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It still is the most practical, sustainable approach over the long term.
The Shoreline Change Advisory Committee report released last week reaffirms the state's strategy, first put into law in 1988. The report's overall goals include:
• Minimizing future risk to beachfront communities.
• Improving the planning for renourishment projects.
• Limiting the use of hard stabilization structures.
• Improving the management of the shoreline in estuaries.
Two areas of concern raised as the report was developed were the limits to be placed on beach renourishment and avoiding subsidies in hazardous areas.
As Hilton Head Island plans for its next renourishment project at the island's rapidly eroding heel and looks to the state to help pay its $11.5 million cost, those concerns hit close to home.
Changes in policy also could have a big impact on state-owned Hunting Island in northern Beaufort County, where state and federal funding has paid for renourishment on its highly erosional beach.
Hilton Head primarily has relied on its 2 percent beach preservation fee, a tax on short-term lodging, to pay for beach renourishment projects. Its last major project in the winter of 2006-07 cost more than $16 million. About 2 million cubic yards of sand were pumped onto about six miles of beach. The town borrowed the money and is paying it back with beach preservation fee collections. That approach allowed it to keep in reserve about $12 million it had in hand.
For its latest project, about 1 million cubic yards of sand would be pumped onto 5,400 feet of shoreline at the island's heel. The town is asking the state to chip in about $1 million, the first time it has asked for state help with renourishment since its initial project in 1990.
The area is losing as much as 130 feet of sand a year, town officials say. The sharp escarpment, uprooted trees and damaged boardwalks along that stretch of beach are testament to that.
(To illustrate how dynamic the beachfront can be, some homeowners in this area of Hilton Head complained in the 1990s about too much sand in front of their homes.)
The escalating costs of these projects -- the first two in the 1990s cost about $9 million -- and a revenue source that has been hit by the recession make it more likely the town will have to look for other ways to pay for them.
How to pay for the latest project will be a part of the town's upcoming budget discussions, and it probably will be part of the debate over a proposed sales tax to be used for tourism marketing and for tourism-related projects.
As we pointed out in November, the report's most far-reaching impact might come in its recommendations for protecting the state's estuarine shorelines. South Carolina has 187 miles of ocean frontage, the reports states, but has 2,875 miles of estuarine shoreline and more than 500,000 acres of salt marsh.
The report warns of the cumulative effects of hard structures in these types of waterways, which include the May, Okatie and Colleton rivers. Since 2001, the state Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management has issued 835 permits for bulkheads or seawalls and 188 permits for revetments along estuarine shorelines.
The report's recommendations include developing erosion control options for different shorelines; developing estuarine shoreline management plans at the state and local levels; establishing minimum setbacks for bulkheads; establishing a minimum 25-foot buffer for all new development; offering tax incentives for buffers in already developed areas; and promoting alternatives to traditional bulkheads and revetments.
A lot of work and public input can be found in the report's 188 pages. Now it should be put to good use.
