BUXTON — A jumble of concrete, pipes and cables protrude from the sand. A strong diesel fuel smell overpowers any scent of salt air, even with the Atlantic Ocean just steps away.
Nearly half a year after coastal erosion exposed them, the hazards on the beach by the Buxton Beach Access on Hatteras Island remain without a clear plan or timeline for cleanup.
A national program tasked with cleanup of former military sites recently concluded that it will not be addressing Buxton beach because of not being able to pinpoint a source for the petroleum contamination there.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) Program addresses environmental liabilities” from properties transferred out of Department of Defense control by Oct. 17, 1986, according to spokesperson Benjamin Garrett.
USACE testing had detected “the presence of weathered petroleum and diesel range organics” at the Buxton site, he said in a Nov. 1 email.
“We (USACE) have conducted subsurface investigations (at various locations) on the beach and have not found a source of petroleum,” Garrett said in a Feb. 13 email to The Virginian-Pilot.
“Unfortunately, in the absence of a source, the FUDS program cannot take any action at the site,” Garrett continued. “USACE FUDS needs to confirm there is a source associated with Navy activity at the site for this matter to fall within the scope of the FUDS Program.”
Garrett said the program hopes to finalize its findings in a report by the end of the month.
The plan of inaction is “inconsistent with what we’ve heard from the FUDS project manager,” David Hallac, National Parks of Eastern North Carolina superintendent, said on Feb. 14.
“We agree that there’s not what we’d call a clear point source that you and I can see today, but between the odors coming out of that old fuel pipe and standing here, the source — in our opinion — is remnant unremediated contamination that was never taken care of in the first place.”
Hallac said that the only other occupant of the site that stored petroleum was the U.S. Coast Guard, “and they’re aware of this as well.”
The National Park Service, which oversees Cape Hatteras National Seashore, leased 25 acres of its land to the U.S. Navy from 1956-82 for a secret submarine monitoring project that was kept classified until 1991, the end of the Cold War.
The country’s first successful submarine detection in this project took place at the base.
“On June 26, 1962, U.S. Naval Facility, Cape Hatteras, N.C., makes the first Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) detection of a Soviet diesel submarine,” according to the Washington, D.C.-based Naval History & Heritage Command website.
After the Navy left, the Coast Guard used some of the former Navy facilities until 2013.
Inquiries sent to multiple Coast Guard spokespersons were unanswered as of press deadline.
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On the beach
“It smells like a gas station on the beach,” Hallac warned upon approaching the closed beach just before noon on Feb. 14, calling it “some of the worst conditions I’ve seen here.”
Erosion caused by late August storms that included Tropical Storm Idalia exposed remnants of the former U.S. Navy base in Buxton that were previously covered by sand.
The National Park Service closed the stretch of beach by the Buxton Beach Access — which had just opened to the public with a 50-car parking lot in late May 2019 — on Sept. 1.
The public health advisory posted Sept. 25 recommends avoiding swimming, wading or fishing in the area from approximately 46285 Old Lighthouse Road up to and including the first jetty “until the petroleum contaminated soils are mitigated and the area is declared safe.”
Recent winter storms exposed even more infrastructure, including a bundle of metal cables Hallac assumes were tied to the Navy’s submarine listening program and massive concrete rectangles he said are the foundation of the Navy’s former Building 19.
That building wasn’t built under the ocean waves that break on it now. The erosion has been so severe in this stretch of Hatteras Island that scattered tree stumps poke up through the sand.
“At one time this was the soundside,” Hallac said, gesturing to the beach, “and so, there’s been so much erosion that we’re having organic peat sediments and tree structures from the sound that are exposed.”
Residents and park staff have reported both a heightened fuel smell and a petroleum-caused sheen on nearshore waters since the second weekend in February.
Brett Barley, a local professional surfer, posted on Facebook that he saw “the sheen all over the water,” attributing it to diesel fuel, and that “the smell became so potent it was as if you were at a gas station.”
He expressed frustration that fuel is “still leaking out into a National Park, and the ocean, where people live and millions of visitors come every year,” opining that “this should not be an issue that drags on.”
After surfing in the morning after high tide on Friday, Feb. 9, “I returned home, showered, and my wife could smell it on me,” Barley told The Virginian-Pilot of the diesel smell. “It did not happen after surfing in the afternoon at low tide.”
Hallac observed something similar.
“This odor is intermittent,” Hallac said, opining that it “appears to be somewhat tidally driven” and might also be influenced by groundwater levels.
Julie Rogers said the area is about half a mile from where she lives, and it’s her favorite beach.
“I heard people say they were leaving that area because of the smell, as did I,” she said of early September. “I definitely had to rethink swimming there. When I leave, I still smell it, like it’s stuck in my throat.”
On Feb. 13, she said she’d smelled it every day since Feb. 9 when she walked on the beach. “You can see the sheen on top of the water, and you can smell it,” Rogers said, expressing frustration that no cleanup has taken place and that she’s “not sure what they’re waiting for.”
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Complicated bureaucracy
There are many overlapping complications at the Buxton site.
Hallac counts four issues: “There’s petroleum contamination that appears to be related to the Corps and the Navy; there is nonpetroleum contamination clearly related to the Coast Guard’s activities; there is modern infrastructure — drain fields and wastewater tanks — from the Coast Guard’s more modern use of things; and then there persists infrastructure from the Navy and the Corps’ site as well, which is most of the concrete you’re seeing.”
“This is a known contaminated site,” Hallac said, explaining that prior to 2005, in “this entire area, 4,000 tons of petroleum-contaminated sediment were removed.”
In October, the FUDS Program acknowledged the September appearance of “peat balls containing petroleum” on the stretch of Buxton shoreline near the former Navy facility and noted that it was coordinating efforts with the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality in “determining any necessary corrective actions,” according to an Oct. 23 press release titled, “U.S. Army Corps of Engineers works to address petroleum soil found along shoreline at Buxton.”
Coast Guard sampling about a decade ago, meanwhile, revealed pesticides and other chemicals present at levels above the acceptable Environmental Protection Agency screening levels, Hallac said.
“So we have been requesting since then that the Coast Guard…perform a more in-depth sampling and then remediate any of that, and remove their PVC drain fields and other septic infrastructure,” Hallac said.
After finding known cancer-causing chemical compounds, pesticides and heavy metals onsite, the Coast Guard submitted a request of around $200,000 for Buxton remediation, according to a July 1, 2013, Coastal Review article.
According to a public records copy of a November email from a Cleveland-based Coast Guard engineer, the Coast Guard has a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) investigation currently underway into nonpetroleum contaminants.
“USACE has been working continuously for the last couple decades but separate from the USCG on this site,” Joseph Lambert, a Coast Guard engineer, explained in his Nov. 17 email.
“Their focus through the FUDS program is the petroleum and petroleum byproducts potentially spilled on the property,” Lambert wrote. “The Coast Guard has prioritized and funded a CERCLA project that is currently taking place. The CERCLA investigation is looking at all contaminates besides petroleum (since the USACE has that piece, and petroleum is not covered under the CERCLA) that may have resulted from Coast Guard operations at the site between 1982-2013.”
Lambert’s email was addressed to George Adams, a North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality engineer in the Division of Waste Management’s Superfund division.
CERCLA is commonly known as Superfund, according to the EPA website.
Superfund cleans up hazardous sites using both state and federal authorities, according to the state’s program website.
William Hunneke, Superfund Section Chief in the same state Division of Waste Management, followed that email with one Nov. 29 also addressed to Adams.
Hunneke said that he “will pursue getting both” USACE and the Coast Guard together on a call “so we might memorialize who is claiming responsibility for what.”
What resulted remains unclear.
The state Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Waste Management “reviewed plans for the affected site from the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is awaiting sampling results after the completion of that work,” spokesperson Christy Simmons said in a Feb. 20 email.
“The Department of Defense is still involved, to DEQ’s knowledge, but DEQ is not the lead agency on remediation efforts,” Simmons added.
Garrett did not respond to follow-up questions sent Feb. 13, including one asking under what jurisdiction cleanup would now fall, given the conclusion that the Corps’ FUDS Program will not take action.
