The North Carolina Court of Appeals has affirmed the state Utilities Commission’s decision to permit the $56 million sale of the Bald Head Island ferry system to a new private owner. The Village of Bald Head Island had opposed the sale.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals has upheld the state Utilities Commission’s decision to regulate a mainland parking lot tied to the Bald Head Island ferry. But appellate judges have rejected the commission’s regulation of a related barge operation that transports goods to the island.
The Village of Bald Head Island and the provider of transportation services to and from the mainland are taking contrasting approaches to the timeline for resolving a legal dispute. Competing court filings Thursday at the North Carolina Court of Appeals exposed the divide.
A legal fight over regulation of one parking lot and a barge service could have broader implications.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals will decide in the weeks ahead whether the state Utilities Commission had the right to start regulating a barge and mainland parking lot tied to the Bald Head Island ferry. A dispute over that decision generated an hour of oral arguments Wednesday at the state’s second-highest court.
Political insiders get special treatment all the time. So what is the big deal with the “booze cruise”? Is it fundamentally different? Not really, no.
RALEIGH — A superintendent with the N.C. Ferry Division pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court to federal charges that he ordered workers aboard a division workboat to illegally cut a channel in Currituck Sound near Corolla.
The political buzz this week may have been all about the Black-Norris-Geddings affair, but there’s been another development in the ferryboat-to-nowhere story in the senate leader’s corner of the state.
RALEIGH — A boat purchased by the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division for a new ferry route across the shallow Currituck Sound does not meet the requirement that it be able to operate in 18 inches of water. The Division of Marine Fisheries inspected the boat and determined that it might require more than 42 inches of water to operate. While the boat was delivered to the state shipyard in Manns Harbor in August, the operating limitations of the vessel became public only recently. Ferry Division Administrative Officer Charles Utz told Carolina Journal, “The operating depth of the boat is 31 inches.”
RALEIGH — Federal documents indicate that the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Currituck-to-Corolla passenger ferry service that was to start May 1 this year was doomed from the start. A May 2003 feasibility study presented to the General Assembly by Ferry Division Director Jerry Gaskill failed to mention past problems in obtaining a dredging permit at the Corolla end of the route. State and federal agencies have launched investigations into illegal dredging at the site. And while the service was initially supposed to transport up to 40 Currituck students, CJ has learned that there are now only six students involved this year.
RALEIGH — The director of the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Ferry Division and the superintendent of dredge and field maintenance were the focus of a raid on state offices by state and federal law enforcement officials Aug. 26. Superintendent of Dredge and Field Maintenance Bill Moore, who reports directly to Ferry Division Director Jerry Gaskill, has claimed responsibility for illegal dredging that occurred in May in the Currituck Sound near Corolla. But both he and Gaskill said the dredging was accidental. Moore said that he and other employees did not “kick a channel” with the boat’s propellers, but that they were marking the channel.
