Heres my synopsis of what happened at the Board of Aldermen meeting last night. I hope I got everything right. It anyone else was there and I got something wrong, please say so. Last nights NTB Board of Aldermen meeting went pretty well, I think. Attendance was good and it seems people came to listen. Ill skip the parts that pertained to other issues than the north end. A presentation was done by Ken Willson of the Engineering firm, Coastal Planning & Engineering (commonly called CP&E.) CP&E is also involved with the terminal groin proceedings for Figure 8 Island and Ocean Isle. Ken said that, had NTB signed onto the terminal groin plan of action two years ago when the State approved it would allow four in the State, we still wouldnt have one up and built now. That means wed still be in the same situation with erosion and sand bags, but would have spent a lot of additional money on the groin-related stuff. It takes about three years to get though just the design and permitting stages of such a project. The drone photos of the work area were taken by a member of the work crew who happens to own a drone. I say this only because someone posted something about why NTB was paying for drone photos. Were not. Carin Faulkner has been named Assistant Town Manager in addition to her duties as Town Clerk. She is very busy, but encourages folks to contact her with questions about the project. Her email is [email protected] Shes also posting stuff to the Town web site as quickly as humanly possible. There is a lot of info there under the Shoreline Protection tab ntbnc.org/Pages/ShorelineProtection.aspx I encourage everyone to have a look, not only at the North End Sand Bags page, but all of them. The gaps/sunken areas in the geotube were not by design, but worked out well for draining away water that overtopped the tube. The sand bags are turning out to fill higher than anticipated. The planned elevation at the south end was 7 ½ feet. Instead, its 9 to 9 ½ feet tall. There is discussion about possibly making the entire bag line so that, instead of measuring height from the beach, measuring for level at the top, matching the south end. The sand bagging is scheduled to be done by 3/17, with all the equipment gone by 3/24. They are a little ahead of schedule at this point. The northern three houses have been officially added to the project. They were not in the original plan because they could not, at that time, have met the criteria for imminently threatened. There is some discussion as to the fill and grading landward of the sand bags. There was so much escarpment, so quickly, that the original plan wont work. It would left a trench between the backfill and the escarpment. There is discussion as to how to handle this as the current amount of sand will not be sufficient to cover a larger area. The source of the additional sand is yet to be determined. There will be a Board of Aldermen retreat on 2/11 to discuss long-term contingencies for NTB. The public may attend the day-long retreat. Some of the topics will be the possibility of more frequent channel dredging to provide a more consistent sand source, the possibility of dredging the channel in a manner that aims it in a direction to our benefit, possible modifications to the plan for the next channel realignment scheduled for 2016/2017, and discussion of planning for a terminal groin. Ken Willson, of CP&E, showed a diagram for a 1200-foot one. It would not extend 1200 feet into the sea. Instead, there is a land portion that would be buried across the spit. It would keep spit erosion from getting around and behind the groin, thus cutting the groin off from land. The Board reiterated their commitment to the people of NTB and that they are intent on keeping their word to do their best to protect us.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 21:59:08 +0000