NAGS HEAD, N.C. — On the Outer Banks, people are usually advised to stay off the dunes. But in Nags Head, there’s one that you can get on: Jockey's Ridge, the biggest dune on the East Coast.
Over the past year, organizations have been working to reinstate Jockey's Ridge as an area of environmental concern.
“It's a place of refuge, it's a place of inspiration, and it's also a living classroom," said Craig Honeycutt, chairman of the board of the Friends of Jockey's Ridge.
Watch related coverage: Discover the beauty of Jockey's Ridge State Park
For decades, Jockey’s Ridge State Park was designated as an “area of environmental concern,” but the North Carolina Rules Review Commission made a ruling in 2023 to strip that status.
“We were all stunned to death to find Jockey’s Ridge being removed as an area of environmental concern," said Renee Cahoon, chair of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission.
North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission has been working on requests to have the protections reinstated. A point of concern from the state has been the verbiage around the protections. They shared the following statement with us:
“The RRC protects the people from agency adoption of vague and ambiguous regulations which, if allowed to become law, would enable subjective enforcement by the agencies.”
“The question was: how was it distinct or unique? It's the only place on the East Coast that has that geologic formation," said Cahoon.
The CRC has had a few requests to have the AEC protections reinstated.
“We decided we would go back through it. We tried to change the word again. We put a definition in our rules of what unique meant, and what it does is it keeps sand from being removed from the area," said Cahoon.
Watch previous coverage: Key protection for Jockey's Ridge State Park rejected by review board
But at its most recent meeting, the organization unanimously passed another request. The replacement of sand that blows off the dune is an important piece of keeping Jockey’s Ridge in its current natural state and part of what the protections ensure.
Without them, Honeycutt explained what might be able to happen.
“They can open the park up to all kinds of things, whether it's somebody building a restaurant, trying to develop it, trying to parse off chunks of land, trying to take sand out of it, trying to mess with the coast. There's a lot. It becomes a vulnerable place," said Cahoon.
There’s no timeline for the rules commission to take up the new request, but no matter their decision, these organizations plan to continue the fight as long as it takes.
"To me, it's just counterproductive to not be working together, but at odds. I don't think that serves the citizens of the state when we're at odds like this," said Cahoon.
