CAROLINA BEACH — Council members approved new storm recovery funding for Carolina Beach after the town’s worst flooding in recent history caused at least $10 million in estimated damages. Town officials are using some of the funds for immediate infrastructure repairs to prepare as Hurricane Helene could bring peripheral impacts.
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ALSO: Stormwater strategy amid historic flooding: CB councilman advocates for a modernized system
Council unanimously approved an $800,000 budget amendment at a town workshop this week for recovery efforts. Potential Tropical Cyclone 8 inundated Carolina Beach with over 20 inches of rain in a 24-hour period last Monday, leaving homes, cars and businesses flooded.
The recovery efforts come as another major storm — Hurricane Helene — is expected to make landfall Thursday in Florida before moving north-northwest through Georgia and Tennessee. Impacts will primarily be felt in the North Carolina mountains; however, the large size of the storm means winds and rain could reach almost 400 miles from its center, impacting the southeastern coast.
The National Weather Service in Wilmington anticipates 1 to 2 inches of rainfall locally. Governor Roy Cooper issued a state of emergency Wednesday, due to potential landslides and other catastrophic damage possible along steep terrain in the mountainous region.
“We don’t think we’re going to get a lot of rain from the storm,” Carolina Beach Mayor Lynn Barbee told Port City Daily. “But after last Monday, we’re extremely cautious.”
NWS anticipated 6 to 8 inches from PTC8 last week and schools were not canceled, leaving folks in their homes and on the roads, unprepared, with waters rising significantly on the island within hours. People were stranded in Carolina Beach and in Brunswick County, the latter of which had multiple roads collapse.
Around $100,000 of Carolina Beach’s recovery funds will be for emergency repairs of the Texas Avenue pump, which serves the Wilmington Beach area near Kure Beach. Town Manager Bruce Oakley noted staff is considering improvements to the pump, which may require additional funding for permanent repairs.
Barbee described the Texas Avenue pump as critical for removing water from neighborhoods during storms and an immediate priority ahead of Hurricane Helene.
“It wouldn’t have mattered in this last storm,” he said. “There’s just no way you could pump all the water that we had. But in a traditional storm, we really need that pump, so [crews] are out there today trying to either get that pump fixed or get some temporary pumps in place.”
The budget amendment will also cover staff overtime from work during the storm. Oakley said the largest portion of the new funding is allocated to debris removal with contractors Crowder Gulf, CTC Disaster Response Inc., and DRC Emergency Services Inc; PCD reached out to the town for figures but did not receive a response by press.
The town manager cited Veggie Wagon, Kate’s Pancake House, The Fudgeboat, Bowman’s Seafood, and neighborhoods surrounding Carolina Beach Lake as some of the worst hit areas by the storm.
“Between personal loss and business loss, we expect $10 million or more in combined losses,” Oakley said.
Oakley said the town is currently working to gain state and federal funding for repairs and potential reimbursements for the $800,000 budget amendment. He believes FEMA will designate the recent storm a federal disaster, which would make individual property owners eligible for federal support.
Carolina Beach plans to use $20 million in revenue bonds for stormwater projects over the next 20 years. Several projects are up for bid, including retention wall projects on Scotch Bonnet Lane and Clam Shell Lane and a vacuum truck for routine maintenance, such as removing debris from drainage pipes.
“We have an infrastructure plan that consists of a bunch of improvements we want to make over the next 10 years,” Barbee said. “But it is somewhat incremental in nature. And we may need to take a bigger swing at it.”
Barbee and Oakley said the town will consider other strategies after N.C. State’s Sunny Day Flooding Project completes an ongoing modeling project on flood impacts in Carolina Beach’s north end.
Coastal engineering professor Katherine Anarde told Port City Daily researchers are currently holding workshops with community members to determine flooding causes and come up with potential solutions. She said the next workshop will be in November and the project is expected to complete by the end of spring 2025.
Raising bulkheads across the town — retaining walls along a shoreline — is a strategy under consideration to prevent tidal flooding, according to Anarde. Her project found high tides contributed to Canal Drive flooding 60 days from June 2023 through June 2024.
“Factors that cause flooding in each of these different communities may vary over small distances,” she said. “What works in one community may not work in another community. And [solutions] vary by what people value and what they want their town to look like. Do they want their town to be surrounded by bulkheads or do they want that native marsh?”
Anarde noted a municipal policy to expand bulkheads would face regulatory burdens related to private property rights and potential negative effects on coastal environments. The town worked with Rep. Charles Miller (R-Brunswick) to introduce a bill authorizing Carolina Beach to regulate bulkheads last year, but it didn’t make it out of committee.
Oakley said the town identified around four properties that contribute the most to tidal flooding on Canal Drive and plans to discuss the issue at an upcoming stormwater workshop on Oct. 23.
Council member Joe Benson advocated expanding the bill to give municipalities greater authority over other stormwater strategies beyond bulkheads.
“It could be a retention wall, it could be living shorelines, it could be earth mounds,” he said. “It could be a suite of solutions applied to a particular part of town that is the best fit. In other words, we don’t constrain ourselves to one single option.”
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