Kill Devil Hills Beach Nourishment Coming Sooner Than Expected
The ongoing beach nourishment project that began in Duck last month is actually moving ahead of schedule, and as a result, the contractor has changed the project schedule and the town of Kill Devil Hills will now be getting its portion completed much earlier than previously expected. Read on for the official press release.
There has been a major change in the beach nourishment schedule for the Town of Kill Devil Hills’ project. Great Lakes Dock and Dredge (GLDD), the beach nourishment contractor, will begin nourishment dredging in Kill Devil Hills in late June or early July. Completion of the Kill Devil Hills project is now anticipated to be in mid-August.
The overall nourishment project began in Duck in May, and GLDD has been operating three dredges to pump sand onto the beaches. Originally, two of the three were to be relocated to another area away from the outer Banks during the month of June. GLDD now anticipates that the Dodge and Padre Island Dredges will be available to stay on the Outer Banks until early to mid-July. In order to maximize the production of these to dredges, they will construct the portion of the project closest to the offshore borrow area, which is Kill Devil Hills.
The bid package for the overall beach nourishment project, including Duck (pictured below), Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, and Kill Devil Hills, did not specific the order in which construction would proceed to allow Dare County the ability to maximize cost savings that could be achieved through scheduling flexibility.
GLDD will begin mobilizing in Kill Devil Hills immediately to prepare for dredging anticipated to begin in the coming weeks. The company intends on landing a subline, which is a large steel pipe that leads out to the dredge from onshore, in Kill Devil Hills sometime early next week. The Helga Street beach access remains GLDD’s staging site for the Kill Devil Hills’ project.
The Town of Kill Devil Hills will continue to provide up-to-date nourishment project reports on its beach nourishment website http://www.kdhnc.com/398/Beach-Nourishment and through www.morebeachtolove.com.
Beach nourishment project in Duck, NC, on June 1, 2017. (photo by Matt Artz for OBX Entertainment)
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Will this block off much of the beach for vacationers?
Not much, but the areas where they are working will be inaccessible for swimming. The KDH portion of the project will start and be based from Helga Street, moving south as it progresses.
Just returned from Kill Devil Hiil, very disappointed in First Flight Realty for not preparing people for this beach renourishment. We stayed at Seven Cs with family, paid for ocean front, got there 6/26/17 & were supposed to stay till 7/2/17 , we ended up leaving a day early because our beach access was closed, we drove 7 hrs to enjoy the beach & feel that we should of been informed, glad that your beaches are being improved but left with such disappointment in this how rents were left high & dry with no one seemingly caring about vacationers whose vacations where disrupted!! We are in our late 60’s & we don’t plan on returning to OBX after this bad experience!