These houses are at risk of falling into the sea, so the U.S. government bought them
The two houses at the end of East Beacon Road in Rodanthe, N.C., sit precariously at the edge of the pounding surf.
Fierce storms and rising tides have clawed away the sand beneath them, pummeled nearby dunes and undermined septic systems. The pair of homes seem destined to one day topple into the Atlantic Ocean, the way a growing number have in recent years along this stretch of the Outer Banks, where the rates of erosion and sea level rise are among the most rapid on the East Coast.
Given that reality, it might seem surprising that 23298 E. Beacon Road and 23292 E. Beacon Road sold on the same day recently. Perhaps even more surprising was the buyer: the National Park Service.
After spending more than $700,000 for the salt-sprayed vacation homes, the federal government plans to promptly tear them down and turn the area into a public beach access.
The move marks a unique and possibly groundbreaking chapter in the deepening dilemma of what to do with imperiled coastal homes, which are becoming only more vulnerable amid rising seas, more intense storms and un-ceasing erosion.
Often, states and localities have little money for buyouts of such places and little political will to pursue the controversial topic of retreating from threatened shorelines. Homeowners face unenviable options of letting their homes become inundated or spending large sums to try to move them, both of which have happenedin Rodanthe.
“Up until we did this, there didn’t appear to be any tools in the toolbox for us to help mitigate the problems associated with these threatened oceanfront structures,” said David Hallac, superintendent of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and the man who engineered the purchases.
In the recent case, Mr. Hallac tapped funding from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, established by Congress in 1964 to safeguard important cultural and natural areas, and to expand recreational opportunities for Americans. Funded by earnings on offshore oil and gas leasing, it does not rely on taxpayer dollars.
Mr. Hallac said he is not aware of other examples of the Park Service using the fund to purchase homes made unlivable by erosion and sea level rise, only to tear them down. But in this case, he said, it madesense.
As long as the houses teetered at the ocean’s edge, visitors couldn’t safely navigate the beach. Turtles and birds couldn’t use that stretch of shore as they normally would. The houses’ septic systems were at repeated risk of inundation. And if or when the homes fell, any collapse posed an environmental and public health threat that would stretch for miles as debris got swept away.
“It will be a safer beach,” Mr. Hallac said, adding that once the homes are demolished, he plans to explore the possibility of scaling up this type of approach in nearby areas where shifting sands have left houses at the brink of collapse.
Finding solutions, finding money — and finding agreement — to the deepening problems of erosion in Rodanthe have been difficult to come by.
This scenic sliver of the Outer Banks has seen multiple houses crumble into the ocean over the past several years, and many more remain at risk of a similar fate. Some homeowners have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars paying to move properties farther from the pounding surf. And residents have implored local officials and the Park Service to do more to protect the fast-eroding shoreline.
An engineering assessment undertaken this year by Dare County, N.C., where Rodanthe is located, found that the type of extensive beach nourishment that many residents want for the area would cost as much as $40 million. Maintaining that beach over 30 years would cost more than $175million, the report found.
By comparison, the balance in Dare County’s beach nourishment fund, which comes from a tax on hotels and vacation rentals and must go toward multiple projects in the sprawling county, stood at $6 million earlier this year. No large influx of state or federal money for a beach nourishment in thecommunity is imminent.
Rob Young, a Western Carolina University professor and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, believes communities should consider more creative and thoughtful ways to retreat from eroding and flood-prone shorelines. Retreat, he often says, can be managed or unmanaged, and in many coastal communities it has largely been the latter so far.
Mr. Young has advocated for more extensive buyouts and believes the Park Service purchase is “important because it is finally a successful buyout on an oceanfront property that I can point to,” he said. “We need models for how this can happen and where the money can come from.”
The two homes the Park Service bought are not a panacea, of course, and it remains to be seen if such an approach can be scaled up. But even the symbolism of what the purchases represent — creating a public beach access from what is a public hazard — is a critical example of what is possible, Mr. Young said.
To purchase the homes, the government first undertook a detailed appraisal of each property, and ultimately offered that price to the homeowners. In this case, both homeowners accepted.
The Park Service purchased 23298 E. Beacon Road for $471,000, as the 1,920square-foot house still had a working septic system and was livable. The purchase price for 23292 E. Beacon Road —a 1,568 square foot, four-bedroom house that had lost its septic tank and been deemed unsafe for habitation — was $260,000.
“There was an opportunity to get out, and I thought I should take it,” said Daniel Kerlakian, 36, of Cincinnati, who bought 23298 E. Beacon Road for $380,000 two summers ago, both as a rental investment but also a place to vacation with his wife and three young sons in a area they had grown to love.
Mr. Kerlakian had to move the home’s septic tank to a more protected area, and was able to keep renting the home almost until the sale. But given the ongoing erosion, the reality that no beach nourishment was planned and the uncertainties of what lay ahead, he decided it wasn’t worth it to stay.