‘What nature intended it to be’: NC lands historic EPA grant to fight climate change

To cut carbon emissions, North Carolina and three nearby states are going to look to nature.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the Atlantic Conservation Coalition a $421 million Climate Pollution Reduction Grant. Along with North Carolina, the coalition includes Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia, as well as nonprofit partners like The Nature Conservancy and the N.C. Coastal Federation.

The grant is the largest the EPA has awarded for the use of natural solutions to curb the impacts of climate change.

North Carolina’s portion of the award includes $50 million to the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to execute “shovel ready” projects, with $30 million passed to the N.C. Coastal Federation to focus on projects like building living shorelines and using dredge spoils to restore threatened salt marshes. The North Carolina chapter of The Nature Conservancy will receive an additional $67.8 million to restore an estimated 33,500 acres of peatlands across North Carolina and Virginia while protecting an additional 10,500 acres.

“Protecting our natural lands for future generations is not only critical to our fight against climate change but also our state’s economy and tourism industries,” Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said in a statement.

North Carolina’s grant projects are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 22.7 million metric tons by 2050, according to Michele Walker, a N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources spokeswoman.

An average car generates about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to the EPA. That means by 2050, North Carolina’s projects will equal the equivalent of taking 4.9 million cars off the road for a year.

The EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants were funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. That law provided $4.6 billion for states, local governments, territories and tribes to enact plans that would curb greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, according to the EPA.

Protecting peatlands

In North Carolina and elsewhere on the East Coast, water was diverted centuries ago to dry out vast swaths of peatland for agriculture. When that happens, the carbon that is stored there steadily degrades, releasing the equivalent of the carbon dioxide from about 21.5 cars annually over a 10-acre tract.

But when peat is in its natural form, the squishy mixture of partially decomposed plant matter is a valuable place to store carbon. A 10-acre tract of peatland absorbs the equivalent of the emissions from 3.25 passenger vehicles each year, according to The Nature Conservancy.

“We’ve all been so intent as humans on how can we make this land fit our needs, and now we’re beginning to realize that it’s a natural solution. Get it back to as close to nature as you can and that’s going to help us all,” said Debbie Crane, a spokeswoman for The Nature Conservancy’s North Carolina chapter.

The Nature Conservancy started working to restore peatlands after a 2008 fire where more than 41,000 acres of dried out peat burned for three months in Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. Known as the Evans Road Fire, the blaze started with a lightning strike, burning underground into the dry peat.

Crane likened rewetting peat to a large plumbing project, with hydrologists looking for the natural route that water would have taken before man-made interventions. Once that route is found, workers plug ditches or build control structures to help the water once again cross the peat.

“Once you get it rewetted you lose that degradation and it becomes what nature intended it to be in the first place,” Crane said.

The Nature Conservancy has focused many of its efforts on Pocosin Lakes and the nearby Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. But it has also started working at Angola Bay Game Lands in Pender County, work that will now be supported with the EPA grant funds. Crane said the conservancy could next look at Holly Shelter Game Land, also in Pender County, before considering projects on other state-owned land.

A focus on carbon sequestration

The N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources has not finalized the list of projects it plans to pursue, but anticipates that benefits will include reforesting 55,000 acres and planting 1,200 urban trees. North Carolina will also use $10 million of its award to add an estimated 3,300 acres of “high priority” land near existing state parks to the system, Walker wrote.

“Individual projects will be identified based on carbon sequestration value, threat of land use conversion, and landowner interest,” Walker wrote.

With the help of the N.C. Coastal Federation, the state also intends to preserve and restore an estimated 595 acres of coastal habitat and potentially work with Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores to protect them from erosion and sea level rise.

Salt marshes in North Carolina can store away about as much carbon dioxide as 54,000 cars produce each year. And they’re storing millions more metric tons, carbon that is slowly leached back into the atmosphere when sea levels rise faster than salt marshes can keep pace, The News & Observer has previously reported.

The Coastal Federation’s work will first include working with private firm Natrx to evaluate erosion rates up and down North Carolina’s coast, said Jacob Boyd, the federation’s salt marsh program director. Then, the Coastal Federation will look at where shorelines are eroding the fastest and at which projects have the highest carbon sequestration potential.

When it identifies a spot that must be saved, the Coastal Federation could build a living shoreline, an artificial structure of rock or oyster shells that slows waves down, protecting the marsh behind it from erosion. Or, Boyd said, the Federation could use sand from nearby dredging to help boost the salt marshes out of harm’s way.

“We’re targeting the carbon sequestration benefits, but it still has all of those community ecosystem resilience benefits,” Boyd said.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and Green South Foundation, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. If you would like to help support local journalism, please consider signing up for a digital subscription, which you can do here.