What’s the solution for Harbor Island’s woes after Hurricane Matthew? Not a public beach

Harbor Island residents who wanted federal money to help clear away homes damaged by Hurricane Matthew won’t be creating a public beach to get it.

Beaufort County officials proposed the idea of public beach access in return for facilitating the private community’s FEMA grant application during a meeting in July.

Harbor Island’s covenants and longstanding development rules won’t allow for a public beach and can’t easily be changed, Harbor Island Homeowners Association manager Don Woelke said.

“Those were set in concrete,” Woelke said. “We’ve been to more than one attorney in an attempt to have them changed but no success.”

Harbor Island homeowners whose beachfront homes were heavily damaged and stranded on the beach due to erosion applied for FEMA money through the state under an existing nonprofit organization formed by homeowners. The federal grant program they pursued would have allowed the affected properties to be bought, cleared and conserved, not to be built on again.

Of the $8.3 million allotted, the homeowners would have been responsible for 25 percent. The fraction could have been cobbled together with insurance money, homeowner Mark Harbaugh said.

But the nonprofit organization wasn’t an eligible vehicle to apply for the money, state emergency officials said, and they directed property owners to the county to handle the application.

Beaufort County said they would handle the grant if Harbor Island allowed the property to become a public beach with parking and bathrooms.

The county needed a public benefit to expend staff time and resources to carry out the grant, said Eric Larson, the county’s environmental engineering director. He said county officials made the same point when approached by Harbor Island months before.

Larson said Harbor Island could have modeled access like Sea Pines, where visitors pay a gate fee, and noted the only other similar beach access was next door at Hunting Island.

“We were trying to find a way we could justify this in spending county resources or tax dollars,” Larson said. “We couldn’t make that correlation.”

Harbor Island property owners troubles began before the hurricane, with heavy erosion during fall storms in 2015 threatening their homes. An experimental plastic wall installed by some owners to prevent erosion was ordered removed earlier this year.

After the Matthew, some opted to move their homes to new lots on the island.

Once beachfront homes are now considered part of the beach and can’t receive permits to rebuild. Beaufort County inspectors labeled 14 homes as a danger to inhabit shortly after the hurricane and listed the reason simply as “in ocean,” Woelke said.

He said a possible solution is a major beach restoration project similar to one planned next year on Hunting Island. The work would cost millions of dollars and isn’t realistic as a private endeavor, Woelke said.

Property owners are pursuing state grants to pay for new sand.

In the meantime, some houses sit on the beach with foundations washed out or leaning.

“They could be there for a long time to come,” Harbaugh said.

This story was originally published August 24, 2017 at 4:29 PM with the headline "What’s the solution for Harbor Island’s woes after Hurricane Matthew? Not a public beach."