North Carolina beach houses have fallen into the ocean. Is there a fix?

New studies show that both beach nourishments and buyouts in Rodanthe, N.C., will be costly. But no funding for any fix is in sight.

By Brady Dennis
May 15, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT



Waves erode the beach behind houses on Seagull Street in Rodanthe, N.C. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

It’s been a rough stretch for Rodanthe, N.C., a scenic sliver of the Outer Banks where houses are crumbling into the ocean, owners are paying to move properties farther from the pounding surf and residents are pushing officials to do more to protect the fast-eroding shoreline.

At a town meeting early this year, Dare County’s manager, Bobby Outten, explained that the local government couldn’t begin to fund the type of extensive beach nourishment that would buy Rodanthe more time from the encroaching sea. But he did promise to undertake an engineering assessment so residents would know just how much it might cost to dredge offshore sediment and add a new expanse of beach.

This week, the county published those figures in a 35-page report, and they underscore the unenviable predicament facing Rodanthe — a quandary that scientists say other imperiled communities like it are sure to confront as seas rise and storms intensify.

A one-time beach nourishment in the area would cost as much as $40 million, the report found — roughly double the amount a similar study found a decade earlier. Maintaining that beach over 30 years would cost more than $175 million. The report details other potential options, such as installing structures to help slow erosion, but every path comes with a massive price tag.

“It’s a big number and it’s a lot of money, and we don’t have that amount of money,” Outten in an interview. “We don’t have a method to fund a project of that scale.”

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By Brady Dennis
Brady Dennis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning national reporter for The Washington Post, focusing on the environment and public health. He previously spent years covering the nation’s economy. Twitter https://twitter.com/brady_dennis