the distance, I caught sight of five surfers, about 40 meters out on the sandbar, suited up for the cold December day. They rode the waves, oblivious, it seemed, to the hidden dangers. That was from a story you wrote Zoe. Have there been injuries, whether physical or because of, as you note, there of septic tanks that have been compromised? I mean, I'm sure. I haven't heard of any cases, but I can only assume. I think all of us locals are just trying to carry on with our regular activities as possible, you know, swimming in the ocean, surfing. I surf myself. And we're really just trying to continue that way of life. But this is causing some really big issues. And I think it could cause some real damage to locals in the area. Can you quantify that for us? As we think about beach erosion and sea level rise and I guess both what you've seen experience during your lifetime and what that has meant, we're obviously talking about the homes, but it's had a myriad of impacts, I would suspect. Oh, absolutely. I think people are really quick to reject the notion that this may be a climate change issue. Obviously, we're on a barrier island. We expect it to move. I mean, I remember when I was in grade school, people talking about the Outer Banks is going to be underwater in a couple hundred years. And so that's something we locals learn to expect. But the rate at which, you know, the oceans are rising and sea temperature change is causing. this increased storm surges. That's not normal, and that's not something we have seen in the past couple years. And so driving down Highway 12 now, I think I can physically see the ocean from the road, which was never a possibility. I mean, I remember trying to look over the dunes and try to peek away at the beach, but it's just, it's all out there for everyone to see now.

Just let it sit there and hope that maybe the beach issues get fixed before that collapse comes. But in many of these cases, these homes are living on borrowed time, and it's only a matter of time before more of them drop in the ocean. There's been no real effort to find a way to deal with that in a better way than just have all the stuff end up in the surf. I'm not sure who this question is best posed to, but how many more are we talking about here? Because 30 is... I suppose you could say it's a small number, but when you're talking about collapsed homes, it's not a small number. But what's the ceiling here, so to speak? I've been told that there's, once the houses that are in the surf right now, in Buxton at least, collapsed, there's a whole other row behind them that will also go. That area is a very, it's really, really rapidly eroding. And they have, I mean, it's not just those houses. Buxton is a year-round community. It's an old... historic community and they're going they're very concerned about the road being taken out and the the the businesses being taken out and also people's not a whole lot of of the year round residents live in those houses on the on the beach front but they you know they depend on those houses for people to stay there summer to for this economy Beach re-nourishment effort that's going to be underwear later this year and the efforts to repair and some of those jetties and groins that are out there is going to be really critical. And how quickly can they get that done before even more houses? Or as Catherine mentioned, there's the potential that if it roads further, you lose the road. The entrance to Buxton is in C-12. And it's by these motels where there's constant overwash during storm. So it's impassable sometimes anyway. But if you were to have it completely wash out. then suddenly that whole end of Hatteras Island has no access other than the ferry from Okra Coke. It's not, I mean, sure, I was going to say it's not navigable, maybe not entirely unnavigable, but it obviously eliminates an access point. Do want to note that there was a 2024 North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Report that cited 750 oceanfront structures along the North Carolina coast that are at risk from the rising seas. We've got a couple more moments with Zoe Kane, Catherine Kozak, and Colin Campbell here on due south. Zoe, I'm interested in the larger ethos of the community that you grew up in. Is there a never say die attitude or people wanting to come up with creative solutions? Are people just saying, all right, this is a matter of time? What's the tenor and the feeling? I think everyone who lives in the Outer Banks is very, very passionate about their home. I think everybody recognizes the issue. But it's really just a problem of who's been delegated to kind of repair this damage and clean up this debris. And that's been a real issue. I know a lot of people have just been going out on their own and trying to pick up as much trash as they can. And I do believe there's been some incentives, especially down south, to complete that.

I think right now we're kind of just stuck in a limbo that nobody really knows how to address. The city of New Orleans sits at an average of two feet below sea level. I believe Buxton is at about nine feet of sea level. Catherine, is there a line of demarcation? Is there a projection or a forecast at which this all becomes untenable? I think so because even the coastal scientists are saying that and the and the and the. policymakers and the local politicians recognize that what's being done now in Buxton is is kind of like a band-aid and they're they really want to find a long-term solution but the some of the some are warning while there may not be a solution because at some point you're going to run out of land and people really won't have any options left. with erosion. And it's extremely very, very powerful. The conditions are very difficult to deal with. One thing we haven't touched on specifically and functionally here, but I do want to before time totally runs out on us, is the financial factor here, right? As we think about the tax base, we think about tourism. Can you give us a sense of the economic harm, the economic impacts? uh that are playing out as a result of these rising seas and these collapsing houses Well, I mean, the one obvious thing is this tourism season is going to be really rough for this area. The beach cleanup that we were talking about, a lot of that's not going to be completely done before the summer season. So there's a decent chunk of the beach, particularly in Buxton, that just people won't be able to use. They're going to have to drive to a different section of beach if they rent houses. There's fewer houses to rent, so there's less money for the businesses there. And then county officials are having to spend millions of dollars on some of these beach re-nourishment cleanup efforts, and that's money that could be spent on other types of local services. basically have their hands tied behind their backs, having to sort of fix the beach first before they can do much of anything else. Zoe or Catherine, anything to add on this? Let's, I guess, let me tee it up this way. As we think about the next, what is it, March, let's think from like now through Labor Day, economically speaking, what else comes to mind for either of you? Well, I think. Economically, like Colin said, tourism is the biggie, but it's also tax revenue, the tax, well, basically the tax base, and then the impact on the home building and real estate industry. And it's very much a, this is a tourism-based economy, and it is, it is.

It is really scary because of it's very difficult to control the, you know, what's going to happen. And then government is, the bureaucracy is just totally unresponsive. And it there's, and there's so much people can do. Zoe, a final word here, and I guess maybe I'll ask you to put a personal twist on it. I suspect you'll be home for part of the summer, if not all, this summer. What are you thinking about in terms of foot traffic and small businesses and whatever else are your usual stomping grounds? I mean, I think the beach just keeps on getting busier and busier every summer. And I think it's really going to affect the southern parts, everything that's going on down in Buxton. And I mean, you also have to think about that most of the businesses down there are locally owned. There's rarely any commercial businesses in Buxton. And so those are people's livelihoods. I mean, they're running businesses out of their own houses. And so what happens when... tourism rates slow down in those areas. And that's going to be a real issue because while the northern part of the beach, I'm sure we'll stay busy, it's a really big question of, you know, will the southern locals be able to sustain their livelihoods down there? Zoe Kane is an intern at Down from D.C., a newsletter examining how federal policy and decision-making impacts North Carolinians. Catherine Kozak covers coastal issues for The Coastal Review. She's a long time Outer Banks journalist, and Colin Campbell is Capital Bureau Chief here at WUNC News. Thanks, y'all for the conversation. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you. This is Dues South on listeners-supported WUNC News. We'll talk to you again tomorrow at noon. I don't know

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