NC - Dream of a Rodanthe beach house ends with a short sale and, soon, demolition
The National Park Service has purchased a pair of crumbling oceanfront homes on the northern end of Rodanthe, a move that could be the first step toward removing more homes in that erosion-threatened part of the Outer Banks.
The homes have East Beacon Road addresses, but any visitor to the Cape Hatteras National Seashore will find them sitting in the middle of the beach strand just past the end of East Beacon Road or East Point Drive. They are two of about a dozen homes in Rodanthe that sit seaward of the dune line.
In the next 30 to 45 days, the Park Service will start demolishing the homes, David Hallac, superintendent of the Park Service’s Cape Hatteras National Seashore, told The News & Observer. The land where they stood will be turned into a beach access. And Hallac believes these two houses could be the beginning of a broader effort in the area.
“There are a number of homes that are if not threatened, imminently threatened,” Hallac said. “When I say that, I mean that the structures or the houses are frequently surrounded by water and in some cases the houses may not be able to be lived in. So there are a number of additional structures that would likely be suited for this type of mitigation in the future.”
The National Park Service bought the houses using the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is generated from the federal government’s leasing of land for oil and gas exploration. The federal government uses the money to purchase land that helps the Park Service achieve its management goals.
Erin Seekamp, the director of N.C. State University’s Coastal Resilience and Sustainability Initiative, told The News & Observer there’s irony to using the Land and Water Conservation Fund rather than taxpayer money to pay for the mitigation project.
“Basically we’re using the economic benefits of oil and gas leasing to be able to offset some of the carbon impacts that are accelerating sea-level rise by using those funds to purchase these houses,” Seekamp said.
Since 2020, five homes have collapsed into the ocean around Rodanthe. To Hallac and the Park Service, those pose a threat to the ecology of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore and to the people who want to visit it.
Septic tanks that crack open from the abandoned homes leach human waste into the water. Pieces of siding and roof and nails wash dozens of miles up and down the coast, especially if the wreckage is left to linger.
A May study prepared for Dare County found that the beach in Rodanthe is eroding at rates of about 10 feet per year. That study also found that the dune line there provides “little to no storm protection.”
Buying properties threatened by that erosion helps owners escape a situation that offers no simple answers, Hallac said. But the goal is really to protect the seashore and the wildlife living there from the impacts of any future collapses.
“The owners do end up selling their homes and being able to walk away from a difficult situation but the purpose really is to remove that structure, to remove those impacts to the resources and the visitors and finally, and this is a tremendous benefit, to make the area a public access site following the restoration of the beach area,” Hallac said.
Headaches at Mermaid’s Kiss
Erick Saks has loved the Outer Banks since he visited them as a child. He and his wife, Vanessa, took frequent trips there when they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. They were married in Duck.
