For over 40 years, lawmakers and corporations have been trying to get traction on a billion-dollar toll bridge to the northern Outer Banks. Right now, the state is considering whether to grant a water quality permit for the bridge. Here's your opportunity to remind them why this bloated, unnecessary project is such a bad idea.
The Mid-Currituck Bridge, which would cross the pristine Currituck Sound about 30 miles south of the Virginia border, has been long stalled due to court challenges and other hurdles. The permit would help open the door to start construction as soon as next year.
The environmental fallout would be severe: This region is home to numerous important wildlife refuges, game lands, waterfowl habitat, fisheries, and other protected natural areas. The project would cause permanent damage to water quality, wetlands, and forests, and raises the specter of overdevelopment in the Outer Banks' unique, irreplaceable habitats.
It's a boondoggle: Why spend billions of dollars on a toll bridge that would only see appreciable traffic for a few months each year? Especially right now: The state's transportation dollars should be flowing to fix storm-damaged roads, bridges and other infrastructure that serve many more North Carolinians.
The N.C. Division of Water Resources is considering whether to grant a water quality permit for the Mid-Currituck Bridge. To qualify, the project can't interfere with water quality, wildlife, boating, wading, or fishing in Currituck Sound. The Mid-Currituck Bridge, directly and indirectly, would harm them all.
Public comments on the permit will be accepted through March 31.
Speak up today – and invite your friends to submit comments, too – to protect the irreplaceable natural beauty of North Carolina's Outer Banks from this waste of money and resources.
More information: This action alert will deliver your comments directly to the NC Division of Water Resources. It's most effective if you add your own thoughts, either directly in the message box or by using the top "personal message" box. Feel free to use any of these prompts!
- Why add another bridge to the Outer Banks if its construction and permanent existence take away the very things that make our barrier islands beautiful and unique? People love OBX because of the wildlife, fishing, and natural beauty. This project would diminish all of those features.
- Construction and ongoing existence of a Mid-Currituck Bridge would damage drinking water supplies in the Outer Banks, where many people depend on wells fed by groundwater.
- The state hasn't appropriated a single dollar for this project yet. North Carolina's transportation funding is needed to repair and improve existing and long-needed travel routes that would serve many more people. For the Outer Banks, state funds would be better spent on smaller scale, less costly improvements to existing routes that would ease the burden of seasonal traffic on local communities.
- What about hurricanes? Studies have shown that this bridge wouldn't be the best way to improve storm evacuation. The increase of development that would be triggered by this project would result in even more people on the island, which means in slower evacuation times than other options.
