N.C. quietly stripped protections for Jockey’s Ridge State Park. Coastal residents are fighting back.

MANTEO — Concern over the continued protection of Jockey’s Ridge State Park drove a handful of people to attend a Coastal Resources Commission public hearing Tuesday afternoon at the Dare County Administration Building.

Most attendees not associated with the state commission had learned of the meeting with at most one day’s notice. They had the impression that the hearing was taking input about rolling back protections for the state’s largest medano, or asymmetrical sand dune without vegetation.

As it turned out, the protective status had been effectively reversed on the state level from October until the beginning of this month, and there is an ongoing lawsuit between state agencies about the matter.

Everyone attending the Jan. 9 meeting was of the same opinion, viewing the state designation of Jockey’s Ridge State Park as an area of environmental concern (AEC) as extremely important.

The Coastal Resources Commission regulates development in 20 coastal counties.

The public hearing was part of the commission’s ongoing efforts to reinstate 16 rules “considered critical” to the day-to-day operations of the state’s coastal management program, according to Mike Lopazanski, deputy director of the N.C. Division of Coastal Management and hearing moderator.

One of those rules, “Unique Coastal Geologic Formations,” designates Jockey’s Ridge as an AEC and restricts development for that reason.

Another rule designates Permuda Island in Onslow County as “a significant coastal archaeological resource area of environmental concern,” noting archaeological evidence of occupation dates as far back as the Middle Woodland Period of 300 B.C.E. through 800 C.E.

The other rules are not as site-specific and cover topics including coastal energy development, permitting authority, processing Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) permits, standards for work plats and more.

The lawsuit the Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) filed against the Rules Review Commission says that the removal of 30 of the CRC’s rules from the state administrative code “has caused immediate harm to the regulated public” and “adversely impacts the CRC’s statutory duty to regulate development and protect the natural resources of coastal North Carolina.”

The removals have also negatively impacted the Division of Coastal Management’s ability to administer permitting and enforcement under the CRC’s coastal management plan, according to the lawsuit.

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The twists and turns of what happened

Lopazanski explained that 30 rules were struck from the state code on the heels of the North Carolina General Assembly’s Oct. 3 passage of its budget bill.

Prior to that budget, “a rule could not be returned to an agency without the agency requesting return,” he said. A specific provision within the budget bill — formally called Session Law 2023-134 — changed that.

Just two days later, the Rules Review Commission sent 30 rules back to the Coastal Resources Commission (CRC), and the state codifier also struck those rules from the books Oct. 5.

None of the Rules Review Commission’s 10 members live in coastal counties. Eleven of the 13 CRC members live in coastal counties.

The CRC filed a declaratory judgment complaint in Wake County Superior Court on Nov. 3 “requesting the court resolve the dispute” between the two commissions with the 30 rules, he said.

In the meantime, the CRC enacted emergency rules — those 16 considered critical, essentially as they were previously written — which went into effect Jan. 1 and expire March 1.

Following the public hearings, the CRC at its February meeting plans to adopt “temporary rules” to replace the emergency rules, effectively maintaining those same 16 rules, Lopazanski said.

The other 14 rules will be addressed through the legislation.

The Rules Review Commission had “checked all the boxes” on the rules they returned, with objections over “ambiguity, clarity and rulemaking authority,” Lopazanski said, despite none of the rules being new.

Three hearings concerning the temporary rules were slated in three coastal counties over two days. Dare and Onslow counties were selected as hearing locations because they each have a site directly impacted by the rules, Lopazanski explained in an interview before the hearing.

General public hearings concerning all 16 rules ran simultaneously in Manteo and Morehead City at 1 p.m. Tuesday. The Onslow County hearing was Wednesday at 1 p.m.

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CRC and local public opinion align

Coastal Resources Commission Chair Renée Cahoon, in a brief interview following the hearing, said that some of the rules “have been on the books for decades” and strongly spoke in their support.

“My position’s all the rules need to be readopted,” she said. “They should have been readopted from the beginning.”

She noted, “We can’t review any federal projects right now, which does put things behind.”

In prepared remarks during the public hearing, Nags Head Mayor Ben Cahoon spoke of the urgent need to protect Jockey’s Ridge State Park and asked for two things on behalf of town citizens, business owners and visitors.

He asked for “permanent protections for Jockey’s Ridge in the form of an AEC” and that “temporary protections be put in place again in the form of an AEC as quickly as possible until the foregoing dispute is resolved.”

Efforts addressing the latter, as it later became clear, were already underway.

Other attendees interviewed after the hearing were also in support of reinstating the rule providing Jockey’s Ridge’s AEC designation.

“It is beneficial to the park to keep the AEC status because it provides DPR — which is the Division of Parks and Recreation — regulatory justification to protect the dunes and conduct whatever maintenance is necessary within them,” Jockey’s Ridge State Park Superintendent Joy Greenwood said.

She added that she has “been in contact with our people in Raleigh, and we’ve been discussing what further steps to take.”

“The AEC has worked pretty well for 40 years, and I didn’t want to see it get stripped,” Nags Head resident Cola Vaughan said of why he attended. “I love Jockey’s Ridge.”

Vaughan said he lives within and also owns a historic rental home within the bounds of the AEC.

He said he’d be submitting written comments to the commission, as his biggest fear of potentially losing the AEC designation “is the tendency towards commercialization.”

Members of the public can send written comments through Feb. 1 by email to Angela.Willis@deq.nc.gov or Braxton.Davis@deq.nc.gov or by mail to Braxton Davis, Director, Division of Coastal Management, 400 Commerce Avenue, Morehead City, NC 28557. “Temporary Rules” should be the subject line.