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Piping plover and loggerhead, green and leatherback turtles nest on the north-island beach, which the town hopes to rebuild next year. On Friday, the town will submit its permit application to begin the $11.5 million project near Port Royal Plantation. The permit would also authorize building a groin to prevent sand from washing away, said Scott Liggett, town public projects manager.
The Fish and Wildlife Service's report establishing wildlife rules for renourishing the beach is the last part of the permitting process the town began more than two years ago, Liggett said. Dozens of studies measuring the project's environmental impact have been completed.
The Fish and Wildlife Service study says the beach along Port Royal Sound is a critical wintering habitat for the piping plover, a tiny pale-colored bird that can be seen hopping around the shore looking for grubs during winter months.
The town will be required to monitor the bird's numbers and fence in plover roosting areas. It also will work with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and the Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor the birds during and after renourishment.
Sea turtles will be similarly protected. The turtles' May-through-October nesting season will be finished by the time the proposed beach fill begins in winter 2011, but the Fish and Wildlife Service says beach renourishment packs sand so tightly it can make it difficult for turtles to lay eggs in subsequent seasons.
The town must adhere to strict construction parameters to make sure turtle eggs aren't harmed, the report said. That means, among other things, waiting until the nesting season ends before starting the project.
Renourishment is urgently needed and becomes more costly with each day that passes, Liggett said. "With every grain of sand we lose between now and when we do this thing, that's another grain of sand we have to replace," he said.
The town pays for beach renourishment with a 2 percent beach-preservation fee, a tax on overnight lodging that generated $4.2 million last year. The last beach renourishment, in 2007, did not include the heel and cost $16.6 million. The town decided to finance that renourishment.
Town officials did not expect the erosion at the island's heel to progress so rapidly, and now there is not enough money in beach-preservation-fee revenue to cover the renourishment, town manager Steve Riley said.
The town will have to dip into its $12 million emergency fund, Riley said. The Town Council will discuss funding at its annual budget meeting in May. Town staff is talking with representatives from the state's Office of Coastal Resource Management about opening public access at some points on the beach.
The town expects the permit will be approved in the summer by the Corps of Engineers.
For residents near the beach, the sand can't come soon enough.
"The erosion destroyed walkways. It's uprooted trees, ... Port Royal residents are extremely upset," said John McCann, president of the Port Royal Plantation Property Owners' Association.
