BUXTON, N.C. (WAVY) — As many in the community have phrased it, there was a lot of finger pointing over the years as to who is responsible for cleaning up remnants of an old naval base at Buxton.
After it was decommissioned in the 1980s with ownership switching hands a few times, the base is now National Park Service land. Based on decades of paperwork, cleaning it up now falls under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This site is just one of 46 Formerly Used Defense Sites, or FUDS, that they are responsible for.
Representatives of the Army Corps have said they are only authorized to remove parts of the site that are impacted by petroleum. Meanwhile, county leaders have said it has been leaking petroleum into the ocean.
Big slabs of concrete, metalwork, rebar and piping are all sticking out of the sand on what is a nationally celebrated beach. Park and county officials found petroleum leaking into the soil and ocean. Recently, even more of the jagged structure has been exposed while unleashing a stench.
“People aren’t exaggerating when they say it hits you enough to kind of make you sick,” Heather Jennette with the Buxton Civic Association said. “That’s not even going down the rabbit hole of thinking about what all this means.”
On Tuesday, the Army Corps told Dare County Commissioners this week they are still waiting on the test results they took roughly four months prior.
“I’m a big proponent of quality assurance and I can appreciate an internal review, but their timeline is unacceptable,” Jennette said.
Of their 46 FUDS, Col. Ron Sturgeon said the site at Buxton is his highest priority. He was able to provide details on a roughly 80 foot pipe they removed from the beach.
“Those results are not finalized, yet,” Sturgeon told Dare County Commissioners. “But, what I can do is tell you the preliminary data from the soil did detect some petroleum above the state’s screening levels in the area where we took out the pipe.”
Sturgeon said their geophysical survey from earlier this year did not find any evidence of leftover storage tanks underground, connected to the pipe. They are still working to find the source of the petroleum.
County leaders are in talks with federal officials. One commissioner told Sturgeon about his meeting with U.S. Sen. Ted Budd, pleading with him to speed up the process.
“Who can do this? Is it a bill in congress, is it a phone call to the secretary of defense, is it a personal visit from the vice president, the president the chief of staff, I don’t know,” Dare County Commissioner Rob Ross said at the Tuesday meeting, recalling what he told Budd.
Listening to their frustrations, Sturgeon showed sympathy to the commissioners and to the Buxton community. He told them this after hearing a myriad of complaints about the slow timeline and worsening conditions at the beach.
“I have frustrations too,” Sturgeon said. “I’m just not communicating them to you or the public.”
In our past interviews with the Corps, they said this is a uniquely challenging project — simply because it is on an eroding shoreline. Their other FUDS are not. The Corps is bound by the process in place to get this done. Many of the people who live there worry the ocean might move faster than the process.
Jennette said within the four months since the Army Corps first took samples, the community completed their own soil tests multiple times, testing positive for petroleum.
Continue to check WAVY.com for updates.
