March 8, 2002
|
| The Atlantic Ocean flows freely through the entrance of the new Mason Inlet. |
SHELL ISLAND | At high tide Thursday afternoon, a new Mason Inlet met the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.
“We met out there at 4 a.m. and started working when the tide began receding,” said Stephen Bassett, president of the Indiana-based company doing the work that Thursday included removing a heavy steel seawall between the ocean and the inlet.
Rather than a flash flood of water and sea foam rushing through the inlet’s new mouth, its opening, timed with the tides, allowed the ocean to filter slowly in, as if it hadn’t missed a beat.
At 35 feet long and 3 feet wide, the individual heavy steel sheets were installed in an 800-foot, C-shaped seawall at the high-tide line. Workers pulled the straight run, about 650 feet, Thursday and left the curved end sections in place as a wind wall to control erosion until the inlet stabilizes.
For the past month, Mr. Bassett had said the project was running ahead of schedule. He upped the ante Thursday and predicted it would be finished on time.
But for that to happen, the rest of the job would need to run as smoothly as it already has. The recent lack of strong coastal storms has kept the project trouble-free.
“We should be done by April 1. That would be my best guess,” he said.
Permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers call for the project to be completed by March 31, but, the county has signaled it’s prepared to ask the corps for an extension.
The inlet was relocated 3,000 feet north to protect property at the northern end of Wrightsville Beach. Over the past 15 years, it had wandered a half-mile south to within 100 feet of the Shell Island Resort.
The county is paying the $6.5 million cost up front, using money from its room-tax fund, which is a 3 percent tax on hotel stays and rentals under 30 days. But the county will eventually send out assessments to 1,044 property owners at northern Wrightsville Beach and Figure Eight Island.
Those owners agreed late last year to pay for the project through the assessments, which got the project started. The county also had to agree to cordon off the area for wildlife monitoring.
The next step is to fill in the old inlet. That will probably begin Sunday or Monday, Mr. Bassett said. Engineers designed the project so that once the new section was opened, the flow through the old section would slow to a point that would allow it to be plugged easily.
Bill Cleary, a coastal geologist with the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, said the inlet’s future depends on maintenance, because if left alone, it would more than likely begin its southerly migration anew.
“From a long-term engineering standpoint, it’s been successful, but it will have to be maintained,” he said.
With the agreement to foot the relocation bill, the northern Wrightsville Beach and Figure Eight Island property owners also agreed to pick up the tab on future maintenance dredging.