NCDOT installs sandbags to try to keep a vulnerable stretch of Outer Banks highway open
There’s not much between the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge visitors center and the Atlantic Ocean — just a two-lane highway and a thin berm of sand.
Often that’s not enough to keep the surf from spilling across the parking lot and under the building. The berm was last breached in November, temporarily shutting down the only highway link to Hatteras Island and the Outer Banks.
Now the N.C. Department of Transportation is spending $400,000 to install sandbags along an 1,100-foot stretch of N.C. 12 near the visitors center. It’s a stopgap measure while NCDOT figures out how to protect one of the most vulnerable sections of the Outer Banks highway.
“We know this is only a temporary fix,” Win Bridgers, the top NCDOT engineer in the region, said in a written statement. “But it’s vital for us to do everything we can to keep N.C. 12 open and accessible while we seek a more permanent solution.”
Last spring, NCDOT won a $1.8 million federal grant to develop detailed, long-term plans for keeping N.C. 12 passable through the refuge during and following big storms. The department calls the project SAND — Solving Access for NC 12 in Dare County — and says it expects to settle on a strategy by the end of 2026.
N.C. 12 extends 11 miles through the Pea Island refuge just south of Oregon Inlet. The highway separates the ocean dunes from the marshes and impoundment ponds along the Pamlico Sound that attract ducks, swans, geese and other waterfowl.
The vulnerability of the road at Pea Island is nothing new. In 2011, Hurricane Irene cut a new inlet through the refuge that forced NCDOT to build a half-mile long bridge a few miles south of the visitors center. And the ocean frequently washed over an area known as the “S-curves” at the southern end of the refuge near the community of Rodanthe.
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NCDOT bypassed the S-curves in 2022 when it opened the 2.4-mile Rodanthe Bridge that juts out into Pamlico Sound.
Environmental groups had pressed NCDOT to build a much longer bridge that would bypass the wildlife refuge altogether. As the state planned to replace the Bonner Bridge over Oregon Inlet, the Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Refuge Association urged it to build a single 17-mile bridge from the inlet to Rodanthe.
But NCDOT said a bridge that long would have been prohibitively expensive. Instead, it built the 2.8-mile Marc Basnight Bridge over the inlet into the refuge, at a cost of $252 million, followed by the $158 million bridge at Rodanthe known as the jug handle because of its shape.
In between is the 11-mile section of N.C. 12 that still remains at the mercy of ocean surf and sand during storms. Jeff Ryder, the Dare County maintenance engineer for NCDOT, estimates N.C. 12 has been closed in the refuge due to high water four times since the Rodanthe Bridge opened in 2022.
NCDOT says it will take about a week to install the sandbags, starting Friday, Jan. 17. Traffic near the refuge visitors center will be down to one lane while the work takes place.
This story was originally published January 17, 2025 at 12:57 PM.
