After several major hurricanes impacted the shores of North Carolina in the 1990s, Carteret County completed a number of initial beach nourishment projects and later selected Moffatt & Nichol to develop a beach nourishment master plan for Bogue Banks.
The Moffatt & Nichol team conducted coastal engineering studies and developed a multi-decadal joint federal U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that incorporated all of Bogue Banks’ beach nourishment and inlet management needs for the next 50 years. In addition to the EIS, staff completed Section 7 consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) under the Statewide Programmatic Biological Opinion and with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries to develop an individual Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statements. The team secured the necessary state and federal permits to address Bogue Banks’ needs and to use specific sand sources for the beach nourishment. With the 50-yr permits now in-hand, the timeline for individual project approvals from environmental agencies has now been streamlined to two to three months instead of nine to 18 months. This has allowed Carteret County to advertise projects earlier in the bidding season to improve the chances for competitive bids.
