Turtles vs. humans: ‘If the wall comes down, my house is gone’

Harbor Island homeowners who had an experimental erosion-control system installed last year were stunned by an order Friday that the structures be removed by the end of July.

The so-called wave dissipation system was installed to slow waves and build up sand behind the walls of heavy-duty pipe. But they must now be removed because of their effect on nesting sea turtles, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control said in a letter Friday to The Citadel engineering professor studying the results of the structures.

The walls must be gone July 28, the end of a year-long study, the letter said, and Citadel researchers are responsible for removing them.

“I’m a little speechless at the moment,” said Patricia Gardner, who paid for the system to be installed in front of her beachfront home. “My thoughts are that if the wall comes down, my house is gone with the first big storm.”

The order follows the threat of a lawsuit by environmental groups who said the structures impede federally protected turtles that nest on the South Carolina coast from May through early August.

A June letter from attorneys representing the Sierra Club and S.C. Wildlife Federation said area residents had reported “false crawls,” in which a turtle had made its way to the structure, turned around and returned to the ocean. The walls violate federal law related to endangered and threatened turtle species.

Four false crawls associated with the wave dissipation system have been reported on Harbor Island since June 2015, DHEC noted in a letter to the state’s Department of Natural Resources in June. That doesn’t necessarily mean the turtle or future nesting was negatively affected, DNR said in its response.

But the agency is concerned with widespread and longterm use of the structures, wrote DNR environmental programs director Bob Perry.

The systems are designed so that sections can be taken down during turtle-nesting season. But the property owners have been told they can’t remove the structures during the study period so as to not affect the collected data, homeowners and an attorney representing the device’s inventor said.

That attorney, Matthew Hamrick, said no turtles had been kept from nesting by the walls, that the area behind the structures was unsuitable for nesting and that those involved in the study haven’t been provided the opportunity to disassemble the horizontal section during nesting season.

“We have received no requests for an explanation or demonstration of this turtle-friendly feature of the (wave dissipation system) design,” Hamrick wrote in response to the letter from the S.C. Environmental Law Project.

In the agency’s letter, DHEC’s Rheta DiNovo said the system must be removed in its entirety, including vertical pilings, which it said would cause a safety issue to beach-goers.

Gardner spent $57,000 on her portion of the wall. Nearby homeowner Derrick Hampton paid about $40,000.

Both say the structure has helped maintain sand in front of their houses. They are hoping for a solution before the structure is taken down and said removing the material isn’t possible by July 28.

“It’s a mess,” Hampton said Monday. “I feel like we’re all alone and nobody’s with us.”

Turtle volunteers on Harbor Island say this has been the program’s most successful year since its formation in the 1990s, according to the group’s Facebook page. Volunteers have discovered 89 nests in 2016, with more than 3,000 eggs.

Fran Nolan, who heads the Harbor Island turtle program, declined comment Monday.

This story was originally published July 11, 2016 at 4:50 PM with the headline "Turtles vs. humans: ‘If the wall comes down, my house is gone’."