Kitty Hawk, N.C. (WTKR) - Work began Tuesday to repair a section of NC-12 damaged during storms in early October.
Large sections of the Beach Road collapsed just north of the Black Pelican Restaurant near Milepost 4 after high tidal waves washed away a 700-foot long sand dune.
After the sand dune was washed away, waves began pounding onto the roadway, causing pavement to crumple.
NCDOT awarded a $412,933 contract to Waff Contracting Inc. of Edenton to reconstruct the road and dune.
Reconstructing the dune will include laying 375 sandbags, each measuring 10 feet in length, installed eight feet below the edge of the pavement to protect the road. Those sandbags will then be covered with sand to create the dune which will be planted with sea grass in Spring 2016.
The new dune will connect to the existing sandbags just south put in place earlier in 2015 after another section of NC-12 washed out during a May coastal storm as well as to the north to a sandbag dune built after Hurricane Isabel in 2003.
Once complete, there will be a continuous line of sandbags protecting NC-12 in this part of Kitty Hawk.
During the reconstruction, traffic will continue to use U.S. 158 / Croatan Highway as the detour route.
"A nuisance as far as through traffic but we have an alternate as long as it's not flooded and it's not the season. So once that passed it became less of a nuisance to us and something we could work with live with until it's hopefully fixed the right way," Kitty Hawk Mayor Gary Perry told NewsChannel 3's Todd Corillo Tuesday.
Work is expected to be complete by mid-December, weather permitting.
