Restoration Is Good for Business

Coastal Review Online

03.08.2012

By Howard White

 

A commercial fishermen loads oysters shells to be placed in Stump Sound. Fisherman were paid to help build oysters reef as part of the federation’s federal economic stimulus grant.

A landmark report on conserving our coastal habitats gives all of us concerned with preserving coasts and estuaries a new argument, one that will appeal to new and larger audiences: It’s good for the economy.

“Jobs & Dollars: Big Returns from Coastal Habitat Restoration” tackles the need to protect and restore our coasts from a perspective some have dubbed “coastal capitalism.”

The report shows that public and private investments in coastal habitat restoration not only produce jobs in this cash-and-job-starved economy, but do it at a higher rate than many more touted job sectors, including oil and gas, road infrastructure and green building projects.

The report was prepared by Restore America’s Estuaries, an alliance of 11 conservation organization that formed in 1995 to preserve our nation’s estuaries. The N.C. Coastal Federation is a member.

SOME OF THE REPORT’S KEY FINDINGS

Coastal habitat restoration—that includes things like wetland reconstruction and improvement; rebuilding depleted oyster beds; removal of dams, culverts, and other obstacles to fish passage; tree planting and floodplain reconstruction; and invasive species removal—typically create between 20 and 32 jobs for every $1 million invested. Compare that with road infrastructure projects that, on average, create seven jobs per million, oil and gas at just five per million, and green building retrofits that produce 17 jobs per $1 million invested.

Habitat restoration creates local jobs and brings dollars to local businesses. In one of the report’s case studies, a watershed restoration project in Oregon, 80 percent of the money invested in the project stayed in the county, and 90 percent stayed in the state.

Restoration not only creates direct jobs—people hired to use their skills and equipment to restore damaged wetlands and similar projects—but also stimulates indirect jobs in industries that supply project materials like lumber, concrete and plant materials, and induced jobs in businesses that provide local goods and services—food, clothing, shelter—to restoration workers.

Most importantly, are the long-term economic returns from habitat restoration: tourism and tourist dollars, hunting and fishing revenues, freshwater supplies and, in an economy where house prices have plummeted, increased property values.

In 2009, the federation was one of 55 groups nationwide that received an economic stimulus grant administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The $5 million grant was used to restore nearly 60 acres of oyster reefs in the Pamlico-Albemarle Sounds region. That $5 million was put to good use: It helped create or protect 150 jobs along the N.C. coast.

Darren Burrus, one of the project contractors and a Buxton resident, had less work for his company in 2009 when the project started. Thanks to the federation’s grant, things started looking up for his small business, Cape Dredging Inc., built oyster reefs off Hatteras Village.

“We’re excited to get back to work, the marine construction business has been slow,” Burrus, a co-owner of the company, said in 2009.  “And having more oysters and fish around will be good for the watermen and oystermen. I love North Carolina oysters.”

 

A barge dumps oyster shells into Pamlico Sound as part of the federation’s stimulus grant.

Another component of the project paid fishermen to plant 40,000 bushels of oyster shell in 19 locations from Ocracoke to Myrtle Grove Sound and Topsail Sound.  This program, which the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries began in the spring of 2009, provided supplemental income for many fishermen hit hard by the economic downturn.

“The project provides immediate job benefits and enhances ongoing efforts to improve oyster and fish populations, as well as improve water quality,” Louis Daniel, the division’s director, said in 2009.

All of which begs the question: How valuable are our coasts and estuaries to the nation as a whole?

While coastal-estuarine counties make up only 13 percent of the U.S. land area, they generate half the nation’s GDP, and provide 40 percent of all American employment. More than three-quarters of all commercial fishing depends on estuaries, generating an estimated $1.4 billion for local fishing concerns. U.S. coastal wetlands provide spawning grounds, nurseries, shelter and food for 85 percent of waterfowl and other migratory birds. Tourism and recreational pursuits—angling, bird watching, canoeing-kayaking and similar activities—add more than $70 billion to the economy every year.

But despite their obvious value, both ecologically and economically, America’s coasts and estuaries are in trouble.

Historic losses alone are staggering. The report documents that 97 percent of Columbia River salmon are gone. Likewise, 95 percent of all San Francisco Bay wetlands have vanished, sacrificed to development and commerce. The Chesapeake Bay oyster population is down to one percent of historic levels.

Louisiana’s wetlands are in a class by themselves. The state’s coastal wetlands are receding at an astounding rate of one football field an hour. Loss of the state’s wetlands not only threatens lucrative local industries like shrimping and crabbing, but also puts 45 percent of the nation’s oil and gas refining capacity and 43 percent of its strategic petroleum reserves at risk.

Locally, it’s no secret that the loss of North Carolina’s coastal wetlands from erosion, rising sea levels and increasing storm intensities pose a threat to economic interests on the Outer Banks. No less important, though, is the threat these new realities pose to the nearby inland areas and communities that depend on healthy coastal and estuarine ecosystems. Flooded coastal marshes; salinization of aquifers and drinking water; impacts to fisheries and wildlife; and property loss and devaluation due to flooding may be consequences of ongoing threats and loss of North Carolina’s coastal resources.

THE REPORT’S KEY RECOMMENDATION

It is critical that the United States invest in coastal habitat restoration. Not only will it address many of the problems listed above, it can and will provide much-needed jobs—everything from out-of-work commercial fishermen, marina and boat captains, barge operators, and seaside businesses ranging from bait shops to four-star hotels and restaurants—in an economy still hurting from the 2008 crash and recession.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Howard White

Howard White is the communications specialist for Restore America’s Estuaries. He has worked on wide a variety of conservation and animal welfare issues over the past 20 years, ranging from manatee and shark campaigns in Florida to national grasslands preservation. He admits to dodging lions in Kenya, rock pythons in the Everglades and caimans in Costa Rica—and loving every minute of it.<  PREVIOUSNEXT  >

New York Times: A North Carolina Lifeline Built on Shifting Sands

North Carolina Department of Transportation

BESIEGED Waves hit a new bridge on Highway 12 at Pea Island, N.C., over an inlet created by Hurricane Irene. Critics say officials should adopt a ferry system instead.

By CORNELIA DEAN

Published: March 5, 2012

RODANTHE, N.C. — Last August, when Hurricane Irene sliced across the Outer Banks, it cut Highway 12, Hatteras Island’s lifeline, in two places. Engineers rushed to repair the damage, filling and repaving a washed-out stretch of roadway here and building a bridge over a newly formed inlet a few miles to the north.This week: The battle of the Outer Banks; a cry in the dark; and falling asleep too easily.

Map

Islands of the Outer Banks

 

WEAK POINT An inlet cut by Hurricane Irene, later reinforced with rock.

The road reopened on Oct. 11, to the cheers of anglers, would-be vacationers and the innkeepers, restaurateurs and merchants whose livelihoods had taken a huge blow.

But the winds and waves that shape the coast were already gnawing at the new bridge. By January, engineers were reinforcing its southern approach with sandbags and rock trucked in from the mainland, in hopes of keeping the road open until a more permanent fix could be designed and built.

The Outer Banks are home to some of the nation’s most celebrated beach communities. The road that links them, also called N.C. 12, offers an extreme example of the difficulty of maintaining houses, condos, roads and other infrastructure in the face of a climate-driven rise in sea level.

By some estimates, at least 70 percent of the ocean coastline of the lower 48 states is threatened by erosion. But the outlook here is unusually gloomy. In 2009, a federal report on erosion in the Middle Atlantic states predicted that if the sea level rises two feet this century — an estimate that many experts call optimistic — “it is likely that some barrier islands in this region will cross a threshold” and begin to break up. The report, produced by the Environmental Protection Agency, the United States Geological Survey and other agencies, said the Outer Banks were particularly threatened.

Already, Highway 12 floods repeatedly and is often cut by storms. Maintaining it “is totally a lost cause,” said Stanley R. Riggs, a coastal scientist at East Carolina University who is an author of a new book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast,” which describes in depressing detail the difficulties of keeping the road open. “It will bankrupt the state,” he said.

But people who live and work on the Outer Banks say abandoning the road would make life impossible.

“You would see people with nothing left,” said Eddie Williams, who was born and raised on Hatteras Island. He manages the Paint Box, a gift shop in the village of Hatteras. “It would be devastating,” he said.

Beth Smyre, an engineer for the State Department of Transportation who is leading the planning effort, acknowledged the pessimism coastal geologists bring to the issue. “We try to take into account all these different opinions,” she said. But she added: “There are people living out there, there are tourists visiting out there. We have to provide a reliable and safe transportation system out there.”

According to a 2011 state report, coastal tourism brought $2.6 billion to the state’s economy in 2009, supporting 50,000 jobs.

“We have an obligation to keep this access in place,” Jerry Jennings, a district engineer with the transportation department who had overall charge of the road repairs, said in October, as he watched crews put the finishing touches on the $11 million-plus repair projects he described as temporary fixes. He added, “Our employees, fortunately or unfortunately, have a lot of experience dealing with Highway 12.”

Irene’s attack on Highway 12 came as North Carolina was already confronting a number of issues relating to the fate of the Outer Banks. Last summer, the state confronted what engineers called “advanced deterioration” of theHerbert C. Bonner Bridge, which carries the highway from Nags Head to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, on the north end of Hatteras Island.

Some geologists suggested replacing the bridge with a system of ferries from the mainland. Others suggested maintaining a road link with a causeway or “long bridge,” looping into Pamlico Sound, an idea that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service endorsed as the best long-term option.

The state opted for a replacement bridge that will run right alongside the existing span; planning is under way. Robert S. Young, a coastal geologist who is head of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University, calls the project “our own little bridge to nowhere.” “They can engineer that bridge so well that it can withstand a Category 3 or 4 hurricane,” Dr. Young said in a telephone interview. “The barrier island it is connected to cannot.”

North Carolina has long been a leader in coastal protection through its ban on coastal armor — like seawalls and revetments — which, while it may protect a particular house or condo, almost inevitably degrades or even destroys sandy beaches. But last summer the State Legislature voted to loosen that prohibition, allowing owners of threatened buildings to protect them with “terminal groins,” structures built out into the surf to trap sand.

Dr. Young said he feared that the move was the beginning of the end for the armor ban. Meanwhile, he is among the coastal scientists who have been recruited to help assess beach damage caused by the groins, a prospect he said was “just so depressing.”

Enlarge This Image

Cornelia Dean

RODANTHE The hurricane left some houses cut off from the main road.

Map

Islands of the Outer Banks

 Efforts continue to maintain beaches by dredging up sand and pumping it onshore, a chronic activity on the Banks and elsewhere on the coast. When Irene struck, a project was under way in Nags Head, where houses routinely end up in the surf when a storm passes. As expected, Irene washed some of the new sand away.

Barrier islands like the Outer Banks are inherently unstable. Waves typically strike these islands at a slight angle, creating currents that pick up sand and carry it along the coast. The wave energy along the Outer Banks is unusually strong; by some estimates 700,000 cubic yards of sand, enough to fill 70,000 average-size dump trucks, moves along that stretch of coast every year.

At the new bridge, evidence of this process appeared even on opening day, in the form of long-necked black water birds called cormorants perching on a spit of sand that had formed near the north side of the bridge. That spit had not been there a few days before, said Pablo Hernandez, the transportation department engineer who managed the bridge work. “It’s very difficult,” he said. “This whole thing has been constantly moving and shifting.”

As he spoke, waves were already starting to cut sharply into the sand at the bridge’s southern flank, an area the engineers later reinforced. In nature, barrier islands respond to rising seas by gradually moving inland. They erode on the ocean side but expand on the bay side, as storms wash sand across them or as inlets form and the current carries sand toward the bay.

Since the middle of the 20th century, though, people here have done a lot to thwart this process. During the Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps built an artificial dune that survives today along much of the length of the Banks, blocking the overwash of sand. When the islands do wash over, leaving Highway 12 covered in sand, people bulldoze the sand back to the beach. When inlets form, they fill them.

The results have been predictable: Eroding on the ocean side and unable to move inland, Hatteras Island has narrowed. “Every year and every storm, the vulnerability just increases,” Dr. Young said.  Andrew S. Coburn, associate director of the shoreline program at Western Carolina University, noted in an interview that Irene was barely hurricane strength when it struck the Banks. “It was a pretty weak storm, but that’s not discussed,” he said. “You don’t hear that. Nobody talks about the fact.”

A weak storm — or even an unusually high tide — can cause big trouble for Hatteras Island, where Highway 12 is a two-lane road usually only a few feet above sea level. The reconstruction job in Rodanthe (pronounced roe-DAN-thee) is the second here in two years; a stretch was similarly repaired in 2009 when surging waves stranded oceanfront houses in the surf, including the house featured in the movie “Nights in Rodanthe.” The house was moved.

The state has moved the highway itself four times since the 1950s, said Dr. Riggs of East Carolina University. His book offers a “minimal estimate” of $93 million for the cost of maintaining it since 1983, a figure that does not include the new work. Replacing the Bonner Bridge will leave the state “locked into trying to protect that highway for 60 to 70 miles,” he said. “They cannot do that. It will not last.”

The inlet spanned by the new bridge is not the first at that site. And in 2003, Hurricane Isabel cut still another inlet across the southern end of Hatteras Island; the Army Corps of Engineers filled that one.

In the coming decades, Dr. Riggs predicted, major storms will turn many parts of the Banks into underwater shoals or flats that are above water only at low tide. If Highway 12 were abandoned and the islands allowed to find their natural equilibrium, he writes, the resulting villages would be “situated like a string of pearls on a vast network of inlet and shoal environments.”

They could be reached by ferries, as are two other islands on the Banks, Ocracoke andBald Head.  Dr. Young noted that until Bonner Bridge opened in the 1960s, all travel to Hatteras Island was by boat. “Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Block Island, Puget Sound — people love to ride the ferry,” he said.

Not everyone agrees. NC-20, an organization of public officials and businesspeople from 20 waterfront counties, acknowledges that sea level has risen about 7 inches in the last 100 years, but rejects the idea that the situation is worsening. And it says that altering road or other infrastructure plans would be “unscientific” and “portends financial disaster.”

In 2010, however, a panel of experts convened by the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission concluded that a sea level rise of about three feet is likely and should be “adopted as the amount of anticipated rise by 2100, for policy development and planning purposes.”

But people do not like to hear that message, especially after a storm, said Mr. Coburn, also a ferry advocate. “Are we at the point where we cannot sustain it? With Highway 12, I don’t think we are there yet. But there will come a day.”

New York Times: The Players

CORNELIA DEAN.

Cornelia Dean is a science writer and former science editor at The New York Times, where she writes mostly about environmental issues and science policy, and a lecturer at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard, where she offers seminars on the public’s understanding of science. Her book Am I Making Myself Clear: A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Public was published in 2009 by Harvard University Press. Her first book, Against the Tide: The Battle for America’s Beaches, was published in 1999 by Columbia University Press and was a N.Y. Times Notable Book of the year. She is at work on a book about the misuse of scientific information in American public life. She is a member of the Corporation of Brown University, her alma mater.Author article,  Former Science Editor at the NY Times, presenting workshops on writing about science for the public.  As increasingly complex scientific issues enter policy debates and public discourse, scientists can no longer assume that science speaks for itself. Instead, researchers must be able to reach outside of the lab and explain their work in ways that the public and policymakers can understand. The ability to explain things in clear, concise, and engaging prose should be a part of every scientist’s skill set.

 federal report

Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in collaboration with the U.S.  geological Survey (USGS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has released a report that discusses the impacts of sea-level rise on the physical characteristics of the coast, on coastal communities, and the habitats that depend on them. The report, Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region examines multiple opportunities for governments and coastal communities to plan for and adapt to rising sea levels.

Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-level Rise is one of 21 climate change synthesis and assessment products commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), the forerunner to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The report examines the effects of sea level rise, impacts on society, and opportunities to prepare for those consequences, focusing on the eight coastal states from New York to North Carolina.

 Stanley R. Riggs,

Dr. Riggs is a coastal and marine geologist who has been doing research on modern coastal systems since 1964 and has been on the faculty at East Carolina University since 1967. His research extends from inland river, lake, and pocosin environments, to estuarine and barrier island systems, and seaward across the continental shelf. His areas of interest lie in sedimentation, Quaternary and Tertiary stratigraphy, coastal and mineral resources, and their inter-relationship with the development of human civilization. Dr. Riggs has been actively involved in numerous technical coastal and mineral resource issues at the Federal, State, and local levels that included appointments to many commissions, task forces, panels, and committees. These appointments, as well as many of his publications, have dealt directly with integrating scientific understanding and utilization and management of various coastal systems including such critical issues as climate change and sea-level rise, shoreline erosion and land loss, hazard zone delineation, inlet dynamics, water quality, and habitat preservation (i.e., hardbottom reefs, salt marshes, maritime forests, etc.), and natural resources (i.e., water, beach nourishment sand, as well as resources critical for energy, food production, building, etc.).

Dr. Riggs has carried out long-term research programs in the following general topics both in North Carolina, throughout the US Atlantic coast, and in many other coastal regions of the world. These projects were funded by many Federal and State agencies including the US National Science Foundation, NOAA Sea Grant, NOAA National Undersea Research Program, Environmental Protection Agency, Geological Survey, Department of Defense, Minerals Management Service, and the NC Departments of Water Resources, Geological Survey, Water Quality, State Parks, and Transportation. a coastal scientist at East Carolina University who is an author of a new book, “The Battle for North Carolina’s Coast,” which describes in depressing detail the difficulties of keeping the road open.

 Eddie Williams,

Paint Box, a gift shop in the village of Hatteras.  See his beautiful photos

Beth Smyre,

an engineer for the State Department of Transportation who is leading the planning effort,  Beth Smyre is a project planning engineer for the Project Development and Environmental Analysis Branch of the  Department of Transportation. Smyre is the project manager for the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge replacement project.  The bridge spans the Oregon Inlet and connects Hatteras Island to the mainland, in Dare County. According to Smyre’s colleague, Robert Hanson, the project is one of the most complex of DOT’s current projects. It has so far required a number of environmental impact statements and assessments – far more than the normal expectations of a project planning engineer. Smyre’s expertise has been critical in managing the project, says Hanson.

Due to the urgent need to replace the existing bridge (current suffi ciency rating of 2 out  of a possible 100), Smyre has been required to achieve project tasks at a very accelerated pace. Her leadership has been especially important due to the highly visible nature of the project and sensitive inquiries from media outlets, environmental interest groups and environmental lawyers. Smyre’s master’s degree in coastal engineering has given her a unique perspective on the ocean processes affecting engineering projects on the Outer Banks. Her experience,
leadership skills and work ethic, led her colleagues in the Eastern Project Development Unit at DOT to recommend her for the Governor’s Award for Excellence.

2011 state report,   NC BEACH AND INLET MANAGEMENT, FINAL REPORT , April 2011 XII-1 XII.

Funding and Prioritization Strategies for North Carolina Beach and Inlet Projects   The North Carolina Beach and Inlet Management Plan is a joint project by theDivision of Water Resources and the Division of Coastal Management. Management of the State’s inlets and beaches is presently achieved through multiple programs managed by the Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources and its divisions.

DENR conducted a second set of public meetings in March to update the public on the progress of the state’s Beach and Inlet Management Plan. Regional presentations can be found here. A summary of public comments recieved is available here. DENR previously held five public meetings regarding BIMP development in December 2008. These meetings included a preview of the draft BIMP management regions, shown below, along with a presentation on accomplishments to date. (Regional presentations can be found here.) A summary of public comments received is available here.

 

Jerry Jennings, Bonner Bridge Repair Work,  Division 1 Engineer.  

• Irene’s attack on Highway 12 came as North Carolina was already confronting a number of issues relating to the fate of the Outer Banks. Last summer, the state confronted what engineers called “advanced deterioration” of theHerbert C. Bonner Bridge, which carries the highway from Nags Head to the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, on the north end of Hatteras Island.

Some geologists suggested replacing the bridge with a system of ferries from the mainland. Others suggested maintaining a road link with a causeway or “long bridge,” looping into Pamlico Sound, an idea that the federal Fish and Wildlife Service endorsed as the best long-term option.

Robert S. Young,

a coastal geologist who is head of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University,

Phone: 828-227-3822
Email: ryoung@email.wcu.edu
Office Address: Belk 294
Website: http://psds.wcu.edu

Areas of Interest:

• Coastal processes and coastal management
• Hurricanes
• Wetlands
• Environmental restoration
• Holocene landscape evolution in the southern Appalachians

Education:

• Ph.D. Geology, Duke, 1995
• M.S. Quaternary Studies, University of Maine, 1990
• B.S. Geology, College of William and Mary, 1987

Recent Publications & Presentations:

Young, R.S. and Conkle, L.J.  (In Press).  A new report on the antiquity of Southern Appalachian heath balds. Geology.

Young, R.S.  (2007).  The importance of carbon loss through wetland erosion in the Albemarle-Pamlico-Currituck Sound system, North Carolina.  Southeastern Geology, 45:2:51-58

Bush, D.M., Neal, W.J., and Young, R.S.  (2004).  After the Storms: Geologists look at coastal zone building.  Architectural Record, 11/2004:65-66.

 

 Pablo Hernandez,

the transportation department engineer who managed the bridge work.  Pablo Hernandez, PE, NCDOT Assistant Resident Engineer
Virginia Tech – BS Civil Engineering , Hobbies: skiing, mountain biking, and hanging on the beach

 Andrew S. Coburn,

associate director of the shoreline program at Western Carolina University,

Phone: 828.227.3027
Email: acoburn@wcu.edu

Andrew S. Coburn is Associate Director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. There he provides critical policy, planning and technical support to hundreds of local, state and federal resource management agencies, universities, NGOs, the media and other stakeholder groups, and has served as a member of the NC Hazard Mitigation Planning Initiative, NC Barrier Island Planning Steering Committee, NC Coastal Stakeholders Committee, NC State Emergency Response Team and NOAA Beach Nourishment Steering Team. Mr. Coburn has completed over twenty aerial and on-the-ground post storm coastal impact assessments, and was one of the first researchers to evaluate and document the impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Ike along the Mississippi, Alabama and Texas Gulf Coast. Mr. Coburn has also provided expert testimony to the US House Subcommittee on Fisheries and Oceans, briefed US House staffers on the status of coastal engineering, served as a coastal management guide/expert for National Geographic, NBC Nightly News, CNN and the New York Times and has been interviewed, featured and/or mentioned in nearly 150 media outlets nationwide. He has a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University and a MEM from Duke University.

Areas of Interest:

• Coastal planning, policy and management
• Hurricane and storm impacts
• Green building
• Alternative energy

Education:

• M.E.M., Duke University, 1993
• B.S., The Pennsylvania State University, 1988

 NC-20,

an organization of public officials and businesspeople from 20 waterfront counties, acknowledges that sea level has risen about 7 inches in the last 100 years, but rejects the idea that the situation is worsening. And it says that altering road or other infrastructure plans would be “unscientific” and “portends financial disaster.”

 North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission

concluded that a sea level rise of about three feet is likely and should be “adopted as the amount of anticipated rise by 2100, for policy development and planning purposes.”

 

Risks to Birds and Wildlife from Offshore Wind Turbines 2011

•UNC‐Chapel Hill Survey of Seabirds and Wildlife for Risk Assessment ‐2011 – funded by Duke Energy

Duke Energy Survey of Seabirds and Wildlife for Risk Assessments
 Pamlico Sound ‐ 98 days of small‐boat surveys from Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 ‐ half in calm (<10 knots), half in windy (10‐25 knots) condition at boat speed of 6 knots
 Potential Pilot site 7‐10 miles out in sound
 Reference site near shore inside of reef
 Coastal ocean shelf: from inlet out to 57‐65 km
 Into Raleigh Bay from Hatteras Inlet – 21 surveys
 Into Onslow Bay from Beaufort Inlet – 4 surveys

Bird Behavior Insights
 Only half the species flew within 26.5‐135.5 m heights swept by rotor blades
 Of those, a small fraction of individuals did, except all 245 scaup
 Some gulls, pelicans, young terns flew over the 22‐m high Bonner Bridge with
little road clearance and dominated road‐kills quantified on the bridge
 Flight paths of passerines in nocturnal migrations that follow Outer Banks still
unspecified – we saw virtually no passerines over water, even at dawn and dusk
 High‐tech instrumentation (radar, thermal, acoustic) may help, but use of air
space is insufficient info w/o behavior
 Seaducks, like long‐tailed, and coastal ducks, like scaup, often raft at night then make twice daily trips to and from foraging sites – on regular flyways?
 Albatrosses that forage at night may have elevated risk
 Only empirical assessments of impacts of operating wind turbines over ocean waters can provide rigorous assessments of true risks

Measures to Reduce Risk to Birds and Bats

 Do not use continuous lighting
 Flashing lights attract fewer migrating birds
 Red lights may be less attractive than white lights
 Reduce or eliminate perches
 The absence of perches, nesting, and roosting sites decreases the
frequency birds and bats closely approach wind mills
 Avoid white colors.  Paint wind mill vanes in high contrast
patterns.
 White attracts insects; increased insect abundances attracts bats
 Test s show that kestrels avoid moving wind mill vanes more readily if
they have patterns painted on them
 Pilot studies and impact studies after installation and operation
of the first wind farm will demonstrate whether other
mitigation procedures are neede

Ecological Risks to Birds and Bats from WindTurbines Over Water.

As Reported in the OffShore Energy Panel in 1211

Birds and bats represent the organisms presumed to be at greatest risk of harm from wind turbines over water, based upon their distribution and abundance patterns and behavioral responses, and based upon observations made on wind-turbine impacts on land. Summering and especially overwintering waterbirds are ubiquitous in the sounds, and the near-shore coastal ocean out to at least 2 miles is heavily used by fish-eating waterbirds and probably occasionally transited by migratory songbirds and shorebirds of concern. Compared to reported minimum densities of birds on land around an existing Minnesota wind farm of about 600 individuals per km2, the Duke Energy-funded UNC surveys in 2010 demonstrated an average bird density in Pamlico Sound of only 12.9 individuals per km2 and on the transects in the coastal shelf out Hatteras Inlet and Beaufort Inlet of 5.0 individuals per km2. To the degree that abundances imply relative risk, the risks to birds would be judged as much lower over North Carolina’s near-shore continental shelf than over land where wind farms exist. The pattern of bird abundance over the near-shore continental shelf exhibits large declines with distance from the shore, such that bird density declines by about two thirds from the highest density within the first 10 km of the beach to the average of the zone from 10-40 km. True pelagic seabirds remain uncommon and only begin to increase in abundance past the 40 km point as one approaches the Gulf Stream, where true pelagic seabirds and many endangered marine mammals exist in substantial abundance off of North Carolina’s coast. The year-long UNC surveys of birds over the eastern Pamlico Sound and on the continental shelf into Onslow Bay and Raleigh Bay failed to encounter even a single individual of an endangered bird species. No bats were detected even though surveys began at first light and ended at dusk daily. Bird abundance is not the only factor determining risk of encounter with a spinning rotor blade. Behavior must also be considered. Night flying would elevate risk because of the difficulty in detecting the spinning rotor blades. Passerine birds (neotropical migrants) make inter-continental migrations during spring and fall, tracking the coastline along the coastal North American flyway. These migrations occur at night, raising concern about these valued terrestrial species. The UNC year-long surveying detected very few passerines and revealed no evidence that the migratory pathway extended out over the continental shelf into areas that would place these birds at risk from wind turbines. In the Duke Energy study, flight elevations of each species of bird were estimated for replicate numbers of individual birds and compared to the heights swept by a standard 3.6 MW wind turbine (26.5 – 135.5 m). Half the species of birds never flew as high off the water as the minimum height swept by the turbine blade. Of those species whose flight altitudes overlapped the rotor-swept elevations, only a small percentage flew within the risky altitudes. Finally, UNC assessed risks of collision of birds with vehicles crossing the 22-m tall Bonner Bridge by comparing counts of dead birds and of live birds by species. 70 W InD e n eR G Y Re s oU Rc e s Brown pelican and juvenile gulls and terns exhibited higher mortality than other species, implying that they might also exhibit similarly risky behavior around spinning rotors of wind turbines. The only reliable means of determining true risk of bird mortality from encountering spinning rotors blades is to conduct an assessment of impact on an installed wind turbine in the geographic area of concern. Nevertheless, existing evidence implies that risks to birds and bats may be lower, even substantially lower, over the N.C. continental shelf 10-40 km from land than on land where existing wind farms are found. In contrast to the elevated bird abundances in the Pamlico Sound relative to the coastal shelf in the Atlantic Ocean, the patterns in absolute abundances of marine mammals and sea turtles spotted during the UNC 2010 surveys reflect substantially higher abundances in the coastal ocean than in the Pamlico Sound. The coastal ocean sampling revealed 0.41 marine mammals per km2, as compared to only 0.013 per km2 in the Pamlico Sound. Sea turtle abundances were also 35 times higher in the coastal ocean at 0.035 per km2 versus 0.001 per km2 in Pamlico Sound. Consequently, absolute risk of interactions between energy-production facilities and both marine mammals and sea turtles is much greater in the coastal ocean. All the sea turtles observed are federally listed under the Endangered Species Act as either threatened (loggerhead, with a current review of evolutionary separate units for potential endangered status) or endangered (Kemp’s ridley and leatherback), so require special consideration and federal agency consultation wherever a development project poses any potential risk to them. Similarly, marine mammals observed in the coastal ocean include at least one species listed under ESA (humpback whale, and possibly also an unidentified cetacean), and require similarly comprehensive federal agency review of development plans. Obviously, marine mammals and sea turtles do not run a risk of death from encounters with rotating rotor blades of wind turbines. The risk of potential concern to marine mammals, and perhaps also to sea turtles, is a risk of noise, especially during installation of piles, which may be forced as much as 30 m deep into the sedimentary sea floor to stabilize the wind turbine above. Bottlenose dolphins have been observed to retreat to a distance of 10 km away from similar noises, thereby temporarily depriving them of use of that habitat area. If this problem is judged to be serious or if any endangered marine mammal proves similarly sensitive, then mitigation during construction may be required. This could conceivably be achieved by doing the construction during a season of low use by marine mammals or by employing gravity-based foundations on the wind turbines, a more expensive design suitable for sites where the sea floor is hard rather than comprised of sandy sediments. Marine mammals and sea turtles may also be affected by the EM fields around the transmission cables running from the wind farm into shore. Sea turtles are known to navigate back to natal beaches based on detecting and following the earth’s magnetic field. This may imply navigation disruptions from the EM fields – an issue that still needs study. Some fishes also use electromagnetic fields for navigation, communication, or aggression, notably the American (and European) eel, and certain rays and other elasmobranchs. A report 4 prepared as a part of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts suggests that while the magnitude of the EM and induced electric fields from buried transmission cables may exceed the detection threshold for marine organisms, the 50-60 Hz frequency from an AC cable may be imperceptible because many organisms are only able to detect frequencies of 10 Hz or less. No problem has been reported from existing European wind farms that relates to EM fields and their effects on fish or wildlife. Many positive environmental synergies can be associated with the presence and operation of wind turbines on the nearshore continental shelf. The foundation of each wind turbine is usually stabilized with a rock anti-scour apron, built up 1-2 m from the seabed using large rocks, ideal for creation of habitat for rocky reef fishes. The species of the snapper-grouper complex that occupy rocky reef habitat on the North Carolina continental shelf include some of the most depleted fishery stocks. Provision of new habitat that would occur through construction of the anti-scour aprons would benefit these valuable fish stocks and the fisheries based upon them. The presence of a wind farm on the continental shelf could also facilitate the ocean mariculture industry. There exists strong interest in shellfish and finfish culture on the continental shelf as a means of escaping risk of escalating water-quality problems inside our estuaries and as a means of minimizing environmental effects of finfish-generated wastes, which can be diluted and dispersed in shelf waters with strong currents. Nevertheless, a major impediment to ocean mariculture is solving the problem of how to protect the pens and nets from being damaged by ship traffic. The presence of a wind farm, with its necessarily well-lit, charted, and visually obvious structures, could offer mariculture pens protection from collisions with ships. 4 http://www.boemre.gov/offshore/PDFs/CWFiles/141.pdf71 W InD e n eR G Y Re s oU Rc e s Several large coastal areas offshore in federal waters off North Carolina were identified as locations where wind farms would not pose excessive risk to birds and wildlife. The coastal zone out to at least 2 miles, the areas within a 5-mile radius around each inlet, the three Capes (Fear, Lookout, and Hatteras), “The Point” northeast of Cape Hatteras, all waters shallower than 4 m in depth, and the entire area swept by the Gulf Stream are characterized by unacceptably high risk to birds, sea turtles, and/or marine mammals and are not compatible with the presence of a wind farm. On the remainder of the N.C. continental shelf, wind farms would not pose high risk to birds and wildlife.