Dredging has been suspended in the Oregon Inlet on the Outer Banks.
The Army Corps of Engineers says the water is too shallow to allow the dredge access to the main channel. Raymond Pugh owns Fin-Nagle Fishing Charters in Nags Head. He said his boat is small enough to get through, but larger commercial fishing boats are having trouble and that's hard on the local economy.
“When they go off-shore fishing, they're having to take their catch up to Hampton, Virginia to offload it. So all these guys that work in the fish houses around here, they're not making any money,” he said. “And one of the biggest problems is the state doesn't have any money to do a lot of dredging with, the federal government doesn't have much money so it’s… It’s really tough.”
The Army Corps of Engineers is stepping up monitoring of the channel and says it will bring the dredge back if conditions improve.
