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Poll: N.C. Voters Say Don’t Trash Environment
Do you personally believe economic development is more important, equally as important, or less important than environmental protection? More Important 27% Equally as Important 59% Less Important...
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Are Wood Pellets Really Green?
First of four parts The quiet piney woods of the N.C. coast are a long way from the bustle of Berlin, London and Amsterdam, but those trees may soon be lighting up those far-off foreign capitals thanks...
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Wow! This Is a Beautiful Place
Jim Snyders of Ohio won first prize in the federation photo contest with this serene scene of a glorious fall sunset over Boathouse Creek in Carteret County. By Frank Tursi Debby Gleeson won second...
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Can the Coast Still Be Protected?
North Carolina’s coastal-management program risks losing millions of dollars in federal money each year and the ability to affect the outcome of federal permits if a bill that changes the composition...
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Lawmakers Warned About Commissions Bill
RALEIGH — North Carolina’s environmental agency has warned legislators that they are putting the state’s federally approved coastal-management program in jeopardy if a bill that remakes the coastal...
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Trip to Rich Inlet Shows What’s at Stake
The shallow water and shifting sand bars of Rich Inlet provide habitat for animals and are a playground for people. Both would be threatened if Figure Eight Island, on the right, were to build a...
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Wood Pellet Plan May Hinge on Faraway Policies
The storage dome and other infrastructure for the wood pellets would be built in the lower right corner of the port. MOREHEAD CITY – They had a public meeting here Wednesday about the state’s plans to...
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Fumigation Plan Raises a Stink
MOREHEAD CITY – The state agency that regulates air pollution will hold a public hearing on a controversial proposal to use a highly toxic gas to fumigate logs at the state port here. “The Division of...
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State Declines $600K in Federal Grants
RALEIGH – Saying they don’t need the money to meet their new mission, state environmental officials recently turned down almost $600,000 in federal grants. The money would have been used to set up a...
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State Will Reduce Monitoring Program
MOREHEAD CITY – The state next year will eliminate 41 sites along coastal rivers and sounds from its program that monitors water quality for swimming because of cuts in a federal grant. The N.C....
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The Top 10 Stories of 2013
As one year ends and another begins, it’s time to step back and take stock. At Coastal Review Online that means reviewing what I think were the top stories of the more than 240 that appeared here in...
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Dredging Plan Ignites New Sand Skirmish
Comment on Plan A public meeting on the Army Corps of Engineer’s “Draft Integrated Dredged Material Management Plan” and the accompanying environmental impact statement will be 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. today...
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Saving a Piece of the NE Cape Fear River
The 2,300-acre Owens’ easement is the latest parcel along the Northeast Cape Fear River that has been preserved by the N.C. Coastal Land Trust. Source: N.C. Coastal Land Trust WILMINGTON – Two...
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Knotts Island: Preserving a Piece of History
Knotts Island is really a peninsula that hangs from Virginia, top of photo, and separates North Landing River, bottom, from Back Bay. Most of the residents live on the east side of the peninsula....
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Duck Dynasty: When Waterfowl Ruled the Roost
Last of two parts Bill Holman, left, and Ric Taylor stand in front of the old barn at Flyway Farms. Photo: Frank Tursi KNOTTS ISLAND – Ric Taylor came from Connecticut five years ago to look after the...
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Venerable Lab Under Budget Axe
The lab soon after it opened on Pivers Island in 1902. Inside the ground floor of the lab in 1902. Photos: U.S. Fish Commission. BEAUFORT – The second-oldest federal fisheries laboratory in the...
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Saving a Piece of Down East Carteret
No one really how many clams Elmer Willis shipped out of this now ramshackle building in Williston, but it was an economic force and a proud symbol of the region known as Down East. Photo: Core Sound...
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Climate Crusader Makes Stop in N.C.
BEAUFORT – Sheldon Whitehouse came to North Carolina this week gathering more facts for his one-man crusade to persuade his colleagues in the U.S. Senate to finally awaken to the dangers of climate...
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Coastal Sketch: Orrin Pilkey
Orrin Pilkey spent his career advocating for beaches around the world. BEAUFORT — The new research building on the shores of Pivers Island at the Duke Marine Lab commands a stunning view of water. I...
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CRC Limits Sea-Level Rise Study to 30 Years
ATLANTIC BEACH – The state’s Coastal Resources Commission took the first tenuous steps along a seemingly old but tortuous path, but its new chairman charted a different course this time, one that he...
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CRC Chairman Avoids Climate Dust Up
MOREHEAD CITY – The chairman of the state’s commission that sets coastal development policy deftly defused what could have been the next explosive issue in the politically charged sea-level rise debate...
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No Sand on Shack, Park Says
ATLANTIC BEACH — After listening to the public and consulting the experts, the superintendent of Cape Lookout National Seashore decided to back away from his controversial request that dredged sand be...
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Coastal Sketch: John Runkle
John Runkle with his wife, Nancy. EMERALD ISLE — When he attended that meeting at the aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores all those years ago, John Runkle had no idea that he was making a long-term...
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Ca’e Bankers
A banner at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center welcomes descendants of the hardy fishing families who once lived on what is now Shackleford Banks in the Cape Lookout National...
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Storms, Whales and Refugees
Last of two parts Janice Ray Lewis Ditto, second from left, talks about growing up in the Promise Land at a reunion of descendants of Shackleford Banks fishing families. Photo: Core Sound Waterfowl...
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Second Annual Christmas Gift Guide
From an island getaway overlooking Bogue Inlet to killer stand-up paddleboards and fishing kayaks, our staff has come up with an array of suggestions for the N.C. Coastal Federation’s second Coastal...
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Group Threatens Legal Action to Protect Wetlands
MERRITT — A coastal environmental group is planning to notify two federal agencies today that it intends to sue them for not enforcing federal law to protect more than 250 acres of wetlands near this...
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Sea-Level Rise Redux
BEAUFORT – The state’s Coastal Resources Commission gathered on an island near here Wednesday to talk about the latest report from its science advisers on sea-level rise along the N.C. coast. There...
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Feds Move Closer to Offshore Wind in N.C.
The federal government yesterday took the next significant step toward developing commercial wind energy off the N.C. coast by releasing an environmental assessment that supports the potential lease...
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Feds Announce Atlantic Drilling Plan
The Obama Administration did the expected yesterday and announced plans to potentially open portions of the Atlantic coast, including offshore North Carolina, to oil and natural gas drilling for the...
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Federation Set to Launch Two Websites
The website for Coastal Review Online is organized like a newspaper site. We here at Coastal Review Online are moving to a new digital home. Come Monday, you’ll find us at a new address:...
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The Good, the Bad & the Ugly of Drilling
WILMINGTON – The first N.C. skirmish in what will certainly be a decades-long battle over offshore drilling played out in this old port city Tuesday. Proponents of drilling marshaled their forces in an...
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Todd Miller Wins Prestigious Award
The founder and executive director of the N.C. Coastal Federation has won a prestigious Peter Benchley Ocean Award for his lifelong work in protecting and restoring the natural resources of the N.C....
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State Fines Duke Energy $25 Million
RALEIGH – The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources yesterday levied the largest environmental fine in state history against Duke Energy for groundwater contamination from coal ash ponds...
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Editor’s Desk: ‘Coastoons’ Come to CRO
Coastal Review Online, starting today, will begin running a new feature at the bottom of our front page called “Coastoons” by Bob Eckstein, an award-winning cartoonist for the New Yorker, The New York...
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Offshore Drilling Series Begins
First of a series For the first time in almost three decades, the federal government is considering opening up the Atlantic Ocean off the N.C. coast to oil and natural gas drilling. The first of the...
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A Very Brief History of Offshore Drilling
1896: Offshore drilling for oil began off the coast of Summerfield, Calif., just south of Santa Barbara. Rows of narrow wooden piers that looked like boardwalks extended up to 1,350 feet from the...
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Dashed Hopes and Dry Holes
The history of oil drilling off the East Coast and in North Carolina has been one of dashed hopes and dry holes. Other Stories A Look Back at the Mobil Fight A Brief History of Offshore Drilling Ten...
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A Look Back at the Mobil Fight
Second in a series MANTEO – Yogi Berra came to mind as I sat among the old activists, who had gathered one night recently to plan for a fight they thought they had won almost three decades ago....
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What’s Out There?
The federal government estimates the amount of recoverable oil in the Atlantic at about 4.7 billion barrels. Natural gas stands at 37.5 trillion cubic feet. The truth? Nobody really knows. The latest...
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Oil: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
All the geological ingredients may be there under the roiling waters off Cape Hatteras for the makings of one of the largest natural gas fields in America. At least, that’s what geologists for Mobil...
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Poll: Drilling Foes Edge Out Supporters
Opponents of offshore drilling edged out supporters among the North Carolinians who would likely be most affected by drilling for oil and natural gas off the state’s coast, according to the results of...
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Coastal Review Gets Conservation Award
One of the many pleasant amenities of living on the coast is that suits are rarely required for anything. But somewhere in the back of a closet I have one. A pretty nice suit, too, if I recollect...
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Lake Mattamuskeet Plan Ruffles Feathers
RALEIGH– A plan approved today that will allow the state to collaborate with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the management of Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge in Hyde County has...
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Editor’s Desk: One Story Ends, Another Begins
There’s a new guy in charge here at Coastal Review Online. Mark Hibbs, a longtime community journalist and CRO’s assistant editor since June 2015, takes the helm today as I prepare for my retirement...
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Remembering Lena, Voice of Stump Sound
HOLLY RIDGE – Lena Ritter, the indomitable fisherman who fought developers to save an island and a way of life and in the process became the eloquent voice of Stump Sound, died Monday of cancer. Her...
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Our Coast’s History: North Carolina’s First Fish
A fishing crew led by Elbert Guthrie hauls in mullets onto Cedar Point Beach in the 1950s. Photo courtesy: The Robert Lee Smith Family Collection, Swansboro Historical Association. Reprinted from the...
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Analysis: A Cry for a Life Preserver
The flooding predicted by the report coincides with this map produced by scientists from East Carolina University. Inland flooding from normal high tides would be particularly acute from eastern...
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Building for Change vs. the Price of Inaction
The home Russell King and his nephew Lebron Lackey had built to withstand 250-mph winds in Mexico Beach, Florida, Oct. 14. When The New York Times published an analysis of aerial images showing a...
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