Hurricane Matthew marine debris removal cost rises by $2.5 million

With Hurricane Matthew debris removal virtually complete along Beaufort County’s roads, the focus of storm cleanup has shifted to local waterways — a much bigger and more expensive job than previously thought with a price tag that has risen by $2.5 million.

“We have finished the initial survey of the entire county; 107,000 acres (of rivers and marshland) were surveyed,” Beaufort County environmental engineering and land management director Eric Larson said earlier this week.

“Our initial cost estimate was about $4.5 million,” Larson said. “Now we are up to $7 million for marine debris (cleanup).”

The surveys discovered “almost double (the amount of debris) we originally anticipated,” he said.

With more debris comes more cost.

In addition to more marine debris — made up of items such as tree branches, logs and pieces of destroyed docks — the county has identified more sunken boats than expected.

In the aftermath of the storm, the S.C. Department of Natural Resources crews cruised local waterways and found 16 boats that needed to be pulled from the water.

Since then, 11 more vessels have been discovered.

To date, the county has been billed roughly $27 million for cleanup of more than 1.6 million cubic yards of debris.

Of that total, $16 million in contractor invoices have been submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for reimbursement.

“We are working with those invoices and preparing them for submission to FEMA,” Larson said of the roughly $11 million not yet sent for reimbursement.

Because the county got a later start on marine debris removal due to a dispute with the state over responsibility for the removal, much of the cleanup effort has occurred after FEMA’s April 8 deadline for reimbursement.

The county applied for an extension, which has been denied.

County attorney Tom Keaveny said earlier this week the denial simply claimed the county “didn’t satisfy (FEMA’s) requirements ... without addressing any of the merits” of the deadline extension request.

He said the county plans to appeal FEMA’s decision and “provide them with all the information we have,” in hopes that at least a portion of the marine debris cleanup cost will be reimbursed.

Deputy county administrator Josh Gruber told members of Beaufort County Council earlier this week that it may be beneficial to have a conversation with state lawmakers about their role in helping local governments with marine debris removal.

“There should be a balance struck” in which the state and county share responsibility for cleaning up both roadways and waterways after future natural disasters, he said.

The county’s total recovery cost for Hurricane Matthew — which caused roughly $10 billion in damage worldwide and was declared the “10th most destructive hurricane to affect the United States” by a recent National Hurricane Center report — could eclipse $50 million, according to county estimates.

The county is planning to raise up to $35 million through the sale of bonds in order to bolster its roughly $20 million reserve fund, which is likely to be drained by storm-related costs before any FEMA reimbursement money is received.

This story was originally published April 26, 2017 at 2:25 PM with the headline "Hurricane Matthew marine debris removal cost rises by $2.5 million."