President Obama’s budget proposal for the 2016 fiscal year – presented to Congress on Monday - includes almost $30 million for operations and maintenance projects in coastal North Carolina, according to a news release from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wilmington District. The district's total appropriation in the draft budget is $54 million for FY 2016, which runs from Oct. 1, 2015 to Sept. 30, 2016.
The largest single expenditure on the draft budget is about $15 million for work in the Wilmington harbor, an increase of slightly more than $1 million from the current budget year's level. A total of nearly $8.8 million is proposed for work in the Morehead City harbor, down slightly from the current fiscal year total of $8.9 million.
Other Wilmington area project expenditures included in the budget proposal are $772,000 for work on the Cape Fear River above Wilmington, $50,000 for maintenance dredging of Masonboro Inlet and $2.6 million for maintenance of the North Carolina stretch of the Intracoastal Waterway.
Elsewhere in coastal North Carolina, $2 million is proposed for maintenance dredging of Oregon Inlet and $300,000 each for maintenance of the Rollinson Channel off Pamlico Sound and Silver Lake Harbor on Ocracoke Island.
The other projects included in the draft budget allocation of about $54 million are located elsewhere in the Corps' Wilmington District, whose civil works borders contain a swath of south-central Virginia and all but westernmost North Carolina. District boundaries, said USACE Wilmington District spokeswoman Ann Johnson, encompass watersheds that drain into the Atlantic coast of North Carolina.
Also included in the district’s news release was an announcement of nearly $7 million in additional funding for operation and maintenance work in the Wilmington District’s current fiscal year work plan. Only a tiny fraction of that money, however, is earmarked for the Lower Cape Fear area: an increase of $3,000 to the already-allocated $478,000 for maintenance of the Cape Fear River above Wilmington. The bulk of the $7 million is designated for Morehead City Harbor and Oregon Inlet maintenance.
