Previously advised that it had received a grant from the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for its 2022 beach nourishment project, the Town of Southern Shores announced in its newsletter today that it has been notified the grant is for $1,408,247.19.
The towns of Kitty Hawk and Nags Head each received a grant in the same amount as Southern Shores, while the towns of Duck and Kill Devil Hills each received a grant of $1,450,921.35, according to a press release from N.C. DEQ, included with the Town’s newsletter article.
The grants were awarded by N.C. DEQ’s Division of Water Resources, which gave $11.5 million to eight communities in coastal North Carolina from its Coastal Storm Damage Mitigation Fund. An individual grant could have been as high as $2.5 million.
According to the press release and a statement by N.C. DEQ Secretary Michael S. Regan, the grants are to “restore our coastal areas damaged by Hurricane Florence.”
While The Beacon is pleased by the grant, we were not aware that the Southern Shores beaches experienced any long-term adverse effects from Hurricane Florence, which the National Weather Service describes as “a large and slow-moving Category One hurricane” that made landfall at Wrightsville Beach, considerably south of the Outer Banks, on Sept. 14, 2018, and caused flooding inland because of “record-breaking rainfalls.”
We well recall the devastation that flooding from Hurricane Florence caused New Bern, N.C. and other towns to the west of the Outer Banks.
See https://www.weather.gov/ilm/HurricaneFlorence
The Beacon also was not aware that the grant application filed by the Town of Southern Shores had anything to do with damage remediation associated with Florence. The Town Council approved a grant application for funding to support Option 4 of the beach nourishment plans recommended by the Town’s coastal engineering consultant, not to mitigate damage caused by Florence.
The Beacon, 10/23/20
The Southern Shores Beacon 