NORTH CAROLINA STATE LIBKAK 1 

 RALEIGH 



Doc. 



RALEIGH Doc. 

 W MAR 2 8 1978 



(SEW (SMUlOd 



March, 1977 



1235 Burlington Laboratories 

 NCSU, Raleiyh, N.C. 27607 Tel: (919) 737-2U5U 



Ocean outfall: 



The answer to coastal problems? 



Winter moved slowly across the coast of North 

 Carolina. At Nags Head, the wind whistled 

 through rows of cottages that line the beach 

 strand. They stood empty and ghost-like against 

 the bleached sky. 



Winter life was quiet in Manteo, too, where Joe 

 Stokes works as Dare County sanitarian. But 

 Stokes knows that the first warm breezes of spring 

 have brought the tourists and summer residents 

 who have made his county a thriving ocean resort. 

 And the population will once again catapult from 

 a winter average of 7900 to its peak summer total 

 of 100,000. 



The dramatic jump in population means pros- 

 perity for local merchants and developers. But for 

 Joe Stokes it also means headaches. Not the least 

 of Stokes' problems is the proper disposal of in- 

 creasing amounts of human wastes. 



Right now sewage is handled through domestic 

 septic tanks — except in Manteo, where there is a 

 municipal treatment plant. But Stokes foresees 



that within five years the septic tanks will begin 

 to tax the land's ability to purify. When that hap- 

 pens development may come to a grinding halt. 

 In addition, occasional high tides associated with 

 storms sometimes leave in their wake flooded 

 septic tanks up and down the narrow 35-mile 

 stretch of Dare County's Outer Banks. 



Stokes knows that some type of municipal waste- 

 water treatment plant is in the cards for Dare 

 County. And, like a growing number of North 

 Carolinians, he believes that the solution to the 

 county's problems may lie in the very resource that 

 draws the tourists: the ocean. He is convinced that 

 one feasible alternative for handling wastes is an 

 ocean outfall — a pipeline stretching from the 

 shore into the ocean. It would dump treated waste- 

 water from several communities. 



Dare County's problems are not unique. Similar 

 dilemmas, in some cases more acute, plague offi- 

 cials in other coastal counties. In Pender County's 

 (See "There doesn't," p. 2) 



