SELC's side
Derb Carter, director of the North Carolina offices of the Southern Environmental Law Center, has been one of the more vocal opponents of the state Department of Transportation plan to replace Bonner Bridge with a parallel replacement.
What are your key arguments in your lawsuit to stop the parallel replacement bridge?
What’s your response to the state’s assertion that the 17-mile bridge will cost four times the amount of the parallel bridge it wants to build?
Even if the 17-mile bridge only costs $569 million, that’s still more than double the cost of the parallel bridge project, so how do you justify that?
How do you respond to the accusation some have made that this is all about winning for you, not necessarily about doing the right thing for the people of Hatteras Island?
NC Secretary of Transportation Tony Tata called you and the groups you represent latte-drinking, ivory-tower elitists who have contempt for the good people of the Outer Banks. How do you respond to that?
Do you think the bridge closure in December was a manufactured crisis to put pressure on you to drop your lawsuit?
For the state
Tony Tata, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, heads the agency leading the way to a replacement for Bonner Bridge that would parallel the current bridge.
Why do you think the parallel bridge option is better than the 17-mile bridge option?
Your engineers estimated the cost of the 17-mile bridge at $569 million in 2012, so how did your estimate change to around a billion dollars in such a short amount of time?
What’s your response to Derb Carter’s claim that the DOT made up the billion-dollar estimate to help make its case for the shorter bridge?
How do you actually know what the long term costs of the parallel bridge are going to be when you don’t know how often highway 12 to the south will be washed out, how many new inlets will form and how many more additional bridge’s might have to be built?
You called the SELC and the groups it represents ivory tower, latte drinking elitists who have contempt for the people of the Outer Banks. Is that the kind of language a high-ranking public official should use?
What about using ferries to access Hatteras Island instead of building a new bridge. It works for Ocracoke Island.
Another option
Stan Riggs, an East Carolina University geologist who’s studied Hatteras Island for decades offers a new way to look at the 17-mile bridge plan.
