2 days ago
As the ocean rises, NCDOT looks for a way to maintain ferry service to Ocracoke
N.C. 12, the highway that runs down the spine of the Outer Banks, is constantly at risk of being covered in water and sand because of erosion and sea-level rise.
Those forces also threaten one of the state's ferry terminals. Ocean water has swallowed pavement and the septic drain field at the Hatteras Inlet car ferry terminal on Ocracoke, forcing the N.C. Department of Transportation to consider whether to fortify the docks or build new ones elsewhere on the island.
NCDOT has come up with four options that it made public in May. Because of the dramatic loss of shoreline in front of the ferry terminal at the north end of Ocracoke, doing nothing is not one of them, said Jed Dixon, director of the NCDOT's Ferry Division.
'In one storm, we could lose all this if nothing's done,' Dixon said, gesturing toward an aerial photo of the terminal, known as South Dock. 'So we really need to start the planning now.'
Ferries are lifelines for Ocracoke, an island community of fewer than 800 year-round residents whose population swells several times that size in the summer. NCDOT's vehicle ferries between Ocracoke and Hatteras carried 186,156 cars and trucks last year and 426,222 passengers.
Two of the options for preserving that service involve expanding the ferry terminal in Ocracoke Village and landing the Hatteras ferries there. That would more than double the run time between Hatteras and Ocracoke to 2 1/2 hours and require NCDOT to buy more of the larger boats capable of operating in the open waters of Pamlico Sound.
A third option would be a new ferry terminal at Devil Shoals, in an undeveloped area outside the village near the Ocracoke Campground. It also would require larger boats and a longer trip, and would come with unpopular environmental costs both in the water and on land.
The final option is to overhaul South Dock, with new slips for larger boats and new 'stacking lanes,' where cars can wait to board. The old waiting area is no longer usable after large sections of pavement were washed away.
The big challenge with maintaining South Dock is that more than a mile of N.C. 12 just south of the terminal is close to the surf and prone to flooding. In 2020, after Hurricane Dorian washed away the beach and left the road broken and buckled, NCDOT installed 2,500 sandbags to try to stabilize the protective dune.
The bags just barely hold back the sea, says Dave Hallac, superintendent of Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which stretches over 70 miles and includes most of Ocracoke.
'Even on a calm day, the waves are basically hitting the other sides of those sand bags,' Hallac told members of the N.C. Board of Transportation's ferry committee in December. 'And then when the surf kicks up, there's just nothing to stop it.'
Because of rising ocean waters and subsiding land, scientists predict sea-level rise of 15 to 22 inches along the Outer Banks by 2050, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment released in late 2023. That will make South Dock and other areas of N.C. 12 even more vulnerable, Hallac said.
'Challenges associated with erosion are going to become worse with sea-level rise, and you don't have to be an oceanographer to know that,' he said. 'With more water, we're going to have more erosion.'
What to do at South Dock is just the latest challenge for NCDOT along N.C. 12. Four years ago, Dare County created the N.C. 12 Task Force to work with NCDOT, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Hyde County to develop a long-term plan to keep the highway open. The plan focused on seven 'hot spots' where the road is especially vulnerable, including the section on Ocracoke near South Dock.
One of the hot spots has been fixed in a way that shows how difficult and expensive maintaining N.C. 12 can be. Two years ago, NCDOT bypassed the so-called S-curves north of Rodanthe by building a 2.4-mile bridge out over Pamlico Sound, at a cost of $154 million.
It's hard to focus on one trouble spot without thinking about the others. At a public meeting about South Dock on Hatteras last month, charter boat captain Steve Coulter asked NCDOT officials about the section of highway between Frisco and Hatteras Village that became an inlet after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and remains perilously narrow.
'All of this is moot if that doesn't get fixed,' said Coulter, who heads Dare County's Waterways Commission. 'That's the narrowest place on the damn island. The most susceptible spot on Highway 12 from Ocracoke to Oregon Inlet right now is right there.'
The narrowest place on Ocracoke is just south of South Dock. Of the four choices presented by NCDOT, fortifying the existing ferry terminal would be the least expensive and disruptive to residents and visitors alike. But it can't be done without also fixing the road, says Natalie Kavanagh, another member of the Dare County Waterways Commission who attended the meeting.
'That is the one that makes the most sense,' Kavanagh said, nodding toward the NCDOT's South Dock plan. 'But we've got to get people safely from there to the village.'
Ronnie Sawyer, NCDOT's deputy division engineer for the area that includes Dare and Hyde counties, said the N.C. 12 Task Force identified potential strategies for stabilizing that stretch of highway, ranging from more sand bags to moving or raising the road or building a bridge.
The problem, Sawyer said: 'We don't have any money to go with our desires there.'
In addition to public meetings on Hatteras and Ocracoke, NCDOT collected feedback on its four plans for South Dock online, where some patterns emerged from the mostly anonymous comments.
For starters, few support moving the Hatteras car ferry to Silver Lake in Ocracoke Village. Many said that would both suffocate the community with cars and threaten the tourism business with fewer and longer boat trips.
'The Village couldn't handle traffic from all the runs, especially in season,' one person wrote. 'Moving the terminal and creating a 2+ hour trip will kill the economy and turn Ocracoke into another Portsmouth,' a reference to the abandoned town on a neighboring island.
A new terminal at Devil Shoals enjoys a little more support, though usually as the best of four bad choices. Many oppose the dredging and loss of habitat that would be required to make it work and worry about marring a pristine part of the island.
'Please leave this area alone,' one person wrote.
Reinforcing South Dock is the most popular choice, as long as it includes stabilizing N.C. 12. 'This is the only feasible option if Ocracoke is to survive,' someone wrote.
But others are skeptical about trying to hold off the sea at the north end of the island.
'I know many prefer this, but it's not a long-term answer,' one person wrote. 'The erosion is only going to continue. Better to move it south and ensure access long term.'
That's essentially what the N.C. 12 Task Force concluded in 2023.
'It was the consensus of the subcommittee that neither South Dock nor the roadway could be protected for many more years absent major engineering of the island,' it wrote in its final report.
The group suggested moving the ferry dock closer to the village, south of the vulnerable stretch of highway, though it said more study was needed to find a location.
NCDOT's options for landing Hatteras Inlet ferries on Ocracoke are all conceptual at this point, lacking both details and cost estimates. Once it decides later this year, the state still needs environmental permits and to find the money, which would be considerable if it must build a new fleet of larger boats.
Dixon, the ferry division director, said the state could decide to work in steps, shoring up South Dock and the nearby section of N.C. 12 while it works on a longer-term solution.
But there's a sense of urgency, as the waves continue to eat into the shoreline at South Dock.
'It's changed fast,' Dixon said. 'We just don't know where it stops. Is there some line where it's going to start gaining back at some point, or is it going to continue to lose? We don't know.'
For more information about the South Dock study, including renderings of the four options, go to
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