news-record.com

RALEIGH — Gov. Bev Perdue said Friday that Hurricane Irene caused at least $400 million in damage to North Carolina, and she pledged to build a temporary bridge across the largest breach in N.C. 12 that the storm carved through the Hatteras Island highway.

The repairs, which will enable the road to reopen within a month, will cost $10 million in federal dollars, Perdue said in a news release Friday. The state will put a temporary, manufactured bridge across the largest breach south of the Bonner Bridge, she said.

Farms and other agricultural operations lost more than $320 million in the hurricane, Perdue said. She is asking U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for an expedited major disaster declaration for 43 counties in eastern North Carolina.

Hurricane Irene slammed into Hatteras Island last Saturday morning, creating breaches at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, south of the Bonner Bridge, and in the village of Rodanthe.

Residents of the southernmost villages are being allowed to return to the island this weekend. But authorities haven’t said when residents of the villages that suffered the most damage from Irene — Rodanthe, Waves, Salvo and Avon — will be allowed to return.

Ferries have been bringing supplies to the approximately 2,500 residents who rode out the storm on the island.

Meanwhile, Dare County officials said Friday that the island won’t be ready for vacationers until sometime after Sept. 17. Services must be restored before people other than residents are allowed to return to the island, officials said.

The 650-foot bridge will cost between $2.5 million and $2.7 million. The manufacturer, Mabey Bridge, will ship it in 35 truckloads so it can be assembled on site.

The bridge is made of metal, so it’s not a permanent solution in the sand-and-salt environment of the coast.

Environmental groups said the state is fighting a losing battle with nature by trying to maintain a hardened surface, such as a road, on a moving barrier island. Some scientists, such as East Carolina University geology professor Stanley R. Riggs, believe the state should abandon the road altogether and put in a ferry system to connect all of the state’s coastal communities.

Some groups sued to stop the state’s plan to replace the Bonner Bridge, which crosses the Oregon Inlet to Hatteras Island, with a parallel bridge. The state recently awarded a $216 million contract to build that bridge.

Environmental groups support a 17-mile bridge, costing about $1 billion, that would bypass the breaches that occurred at Pea Island, but not those at Rodanthe or those carved farther south by other storms.

“Now’s the time to put the long bridge over the sound and ferry alternatives for more reliable, long-term access to Hatteras Island back on the table,” Derb Carter, director of the Carolinas office of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said in a news release. “NCDOT’s insistence on waging a losing and costly battle against the ocean at taxpayers’ expense is irresponsible because the ocean will win in the end, as scientists predict.”