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Emergency Funds Spent To Replace Beach Sand
By Gilbert M. Gaul
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 30, 2004; Page A01
EMERALD ISLE, N.C. -- The morning after Hurricane Isabel hit last September, Town Manager Frank A. Rush Jr. dashed off an e-mail.
"The town of Emerald Isle was extremely fortunate, and sustained very little damage," Rush wrote on Sept. 19 to town officials. "Beach erosion . . . is minimal."
Yet Emerald Isle turned to the government for help. After the beach resort was declared part of a federal natural disaster area, the Federal Emergency Management Agency awarded the town nearly $1.5 million for street signs, tennis court lights and sand for the resort's carefully manicured beaches.
"I have a great deal of difficulty using FEMA for wealthy beach towns getting money for sand," said Emily Farmer, the former mayor of the town of 3,500. "Emerald Isle basically uses FEMA as an insurance policy."
It is not alone.
Dozens of wealthy beach towns and coastal communities turned to the federal agency after Isabel and received tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded disaster relief, records obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act show.
The bulk of the money was used to clear debris and pay for emergency workers' overtime. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, however, were used to repair flagpoles, signs, bike paths and ball fields. And, in what some environmental groups and regulators say is a troubling development, the federal agency is paying for an estimated $15 million worth of sand.
Emerald Isle "was a declared area and they were an eligible applicant and they were funded," said Paul Wilson, a disaster recovery specialist in FEMA's Atlanta office. Agency officials did not respond to requests for additional comment.
Why is the nation's disaster relief agency paying for sand? Under FEMA's policies, beaches such as those in Emerald Isle are viewed as part of the public infrastructure, similar to a water plant or an electric utility. As long as the beaches are maintained and there is a federally declared disaster -- such as a hurricane -- a community can apply for funds to replace any washed-away sand.
The rationale is that the FEMA-funded beaches and sand dunes protect property and reduce storm damage. But some environmentalists say that FEMA, by paying for sand, is encouraging risky development in the very places that people should be avoiding, and exposing the federal treasury to an endless cycle of bailouts in the process.
"There is no emergency if you stay out of harm's way," said Orrin H. Pilkey, a Duke University geologist and longtime critic of federally funded beach fills. "It's only when people build on the shoreline that it becomes dangerous and you get all of these other problems."
FEMA's growing role in the sand business comes as several important developments are reshaping the economic and political landscape of North Carolina's coast. In the past two decades, beach towns have undergone an unprecedented building boom, transforming sleepy fishing villages into modern resorts. Land values have doubled and tripled, with oceanfront lots selling for $1 million or more. Quaint shore cottages have been replaced by hulking rentals with 10 bedrooms, game rooms, elevators, whirlpool bathtubs and pools.
At the same time, some sections of the North Carolina shoreline are running out of sand, leaving local officials to scramble for replacement sand and the money to pay for it.
In the past, many of these towns would have turned to the Army Corps of Engineers for help. Although better known for building bridges and dredging harbors, the Corps has also served as the largest source of federal sand dollars for eroding beaches. Since the mid-1950s, it has spent an estimated $1.5 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars on sand.
But in recent years, those projects have been criticized as wasteful, and the Bush administration's new budget has called for an end to new projects. In the meantime, beach towns are looking for new sources of funds.
Some, including Emerald Isle, are turning to FEMA.
Emerald Isle Spared
At one point Isabel was a powerful Category 5 hurricane, with winds greater than 155 mph churning across the Atlantic. By the time it made landfall on Sept. 18 near Drum Inlet, however, Isabel had weakened into a moderate Category 2 hurricane. Most of the ensuing damage resulted from storm surge that scooped up sand under oceanfront properties or flooded low-lying homes in poorer, inland communities.
Isabel's winds skirted Emerald Isle, with the eye making landfall about 70 miles to the north. The average wind speeds on the island were 30 to 55 mph, and there was little flooding. Property owners filed just three flood claims with FEMA, totaling $8,502.29, according to a FEMA database.
"Emerald Isle didn't even lose its electricity. That's how mild it was here," said Farmer, who lives in a house overlooking Bogue Sound.
In a series of e-mails written to local officials, Rush noted that most property damage was limited to shingles, siding and torn screens. "Flooding on town streets was typical of heavy rainfall events, but not overwhelming," he wrote on Sept. 19. The Post obtained copies of the e-mails.
One of the first areas Rush checked was a six-mile stretch of beach where the town had added sand to battle an eroding shoreline several months earlier. Rush wrote that the stretch -- nearly half of the town's 13 miles of beach -- appeared to have "fared very well." At least one property owner agreed, observing that the nourished beach actually appeared to have grown.
Nevertheless, Rush asked the town's engineers, Coastal Science & Engineering of Columbia, S.C., to survey the six-mile stretch. "There are some areas in the nourishment area where it appears that we MAY have lost some sand," he wrote in an e-mail on Sept. 22. "As you know, any lost sand should be eligible for FEMA reimbursement, and I want to make sure we maximize our FEMA reimbursements."
In a second e-mail sent the same day to the engineers, Rush wrote: "My guess is that the grand total of erosion losses will be relatively minor, however, I'd like to file a FEMA claim for any losses that we did experience, even if it only amounts to a few hundred thousand dollars or so."
In an interview, Rush said Emerald Isle qualified for FEMA funds because the town had spent $11.7 million of its own tax dollars in 2003 to replenish sand on the six-mile stretch of beach and had maintained it ever since. The only other requirement -- that the area be part of a federally declared disaster -- was met within days when the Bush administration named Carteret County among the numerous coastal communities eligible for federal aid.
"We view the beach as part of our infrastructure," Rush said. "Obviously, the reason folks come to Emerald Isle is that we have a nice beach out there." A healthy beach also provides a buffer against storms, he said.
According to state figures, Emerald Isle has been losing about two to three feet of shoreline a year. But Rush said erosion has accelerated in some areas: "Since the early to mid-1990s, we've had a lot of erosion."
That time period overlaps a dramatic run-up in property values. Since 1993, the assessed value of Emerald Isle's approximately 6,000 properties has more than doubled, to $1.4 billion. Much of the resort is now built up, and owners have begun replacing older cottages with larger, more luxurious investment homes. Emerald Isle also has one of the lowest tax rates among beach towns in North Carolina, with combined county and local taxes of just 48 cents for each $100 of assessed value. In the same decade that its property values have doubled, Emerald Isle's local tax rate has dropped by nearly 20 percent.
For nearly three decades, North Carolina experienced a relatively quiet period of hurricanes. But in the mid-1990s, that trend reversed and the coast has since been buffeted by half a dozen hurricanes, including back-to-back storms in 1996. The hurricanes and subsequent disaster relief payments have exposed the increasing vulnerability of the state's coast and have prompted increased efforts by beach towns to build up their shorelines.
After Hurricane Isabel, surveyors determined that Emerald Isle had lost 128,187 cubic yards of sand, or about 7 percent of the six-mile stretch of beach. In October, Rush filed a claim with FEMA, this time noting that the six-mile section had withstood Isabel "relatively well." He estimated the replacement cost of sand to be $2.3 million, a figure later lowered to about $1.9 million. FEMA is paying for 75 percent of the cost, with the state's Division of Emergency Management picking up the balance.
The sand was pumped onto the beach in March in front of a row of condominiums and vacation homes.
Under FEMA's policies, Emerald Isle can file new claims the next time a hurricane chews away part of the six-mile stretch. "As long as we maintain the beach and we lose sand, I would suspect we would be eligible again," Rush said. "And we would file a claim."
Rush noted that FEMA also makes payments -- in the event of a natural disaster -- to people who live near flood-prone rivers or in earthquake zones. Paying those who live near an eroding shoreline is no different, he said. "Everyone in this country lives in a dangerous place."
Running Out of Sand
In some North Carolina beach towns, sand is now considered such a precious commodity that locals steal it. After Isabel, thieves took "massive amounts" of sand from stockpiles that Dare County officials had placed along the Outer Banks, according to Norma Mills, the Dare County attorney.
"People were stealing fairly sizable amounts of sand," Mills said. "In some places out here, sand is a pricey item."
Erosion rates along the Outer Banks vary from town to town, and sometimes within towns. Areas in Kitty Hawk, South Nags Head and Rodanthe have lost most of their beaches, leaving vacation homes defenseless against the pounding surf.
Dozens of homes were condemned after Isabel undercut their pilings, exposed their septic systems or swept them off of their concrete slabs. In Nags Head, FEMA is spending millions of dollars to create an emergency dune to protect rental properties in an area where condemned houses now lean into the surf. Several of the houses are actually in front of the dune. At least one of the streets has already lost its front row of houses to the Atlantic, and officials suspect it may only be a matter of time before it loses the next row.
"The ocean is going to reclaim those houses unless we can get a bigger beach," said Dave Clark, director of public works in Nags Head.
Clark said the emergency berm will buy homeowners time as the town and county explore other ways to shore up the beach. FEMA is picking up 75 percent of the cost, which soared from $1.1 million to $5.1 million after Nags Head found out it had lost more sand than it first estimated. A contractor is trucking the sand in from a pit on the mainland at a cost 60 percent higher than FEMA initially estimated.
FEMA has also approved berms for the towns of Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, but it is still negotiating how much it will pay. In Hatteras Village, the agency paid for a berm but declined to say how much. It paid $6.2 million to fill in an inlet cut by Isabel near the town of Frisco.
The Dare County beach towns are seeking a 50-year commitment from the Army Corps of Engineers to widen their beaches with sand pumped from offshore. The plan has been approved by the Corps, according to Dare County Planner Ray Sturza, but there is no money appropriated in the federal budget.
The beach towns hope to persuade members of Congress to put money back in the budget for new beach fills. In the meantime, the county is thinking of doing its own sand replenishment, a move that would make it eligible in the future for FEMA aid.
Meanwhile, a growing number of property owners are taking matters into their own hands. After Isabel, hundreds hired contractors to bulldoze sand into protective barriers in front of their oceanfront homes. Under state law, the bulldozers are supposed to scrape down only one foot into the sand. But there aren't enough regulators, and no one knows how much sand was actually moved.
In Duck, an exclusive resort on the northern Outer Banks, the beach scrapes appear to have exacerbated erosion in some spots, according to Town Manager Chris Layton. "I was on the beach last week and I could see a drop-off," he said. "All of this money people have spent is ending up in the ocean."
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