CAROLINA BEACH — The town of Carolina Beach has an unusual relationship with the military.
There is no base, nor a large number of service members or frequent training exercises in the area. Yet, the U.S. Army is one of Cape Fear’s largest land owners. A few hundred acres west of Dow Road make up a chunk of an explosives buffer zone around the Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point (MOTSU).
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Col. Chad Blacketer, commander of the brigade that oversees the terminal, met with the Carolina Beach Town Council on Thursday to discuss adding one more well in the area and chat about future projects that had been floated to the town. The Army has to sign off on anything the town does in the zone.
MOTSU, located between Boiling Springs Lakes and Southport, is an import and export location for Army weapons.
“In the ‘50s, the military came in and acquired that whole back side of our island,” Carolina Beach Mayor Lynn Barbee said. “So when you go down Dow Road and you see woods on both sides, that’s not a part of Carolina Beach, not a part of Kure Beach — that is property owned by the U.S. Army.”
The buffer zone is the result of safety policy rather than an attempt to create a veil of secrecy around MOTSU. The reason for the current policy came almost 80 years ago after a munitions explosion on the other side of the country.
On July 17, 1944, a ship blew up at the Navy’s Port Chicago (located in Contra Costa County, California), killing 320 people and destroying the surrounding town. Most of the dead were Black service members. The fallout from the event resulted in a mutiny months later. The sailors involved in the uprising were caught in a protracted prosecution and it was one of the events that led to the Navy starting to desegregate its service members starting in 1946.
Eleven years later MOTSU set up shop with 11,000 acres combined on both sides of the Cape Fear River to give the operation a wide berth as a direct response to the disaster on the West Coast. These days the edge of the buffer has become a prime place for uninhabited infrastructure.
The well the town discussed on Thursday, dubbed 15H, is currently a test well, set up in the early 2000s off Croaker Lane. Assistant Town Manager Ed Parvin told Port City Daily the town constructed about a half-dozen test wells in the early 2000s and 15H won out for flow rate and the quality of water it produces. On the whole, he added, the town’s water supply is in good shape, except for a few times when tourists flock to the area during the summer.
“The Fourth of July is a big one where we’re close to max capacity according to the state, their threshold,” Parkvin said.
A 2020 study the town commissioned on its water supply indicated the test well could be converted to a permanent facility if a pump and piping are installed, and it goes through the permitting process.
This is an issue for the town because its tourism sector is still growing by about 1.3% year-over-year. For most of the year, there is more than enough water for permanent residents, but in peak summer months, the town runs close to the 2 million gallons per day its system is rated for.
The report notes the town can occasionally go over the limit without issue, but states CB needs to make long-term plans to increase its water supply. It also suggests adding storage to offset peak use.
The same report notes MOTSU owns the western boundary of the town, where virtually all the feasible places to install wells are located. The rest of the town has been almost completely developed, and the Army has to sign off on any new projects in the buffer.
The section in Carolina Beach, despite being large for the town, is only an extreme western sliver of the zone. There is an entire Army manual with rules on how the buffer zone works, as well as a secret line within the buffer area on Pleasure Island where no inhabited buildings can exist. Carolina Beach’s projects are behind that line.
Parvin did not have a figure for exactly how much 15H alone would draw, but another well described in the report had an estimate of 350 gallons-per-minute. The project is projected to run upward of $470,000.
The long-term expansion plan includes adding a total of 0.875 million gallons of water capacity through the combination of 15H and an unidentified well site, building new piping infrastructure and ultimately a new water treatment plant. The entire project, with no specific timeline, has a preliminary cost of $22 million.
15H could become a reality relatively soon by Army standards. Blacketer said the proposal will have to be sent up the chain of command for a lengthy approval.
Parvin told Port City Daily if the town gets approval within six months, it could start work on the project next summer.
The Army has been willing to sign off on letting the town use the area. The DOD even funded a joint land use study — published in 2019 — administered by the Cape Fear Council of Governments to safely guide development around the buffer.
Right now, the edge of the buffer has three stormwater retention ponds, four wells, Mike Chappell Park, the island greenway and, most notably, the town’s 50-acre wastewater treatment plant. The town also has an agreement with MOTSU to temporarily store storm debris at the wastewater site.
Parvin said future prospects — though speculative — include passive trails, sports field, parking, a community swimming pool, a firing range for police and training facilities for emergency management workers. Someone even suggested building a nine-hole golf course in the area at one point.
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