Clear-cut land a shock to some Lady's Island residents
Gordon Fritz graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1972 a biologist and wanted a fitting home near the woods and marsh.
He was able to secure about 100 acres of northern Lady's Island and is proud that the land and surrounding areas have resisted dense development. But Fritz, along with some other area residents, have expressed alarm at the clearings popping up on Lady's Island recently.
Most notable is a 40-acre site on Sams Point Road cleared for the Village at Oyster Bluff. The sight came as a shock to some who travel the road regularly and prompted Fritz to dash off a letter to city and county leaders last month questioning the demise of the community's trees and asking how such a thing be allowed to happen.
Some answers came this week during a Lady's Island Community Preservation Committee meeting. Developers complied with Beaufort County's tree ordinance, conducting a tree survey and paying the required fee for some of the trees removed from the site.
Fritz thinks those rules need to be tougher.
"What I've learned since I wrote (the letter) was that we've got some real work in the county and in the city to put things in place that will truly protect the environment and not just pay homage to it with no meat on the bone," Fritz said last week.
Fritz isn't alone in noticing the new, empty acreage.
"I nearly threw up when I saw the huge swath of denuded land called Oyster Bluff on Sams Point Road," Beaufort resident Luanne Elliot wrote The Beaufort Gazette and The Island Packet this week.
But the issue is complicated, said Jim Hicks, chairman of the Lady's Island preservation committee and past chairman of the county Planning Commission. The county's tree ordinance was years in the making and rules have to account for property owners' rights.
"This has been a struggle to find the perfect answer," Hicks said.
County Councilman Paul Sommerville, who represents Lady's Island, said during the preservation committee meeting he would ask for a review of the current tree ordinance, Hicks said.
In Fritz's letter, he also took aim at the planned Harris Teeter grocer store and retail shops on the site of the former Publix on Lady's Island. Trees there are taped and ready to fall for another development, he said.
The proposed Harris Teeter property, part of which is in the city, will be subject to a tree survey and a request that the developer save trees when possible, per the city's review of the project. A stand of live oaks near Sams Point Road received particular attention.
The city has worked to develop a tree ordinance similar to the county's that would require developers replace trees cut from a site or pay into a tree fund that would go to maintaining the city's canopy.
But, as Hicks said, the process is tricky.
Tougher tree rules are seen by some as more red tape hindering development.
Fritz, now a real estate agent, said he is not a tree-hugger or averse to change. But when arguing for stiffer rules for developers, he points back to the charge during the 1970s when logging threatened some of the most impressive trees in the state.
Activists were successful in establishing the Congaree Swamp National Monument, which later became Congaree National Park.
"And it is its gorgeous -- raised walkways over the wetlands and you've got these trees big enough to put bulldozers on top of stumps if they were cut down," Fritz said. "That's not Beaufort County, but we had something in the state that was precious, and we almost lost it because there is no vehicle to save our greenbelts."
Follow reporter Stephen Fastenau on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Stephen.
Related content:
- Letter: Clear-cut land bad sign for Beaufort, Jan. 14, 2016
- Harris Teeter proposed for Lady's Island in former Publix building, Sept. 14, 2015
- Residents alarmed at plan to cut down trees at Lady's Island Elementary, March 27, 2013
This story was originally published January 17, 2016 at 2:57 PM with the headline "Clear-cut land a shock to some Lady's Island residents."