10-11-06: New places to chuck ’em

The Jacksonville Daily News
Published October 11, 2006
By Patricia Smith, Daily News Staff

Photo credit: THE DAILY NEWS/JOHN ALTHOUSE
Shuck ’em and chuck ’em –  in the right place: Mike Giles helps build an oyster shell bin at Sturgeon City in Jacksonville on Tuesday.

New places to chuck ’em

When oyster season opens Sunday, folks in Onslow County will have two new places to chuck their shucked oyster shells.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation, along with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, built two new oyster shell bins Tuesday — one at Sturgeon City in Jacksonville and the other at Morris Landing in Holly Ridge.

“What we’re trying to do is just make it very easy for the public to drop off oyster shells,” said Ted Wilgis, a biologist educator with the Coastal Federation.

The new drop-off sites are part of an effort to establish convenient sites before a new law goes into effect Jan. 1 banning oyster shells in landfills, said Craig Hardy, chief of Resource Enhancement for the Division of Marine Fisheries.

The law adds oyster shells to a list of items, such as aluminum cans, that are already prohibited in landfills. It was originally adopted in 2005 to become effective Jan. 1, 2009. The General Assembly moved up the date by two years in the waning hours of the 2006 session as part of a technical corrections bill.

The law is rarely enforced, and Hardy doubts that will change.

“In reality probably nobody’s going to be arrested or be cited for throwing away a bunch of shells,” Hardy said.

What is hoped, Hardy said, is that the new law will draw attention to the value of recycling shells, just as it has drawn attention to recycling aluminum.

“People just don’t realize the value of the shell and how it’s used,” Wilgis said. “The shells people recycle are the foundation for new oyster reefs.”

They are important to state and nonprofit oyster restoration efforts, especially now since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, depleting the area that supplies much of the nation’s oysters, Wilgis said.

And oysters are not just good for eating, Wilgis said. Oyster reefs provide shelter and food for juvenile fish, and oysters filter pollutants from the waters, helping to improve water quality, he said.

The state has set up numerous oyster shell recycling sites in coastal counties, mostly more temporary bins. A list of sites can be found on the Division of Marine Fisheries website at www.ncfisheries.net/shellfish/recycle4.htm

The 8-by-12-foot wooden structures were built Tuesday with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Community Based Restoration Program and the FishAmerica Foundation.

The Coastal Federation wanted to build the larger, more permanent bins at Sturgeon City and Morris Landing because they fit with the purposes of the places, Wilgis said.

Sturgeon City is a former Jacksonville waste treatment plant used as an environmental education center and headquarters for the city’s water quality initiatives.

Morris Landing is a 52-acre site purchased with a Clean Water Management Trust Fund grant for the protection of outstanding resource waters in Stump Sound. Morris Landing will eventually also serve as an oyster shell stockpile site for Division of Marine Fisheries shellfish rehabilitation programs.

To see video of the bins being built check the Daily News Web site www.jdnews.com

Contact Patricia Smith at psmith@freedomenc.com or by calling (252) 808-2275.