CURRITUCK, N.C. — A bridge crossing the Currituck Sound directly into Corolla has been talked about for decades. The focus? Alleviating traffic on NC12 from Southern Shores to Corolla during the peak summer season and creating another hurricane evacuation route.
"It's a greater good situation. It isn't much different than when they built the Wright Memorial Bridge," said North Carolina state senator Bobby Hanig.
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The Mid-Currituck Bridge Project plans to bring a seven mile, two-lane tolled bridge across the Currituck Sound from Aydlett into Corolla. However, decades later, there remains some opposition to it.
"We fully understand that there can be some heavy weekend traffic in the summer. But really trying to think, what is a scalable solution that meets vacation tourist travel without completely changing the character and having a lot of destructive impact?" said Kym Meyer, the litigation director for the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The SELC has represented community members who oppose the project for years.
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The North Carolina Turnpike Authority is seeking funding opportunities to help offset the project's expected cost of nearly $1 billion. A recent blow is that the U.S. Department of Transportation did not select the project for its Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant, which would have been for $425 million.
"More than 10 communities and community organizations wrote letters of support for the project’s grant application. While competitive, the project was not one of the projects ultimately selected for this round of grant funding," said Logen Hodges, Director of Marketing and Communications for the N.C. Turnpike Authority.
Meyer shared the following about the funding challenges for the project:
"The reality is, to build something of this magnitude, you're gonna need funding, and that's just not there. And it's not there for a couple of reasons. One, this project scored incredibly low. It's one of the lowest scoring projects in the state. There's always been a hope, well, we can pay for this project with toll revenue, but you need a lot of tools to get to even half of a billion dollars. But then you look at maps of sort of sea level rise and storm surge and think like, is a private financial investor really going to put their money on generating revenue and getting a return on investment over 40 years in an area of the world that is so fragile?"
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Hanig thinks they will find a funding source one way or another.
"The funding study hasn't come back yet. So the funding study takes about a year, and what that does is it establishes what type of program the bridge is going to be. The funding will work itself out," he said.
Residents who oppose the project are also concerned about what the bridge might bring to the area.
"I think they really just don't want to see their community completely change. Corolla is a pretty remote, really beautiful, special place. And they don't want to be Myrtle Beach," said Meyer.
"When people see the final product and the benefits from it, I think as a general whole, the community is going to be very pleased with the product and how much better it is in the Corolla area. And I can assure you that people that are on the beach side and on the mainland side will use that bridge," said Hanig.
The NC Turnpike Authority is continuing its progress of obtaining environmental permits and searching for other funding sources. Though some opposition remains, the project leaders continue to standby that one day, the Mid-Currituck Bridge will become a reality.
