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It involves decisions made decades ago to armor the shoreline, disrupting the natural patterns of sand deposits. And it involves private decisions and actions that affect a public resource.
The community plans to spend about $240,000 for permits and to move sand to the spot in question. Access to the beach is only through the community's private gates. It can't be reached by walking from another area of public beach.
That makes the expenditure of money collected through a transfer fee on sales in Hilton Head Plantation appropriate. The community has rightly stepped up to pay for a project that benefits its residents. And it is probably a sign of things to come as the Town of Hilton Head Island reviews its policy about when and where to renourish island beaches in the face of mounting costs. Hilton Head Plantation has paid for two other renourishment projects in the past decade.
But the salt marshes and areas below the mean high water mark are public domain, so public
officials have a role to play in the Hilton Head Plantation project. We rely on state and federal officials who make the decisions on permits for such projects to watch out for the public's interests.
The issue at large is a balancing act, and so far we in South Carolina haven't been very successful in maintaining an appropriate balance between protecting our natural resources and promoting development.
But after two decades of experience with the state's beachfront management law, state environmental officials want to take another crack at it. State law calls for a gradual retreat from the beach on new development. The idea is to get out of the way of Mother Nature, a much more cost-effective and environmentally sensitive way to handle development along the shore.
But that largely hasn't happened, especially in areas where beach renourishment has occurred. Parts of the law are at odds with each other: While one section calls for gradual retreat from the dynamic shoreline, another section says the state can push forward the lines controlling where development can occur in areas that have been renourished. The line is based on the erosion rate in a particular area.
That contradiction prompted Hilton Head Island to develop its own rules to ensure that its renourishment projects don't push development seaward as a result. The dunes systems that result from such policies provide critical storm protection. In the long run, that's the smart thing to do -- for the property owners and taxpayers who can end up footing the bill for property damage after a major storm.
This past week, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control put out a call for volunteers for a new "blue-ribbon panel" to come up with specific recommendations for the legislature on shoreline laws and regulations. DHEC's board approved forming the 15-member panel earlier this month at the request of staff members.
It was a report by a similar statewide panel, made up of people representing various interest groups, that led to the 1988 Beachfront Management Act.
The new committee is to evaluate policy needs related to beachfront and estuarine shoreline management, according to a DHEC news release. That could have a big impact in Beaufort County with our many miles of tidal creeks and rivers.
The committee is expected to meet monthly for about a year and is to produce a final report in 2012 that would recommend specific statutory and regulatory changes based on research and input from coastal officials, experts, stakeholders and the public. Lawmakers ultimately would make the call on any changes, and to give this effort a chance, they shouldn't meddle with current law in the meantime.
The panel would use information from a two-year study finalized in April that concluded South Carolina's attempt to push back new beachfront development hasn't worked as intended.
The Shoreline Change Advisory Committee report's overall goals included:
• 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.
Hilton Head Plantation's general manager Peter Kristian sums up his community's project in a way that applies to other communities and situations all along South Carolina's shoreline.
"We have been fighting Mother Nature for quite some time, and we throw a lot of money at Mother Nature," Kristian said. "It's such a special amenity and fragile ecosystem. It needs to be protected."
The multibillion-dollar question for South Carolina is determining the best way to do that.
