Beach renourishment endgame starts to crystallize after months of uncertainty portcitydaily.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from portcitydaily.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Biden policy disrupts beach renourishment status quo portcitydaily.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from portcitydaily.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Faced with the very real possibility that federal funding for New Hanover County’s beach nourishment projects might have washed away, Wilmington-area officials are scrambling to try and get the projects back on track.
But with budgets stretched by the COVID-19 pandemic and time running out to finalize any beach-building work to take place later this year, it could be winter 2022 or even later before Wrightsville, Carolina and Kure beaches see fresh injections of sand on their beach strands – assuming new funding can be secured.
“Frankly, we don’t have an answer right now,” said Carolina Beach Mayor LeAnn Pierce. “We’re not sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring it, but we just don’t know. It’s extremely frustrating.”
“We are still trying to find out what happened and we’re working toward a remedy,” said Tim Buckland, New Hanover County intergovernmental affairs manager.
County and town officials have been elated at the news that beach nourishment projects in Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Wrightsville Beach were authorized under the Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, which was included in a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending package former President Donald Trump signed into law Dec. 27, 2020.
After projects receive federal authorization, federal appropriations for the projects still have to be approved.
The omnibus spending bill included the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, which doled out more than $53 million for operations and maintenance projects within the Corps’ Wilmington District.