With Hurricane Irma looming, fast-thinking businessman files claim on NC's new island
CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ If Hurricane Irma moves up the east coast, it's entirely likely North Carolina's newly formed Shelly Island will be wiped out, but that isn't stopping a quick-thinking Virginia businessman from claiming he owns it.
Yes, someone has filed a Quit Claim Deed to the 10-month-old island, despite expert opinions that it's owned by North Carolina for the time being.
Kenneth M. Barlow, who lives outside of Richmond, filed the claim with the Dare County Register of Deeds on Aug. 7. It cost him just $26, which is cheap for a nearly mile-long island ... or sandbar, as some insist. The deed gives him "all right, title, interest and claim" to the island.
"I own this island now. That argument is over," said Barlow, 59, who is a critic of the National Park Service's regulation policies on Cape Hatteras National Seashore. "I'll fight them all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to. The laws are simple. Ownership has been decided. I'm notifying them (the National Park Service) to stay off my property."
His plan for the island?
"I'm not going to do a thing with it," Barlow says. "My motivation is to keep it out of hands of the National Park Service and its policies, which have proven to be incompetent."
Cape Hatteras National Seashore is aware of Barlow's claim and is not commenting on it. Park Superintendent David Hallac has told the Observer the island belongs to either the state or the National Park Service, depending on whether it stays an island or connects to land.
It's currently being treated as property of North Carolina, under the jurisdiction of Dare County, he says. If the channel fills in and it connects to Hatteras Island, it will likely be the property of the National Park Service, Hallac says.
_The Charlotte Observer
