Monday, November 24, 2003

MEMORANDUM

To: North Carolina Media

From: Kenneth Luck, PR Intern

The University of North Carolina at Wilmington received $358,840 from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Wilmington District to study area beach recreational usage.

Sixty-seven miles of beaches in North Carolina which have applied for nourishment will be part of the study. Nourishment is the pumping of sand to maintain the beach to protect homes and businesses along the coast. USACE is responsible for beach nourishment, also known as federal shore protection. To be granted federal shore protection, state and local governments must make the beach public. The beach must also have a public access every half mile and adequate parking at the public access to meet demands. These are recent requirements due to cost sharing the federal government has required from state and local governments to fund beach nourishment.

UNCW researchers will produce a model to determine the actual visitation usage and peak projected visitation demand for the beaches undergoing federal shore protection. Peak visitation is the demand of who would come if there were enough public beach access and adequate parking at the access to accommodate visitors.

The UNCW project is the first study of federal shore protection and peak demand. The model created will be able to predict how many parking spaces the beach needs to accommodate the peak projected visitation demand. USACE can use it as a methodology for predicting annual and peak visitation on future beaches that apply for federal shore protection.

The project has three phases: a field study, a phone survey/focus group and a study of future demand variables.

The field study was completed in the summer, between July 4 and Sept. 1. For five weekends beach visitors were surveyed on where they traveled from, parking issues and variables on why they were visiting. Flyovers to photograph the beaches were also done to count the number of visitors. During the field study a count of parking spaces and turnover of empty spaces was completed.

The second phase to be accomplished early next year will be a phone survey to areas in the zip codes obtained from people interviewed in the field study. Topics to be covered include: beach visitation demands and how parking affects those demands. Focus groups will be held in the beach towns involved in the study to get responses from area citizens about beach usage and visitation in their area.

The third phase of the study will analyze secondary sources: what is coming in the future that may affect actual visitation usage and peak projected visitation demand for the beaches undergoing federal shore protection. These include the building of state parks in beach areas, building of highways and bridges to the beaches and population projections data gathered from census sources.

James Herstine, assistant professor in the UNCW Department of Health and Applied Human Sciences, is the principle investigator, with co-investigators Jeff Hill, associate dean of the UNCW College of Arts and Sciences, and Bob Buerger, professor of environmental studies. They are working with John Whitehead, associate professor of economics from the UNCW Cameron School of Business, and Carla Isom, project manager and a graduate of the Master of Public Administration Degree program at UNCW. The data will all be gathered by spring 2004 with a final report sent to USACE by summer 2004.

Questions Herstine can address include:

• What North Carolina beaches are involved in federal shore protection?

• How will USACE use the model created by the study?

• How the data collected from the study can be analyzed to obtain peak visitation demand?

• Why is federal shore protection important to beach businesses and residents?

Herstine has been a practitioner and classroom educator for the past 21 years. Both his practical experience in the field of coastal zone natural resource management and his involvement in research related to barrier island processes and procedures have made him an expert in the field of coastal zone natural resource recreation management. Herstine has served as an expert witness in this area on several occasions and has been involved in numerous professional presentations on natural resource management in the coastal zone. He has written several journal articles and done a variety of presentations. Herstine has also received numerous awards and grants for past research, including the Impact of Hurricanes on Recreational use of Barrier Islands and a Reassessment of Recreational Impacts on Masonboro Island.

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Contact James Herstine at 910/962-3283 or by e-mail at herstinej@uncw.edu.