It was moving day for a coastal inlet. A huge dredge and floating pump are working hard in Bogue Inlet, pumping sand down the Emerald Isle beachfront. That sand is coming from the bottom of the inlet, where a new channel is being dug 3500 feet away from the badly eroded tip of the island.
The $9 million project will help protect oceanfront homes, as well as those almost falling into the inlet. The crews working for Emerald Isle will only have until April 1 to finish moving that sand, cutting a new channel, and building a dike to block the old channel. April is when sea animals, like turtles, move back closer to the island, and when the permits to do that work will end.
