Timing is everything. Yolanda and Don Hitko can attest to that. The Michigan transplants moved to Yaupon Beach the day before Hurricane Floyd slammed onto the North Carolina coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its driving winds, tides and floods cut fresh scars on beaches, already struggling to heal from an earlier assault by Hurricane Dennis. Meeting little resistance, Floyd managed to wipe out many remaining dunes, pushing sand across ocean beach roads and into soundside marshes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Waves crashed up the beach and scoured sand from the base of the man-made six-foot dune that stood between the advancing sea and the Hitkos’ new home. The line of dunes that runs along their property and the public access way also took a pounding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I believe the dunes protected us,” Hitko says. With about $25,000 worth of property damage, he feels blessed compared to many Oak Island neighbors whose homes and businesses were destroyed by Floyd’s direct hit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oak Island is in line for a major beach nourishment project in 2004 that will transport sand to widen its beaches and engineer a dune system along its popular ocean front beaches. In the meantime, some sand from the Wilmington harbor relocation project will be placed on part of its sand-starved shores. Traditionally, the town has redistributed sand that could be retrieved in the wake of storms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I am definitely a believer in beach nourishment projects and am willing to pay my share,” Hitko pledges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Hitko knows that beach erosion and beach nourishment are “hot button” topics that evoke as many opinions as grains of sand on the beaches he would like to see restored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The catastrophic 1999 hurricane season heightened public awareness of the vulnerability of erosion-prone coastal communities, where beach erosion is a fact of life \u2014 nature’s work in progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, storm damage, coupled with mushrooming coastal development, seems to have been a catalyst for new pleas to state legislators for a funding mechanism to address long-term beach nourishment needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coastal Development Regulations in Place<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In 1974 the N. C. General Assembly passed the Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) to coordinate state and federal programs affecting coastal land and water resources, and to promote sustainable coastal development. Among other things, CAMA seeks to preserve natural ecological conditions for the barrier dune systems and beaches, and to safeguard their economic and aesthetic values, says Walter Clark, North Carolina Sea Grant coastal law and policy specialist. CAMA established the Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) as its regulatory arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n