Is an ancient riverbed the reason they have to keep rebuilding the road in Kitty Hawk?
Every storm these days seems to brings new damage and another round of road repairs to the Beach Road in Kitty Hawk. As Jeff Hampton, writing for the Virginian Pilot explains, with the roadbed resting on top of an ancient riverbed, the process is sadly predictable although beach nourishment will help.
“Waff Contracting foreman David Lassiter pushed sand with a bulldozer along N.C. 12 on Tuesday, the latest of many efforts to rebuild dunes and replace broken pavement.
Hurricane Matthew washed out 300 feet of the highway at about Mile Post 4.5, just south of where storms last year demolished dunes and road. It happens over and over, Lassiter said.
Lassiter leads a crew of 13 that will set 328 sandbags of about 5 tons each along the highway, rebuild the dunes and replace the asphalt by January at a cost of $588,000. The latest effort lengthens the wall of bags to about a half-mile.
It’s a pattern that keeps repeating. The state placed sandbags beginning around Mile Post 4 a few years ago. Last year, storms broke up the road south of the bags for several hundred feet. The state placed sand bags along that stretch. Early this month, Matthew tore up dunes and highway again. The bags protect the road, but the storms’ destruction travels ever southward.
The wall of bags may have to go for more than a mile.”
[box type=”bio”] Atlantic storms and and ancient riverbed continue to wreak havoc on the Beach Road in Kitty Hawk as reported in the Virginian Pilot.[/box]