A popular free beach and a stretch of road connecting a Coast Guard station and port facilities on Radio Island, North Carolina are under threat from accelerating shoreline erosion, and Carteret County is moving to stop it.

Radio Island sits in Beaufort Inlet between Morehead City and Beaufort, a small, working island where Marine Road is the only route to everything: state port leaseholders, a U.S. Coast Guard station, and the southeast beach that locals have long used as one of the few free, walk-on swimming spots on the central coast. That shoreline, facing one of the most dynamic and heavily dredged inlets on the East Coast, has been losing ground steadily for years.

Decades of federal channel deepening at the Port of Morehead City, including a recent 47-foot deepening project, have starved the island's unarmored shores of sediment. Unlike the resort beaches of Bogue Banks, Radio Island has no dedicated nourishment program and no armoring to slow the retreat.

Carteret County has built unusually deep expertise in coastal engineering through its Shore Protection Office, regularly funding beach nourishment cycles on Bogue Banks to sustain its tourism economy. The Radio Island project represents a shift: protecting working infrastructure and public access, not resort shoreline.

The county has posted the project for bid, seeking contractors to restore and stabilize the southeast shoreline, shield Marine Road from further erosion, and improve public beach access. Funding is expected to draw on some combination of county capital funds, state coastal management grants, and federal hazard mitigation dollars.

If the road is lost or cut off, there is no alternate route. The free beach, already one of the few accessible swimming spots for residents who can't easily reach or afford parking at the Bogue Banks resort towns, would effectively disappear with it.