I have had partial ownership of several beach homes in Brunswick County, and for decades I watched as coastal geologist Orin Pilkey’s words came true “build too close to the ocean and, sooner or later, the ocean wins.”
I have seen that truth firsthand.
At Holden Beach in the late 1980s, I watched street after street disappear into the Atlantic Ocean.. Houses that looked permanent one summer were gone the next. Our own second-row home survived only because of publicly funded dune-replacement projects—efforts that protected private property with public dollars…