Currituck beaches face traffic issue

CURRITUCK COUNTY, N.C.

On a beach where the sand is a playground, a highway and a refuge, the question is who gets priority - a 3-year-old girl with her plastic bucket, a 30-ton cement truck or a herd of wild horses?

Currituck County officials have labored over the problem for nearly 20 years, passing ordinances to limit speed and establish parking areas. Still, traffic on the beach north of Corolla gets thicker and conflicts persist.

Now comes the latest attempt to keep the peace.

A citizens committee appointed by the Currituck County Board of Commissioners has made several recommendations, including putting up more signs, establishing safe places to deflate and inflate tires and performing a study on a permit system, the most controversial option.

"We're just trying to find out what we can do," said Vance Aydlett, chairman of the Currituck County Board of Commissioners. "We've got to get our act together and figure out how we're going to skin this cat. There are no easy solutions."

During the summer, thousands of people drive off the end of N.C. 12 just north of Corolla and into deep sand that is the beginning of an 11-mile beach strand stretching to the Virginia line.

A local population drives back and forth daily to work and shop. Construction trucks rumble through constantly. Lines of vehicles in wild-horse tours pass through regularly. They all prefer to drive near the surf on the hard sand left behind at low tide.

Meanwhile, the hard sand known as the foreshore is also where children play, families set up umbrellas and beach chairs and anglers cast lines in the water. Some are there for the week, renting beach homes. Others come just for the day. Occasionally, wild horses gather right in the middle of it all.

At high tide, the hard sand is under water, people move back, and traffic has to travel in rough, deeper sand closer to the dunes. That sand is a bumpy ride, tough on vehicles and where inexperienced drivers get stuck.

Since at least 1994, county officials have established ordinances to attempt control. Sunbathers are supposed to leave the foreshore open. Vehicles should park perpendicular to the ocean in the middle of the beach between the surf and the dunes. Drivers should go only 15 miles per hour when within 300 feet of people; otherwise, the speed limit is 35. Everybody is supposed to stay at least 50 feet away from wild horses.

During the summer, deputies on all-terrain vehicles try to enforce it all.

"Two deputies go back and forth up there 10 hours a day," said Lt. Jason Banks with the Currituck County Sheriff's Office. "They're busy the whole time."

The most controversial option is to establish a permit system that could limit how many vehicles may drive onto the beach. The committee recommended a study to see how that would work. Many other beaches use permit systems, but they don't have the same situation where people are driving for work and for recreation on the same beach. Commissioners are mixed on that plan.

"I will never vote for a permit," said Butch Petrey, a Currituck County commissioner.

But Aydlett and Commissioner Paul Martin could support a permit system, they said.

Tourism is Currituck's most lucrative industry; it's been called the county's golden-egg-laying goose. In Corolla, real estate and rental companies, restaurants and other stores with hundreds of employees depend on the visitors.

The question comes up often: Is leaving the situation alone bad for business, or would a permit system and tighter controls drive people away?

"That's all to be determined," Aydlett said.

Jeff Hampton, (252) 338-0159, jeff.hampton@pilotonline.com