BUXTON, N.C. — Cape Hatteras Naval Station, built in 1956 to detect submarines, was visible near the lighthouse's old site. This is believed to be the first location where a Soviet submarine was discovered.
After being turned over to the Coast Guard in the 1980s, the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to remove Building 19. They signed an agreement to remove the entire foundation, but parts of it still stick out from the shore.
The National Park Service said parts of the building, large cables, septic tank drains and some metal pipes tested positive for oil. They seem to leak into the ocean, with surfers reporting that their wetsuits took on an oily sheen when they got out of the water. Storms occasionally cover the Old Navy grounds with sand, but they recur.
“This is nothing new,” said Carol Busby of Buxton. “It comes and goes, it comes and goes.”
Busby, who has lived and surfed the Outer Banks for more than 40 years, has seen it poking out of the sand many times. Even after all these years, it still hasn't been removed.
“I come here almost every day and pick up trash on the beach almost every time,” Busby said. “And I wish someone else would do it too.”
Colin Kreutzberg, a surfer visiting from New Jersey, was disappointed to see a large swath of the beach closed due to an old base.
“There's no development, there's no skyscrapers, there's nothing remotely like New Jersey,” he said of why he loves the Outer Banks. “So when you come here, you expect it to be like a safe haven.”
This stretch of beach was closed last September and is now about three-tenths of a mile long.
State Parks Director Dave Hallack explained to county commissioners the base's deep history, saying, “I had no idea there was a base here.”
It once had about 100 employees and several buildings on 50 acres. A thick cable used to detect Soviet submarines has entered the water. Such cabling can still be seen there today, along with the rest of the abandoned site. Dare County Commission Chairman Bob Woodard traveled to Washington, D.C., to speak with lawmakers about the base and its contamination.
“There has been no success whatsoever in holding people accountable for this problem, and yet this is clearly a federal problem, and the federal government is not responding,” Woodard said.
Mr Woodard is particularly concerned about how this will affect the local tourism industry.
“We're actually making people think twice about coming on vacation,” Woodard said.
When naval bases were built, they weren't that close to the ocean. A common theme along the Outer Banks is that decades of erosion have brought the Atlantic Ocean closer to Building 19, exposing what was left behind.
“Ever since people took over this area, it's been eroded,” Dave Hallak told 10 On Your Side. “And it's very difficult to manage everything along this coast. We are requesting that all infrastructure be removed.”
The Navy handed the base over to the Coast Guard in the 1980s. Since then, the Army Corps has agreed to renovate the Pentagon property, which was used before 1986, Hallak said. The Corps removed thousands of tons of oil-contaminated soil in the early 2000s.
Since the beach closed in September, the Corps has taken samples from the site to determine where the contamination was coming from. They expect results in June.
