Author: Kip Tabb | Outer Banks Voice, September 29, 2024

From the North Carolina Department of Coastal Management interactive map showing erosion rates in Rodanthe. (Photo provided by Reide Corbett, CSI)

What can be done to prevent Rodanthe’s houses from collapsing?

Author: Kip Tabb | Voice from the Outer Banks

Over the past four days, the sea has claimed three Rodanthe homes, bringing the total to 10 homes lost since 2020. This does not include two homes purchased and demolished by the National Park Service (NPS) earlier this year.

The two houses demolished by the NPS were once located far from the shoreline, with a protective line of sand dunes in front of them. They have become uninhabitable by 2023. At the time of demolition, the mean high tide line was under the houses, and the east-facing front pilings were actually on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore (CHNS) property, which extends to this mean high tide line.

“Given the rate of erosion, it’s not surprising what’s happening,” Outer Banks Group Superintendent Dave Hallac told The Voice. “It was only a matter of time before the ocean collided with these structures.”

If the ocean collides with the structure and collapses, debris will be scattered for miles along the beach, and sometimes it may take months before cleanup can be completed.

“There may still be trash floating in the ocean that could take weeks to wash out. There may be some minor beaching of the Cape Lookout National Seashore,” Hallac said.

CHNS’s purchase of both properties was a first-of-its-kind program that Hallac hopes can continue in the future.

“We are working with Dare County, N.C., and our Park Service colleagues to see if there is a way to model a larger program based on the pilot project we have implemented,” he said.

The buyout program is one of a number of strategies being considered as the increasingly famous sight of an Outer Banks beach house falling into the ocean is making national headlines and fueling debates about sea level rise, climate change and the livability of the ocean. coasts. Some of the solutions being considered focus on changing the insurance payment system to prevent house collapses, as well as implementing government programs for the purchase and relocation of these properties.

“There is no simple solution here. This will require a multi-pronged approach,” Reide Corbett, dean of the Institute of Coastal Studies, told The Voice.

Corbett, an expert in coastal processes, said: “This area (Rodanthe) is a known erosion hotspot. Rates of (higher than) 3 feet per year have remained stable for decades.

The North Carolina Department of Coastal Management’s Rodanthe map, showing shoreline retreat, indicates erosion rates range from 9.5 to nearly 4.5 feet per year between the north end of the village and Dean Avenue on the south side.

A 2023 report by Rob Young, director of the Shoreline Development Research Program at Western Carolina University, identified 80 properties on the shoreline of the affected area. Well over half of the homes were built before 2000 – the oldest in 1965, and with the exception of two high-value homes built in 2016, all of the homes along this stretch of beach have been in place for at least 15 years.

In 2023, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) and CHNS hosted a series of three workshops “to guide next steps as the state works to address threatened riparian structures.” Report, 2024 Inter-Agency Working Group on Endangered Coastal Structures Reportwas released in August of this year and highlighted the complexities local, state and federal authorities face in trying to address what is happening in Rodanthe and other areas of the state.

Cover of the Interagency Working Group report

Each workshop focused on one specific area – financial assistance options, the role of public and private insurance companies, and legal and regulatory authorities.

In particular, the second workshop, examining the role that insurance plays in the decisions homeowners make when the ocean threatens their home, discussed why a homeowner allows a structure to collapse into the sea.

In the working group’s report, the study’s authors noted: “Currently, property insured under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is not eligible for a full claim until the structure collapses.”

Dare County Manager Bobby Outten explained the practical implications of this policy.

“If you take a house on the beach, it will be covered by an NFIP flood insurance policy,” he said. “The maximum policy you can get is $250,000, so the owner is sitting around waiting for his house to fall down so he can get his $250,000 back.”

Since the home may be uninhabitable at this point, the only hope the homeowner has to pay for the property investment is to allow the ocean to destroy the home.

The property owner covers the beach cleanup costs – usually around $50,000, but Outten points out that he “makes $200,000.”

Panelists from the insurance and structures at risk working group recommended “options for the NFIP to provide insurance against the removal or relocation of immediately threatened coastal structures prior to imminent collapse.”

“Such reforms could help prevent the predictable collapse of seriously threatened structures, thereby reducing the financial exposure of the NFIP and the impact of collapses on public safety and the environment,” they wrote.

North Carolina Congressman Greg Murphy (R) has introduced legislation that closely follows the task force’s recommendations.

Introduced in June this year, it is a two-party system Environmental Risk Prevention Act of 2024 restored provisions included in federal programs from 1987 to the early 1990s.

When asked by The Voice why he introduced this legislation, Rep. Murphy recalled that after visiting the beach with Superintendent Hallac, he felt it was important to address the issue.

“I was wondering how we can prevent this from happening… How can we be proactive rather than reactive,” he said. “We just want to encourage citizens not to let their houses fall into the ocean and prevent ecological disasters.”

The bill allows the NFIP to pre-emptively pay homeowners if their home “is condemned or deemed unsafe for occupancy by the state or local authority due to imminent collapse or subsidence due to shoreline erosion.” Or, if the house can be moved, the law allows payments of up to 40% of the value of the structure.

The Act also limits the amount of insurance for a house that has been found to be at risk of falling into the sea. This requires “the state or local authority” to declare the structure uninhabitable. This is a process that is not always as obvious as it may seem at first glance.

“We are giving them a yellow flag,” Outten County Manager said, referring to the home that cannot be used. – You can’t live in these houses. You cannot occupy these houses. You can’t rent these houses. You can’t enter these houses.

Outten, however, struggles to distinguish a house with a yellow tag from a condemned house.

“The rules are a little strange because the courts have said that if someone wants to apply to try to repair one of these houses, if they have enough land to build a septic tank and if they can show that the house is structurally sound… then we are obligated to issue a permit if they meet all the rules.

If the high tide line reaches the piles of a structure, declaring it uninhabitable is easy, although unless the house collapses, the NFIP will not compensate the owner. Due to the value of the property in Rodanthe, the payout was invariably the full $250,000.

However, if the high tide line has not yet reached the property, as Outten explains, the property owner may find it beneficial to generate as much income from the property as possible for as long as possible.

“If we go a little further down to the beach where they can still put in a septic system and they can still use the house, in their mind the value will be greater than $250,000 because it is a usable house that can still be developed. rented and can still generate income from it,” he said.

While much of the discussion among elected leaders and government officials focused on insurance and how it can be more effectively applied to distressed structures, there was also discussion about how government agencies can work more actively with property owners before an insurance claim occurs and fall.

The first interagency working group addressed this issue in its final report, suggesting that North Carolina should “consider leveraging and expanding…efforts to acquire, relocate, or remove immediately threatened structures under existing programs such as the Beach Access Grant Program public and NC waterfronts.”

She also recommended the creation of “a new statewide program with funds dedicated to addressing endangered coastal structures” and wrote that “beach communities may consider establishing their own buyout or financial assistance programs.”

The suggestions presented by the working group are very similar to the content of Rob Young’s proposal Benefits of Redemptions in Rodanthe report.

He points out that due to Rodanthe’s dynamic coastline, beach powering is disproportionately expensive, with a 2023 Coastal Science and Engineering cost estimate of approximately $40 million.

“Long-term beach maintenance costs will total approximately $120 million over the next 15 years. It is assumed that the sand from each feeding site will last about five years, which may be slightly longer for this coastline,” he wrote.

For comparison, in 2022 Nags Head added 7.45 km of beachfront for just under $14 million.

He suggests that the alternative is a “purchase plan for highly exposed properties.”

Using tax assessments to determine property values, he wrote that “purchasing all of the selected (80) properties will cost nearly $43 million” and that “by removing these properties, Rodanthe will likely have a viable beach for 15-25 years.”

As Young notes in his report, buyouts “could be phased in, focusing first on properties with the highest exposure and willing sellers… The initial costs would be much less than dining on the beach.”

He ends his report with a cautionary note, writing that “It is abundantly clear: the status quo (no action) is the least beneficial and most environmentally damaging option.”

SEE ALSO: Another house collapses in Rodanthe, the third in a week