Infuriated Lady’s Island residents tired of high water. ‘We can’t live a normal life’
A great egret coiled its neck and snapped its beak into the pond water as it hunted for tadpoles. A month ago, this same setting at 4 Needlerush Court was the well-manicured lawn of Mark and Carol Presnell. Today, the couple can watch a variety of shorebirds from the porch and bugs are invading their house nestled in the woods.
Successive rains and problems with the public storm drainage system are to blame. The Presnells are at their wits end and pressing county and state officials to do something.
“If you look in the water, it’s teeming with tadpoles,” Mark Presnell said on a recent afternoon when he needed white rubber boots to wade through 2 feet of water to greet a visitor at the end of his flooded driveway.
With an elevation of around 10 feet, Beaufort County is called the Lowcountry for a reason. Flooding issues are not uncommon. Above-average rain, like the region has seen in August, exacerbates it.
But even in this soupy environment, the extended stint of standing water in parts of the Royal Pines neighborhood, where the Presnell’s live, stands out.
“This is Day 37,” a frustrated Presnell said earlier this week.
The flooding has several property owners, including the Presnells and their neighbors, demanding answers from Beaufort County and the state of South Carolina.
Beaufort County announced on Monday it was sending in Public Works Department crews to bring relief to the residents but there’s no single, simple solution, said Hannah Nichols, a spokesperson for the county.
The location of the problem
At least six properties in the Royal Pines Country Club Estates have been identified as having the most serious flooding, said Nichols, but pockets of standing water are located across the large northern Lady’s Island neighborhood west of Sams Point Road.
The worst water issues are on properties on Turtle Lane and Needlerush Court, where the Presnells live.
Presnell is glad to see the county crews taking action to unclog the jam but he sees a bigger issue with the drainage system for the area. He’s been pressing for answers from state and county officials about drainage problems for months. He’s so frustrated he’s contacted Congresswoman Nancy Mace.
“It’s infuriating,” Presnell says. “We can’t live a normal life.”
Even with higher rainfall in August, Presnell argues the water on his property is exceeding what is described in the county’s Lady’s Island Drainage Study as a 100-year flood event. Even when Hurricane Debby hit the area in 2024, dumping 12 inches of rain in 24 hours, the water level on his property wasn’t as high as it is now.
“This is a successive series of rain events with no drainage,” Presnell said.
The source of the problem
The main source of the water is runoff from Middle Road, which is ending up on a vacant lot next to his property and flooding the area, Presnell says. It comes from a drainage pipe located under Middle Road. The water flow is supposed to turn into a ditch. Instead, it has eroded a berm and is flowing straight, directly onto the vacant lot. Much of that water is supposed to drain into a lake on an old golf course located upstream, Presnell said. But when the lake’s water level is too high, which it is now, it backs up the entire system. “Someone has messed with the natural drainage,” Presnell said.
The SCDOT is responsible for the drainage on Middle Road, he says.
Who is to blame for the problem?
Presnell says Beaufort County is partly to blame as well. A while ago, a tree in front of his driveway fell down and Beaufort County Public Works used a backhoe to push it away from the street into his yard. Soil was also pushed away in that process. That exposed his buried cable TV cord (which he fixed himself). But most significantly it created a path for stormwater from the entire Needlerush Court to flow down his driveway.
Nichols, the Beaufort County spokesperson, says heavy rainfall in August and drainage “pinch points” are two factors contributing to the problem.
August was rainy.
The National Weather Service in Charleston said 11.79 inches of rainfall fell in August in Savannah, its closest measurement site to Beaufort County, compared to the average of 5.46 inches, making it the 14th wettest August on record. Downtown Charleston saw 15.78 inches for the month, the third wettest.
There’s no quick solution but Beaufort County Public Works crews are addressing the problem, Nichols said.
Most of the drainage from Middle Road to Sams Point Road flows east through a series of pipes and ditches to Rock Springs Creek, which is located on the opposite side of Sams Point Road.
What the county is doing about the problem
Pinch points in that system have been located between Thomas Sumter Street and Sams Point Road, the county said. Crews are clearing ditches and cleaning pipes and cutting overgrown vegetation to free the jams.
The county is also working with a landowner to temporarily lower the elevation of a pond, which is allowing the drainage system to better handle stormwater, Nichols said.
If enough pipes are cleared and the elevation of the pond is lowered, “hopefully everything should start draining down the line,” Nichols said.
Many of the roads in the area are maintained by the SDOT, Beaufort County said. The county plans to talk to SCDOT about additional ditch work along Sams Point Road and vacuuming clogged pipes beneath the road.
Longer term, said Nichols, Beaufort County also plans to investigate increasing the size of drainage pipes and moving the final drainage discharge point, known as the outfall, to a location that is closer to the source of the water. “We are definitely looking at all options,” Nichols said.
Complaints about the problem
The Royal Pines neighborhood, which started out as a retirement community for military in the early 1970s, is located on roughly 700 acres and has 800-900 homes today, said Pam Bars, vice president of the Royal Pines Homeowners Association.
Drainage from a now-defunct golf course and poorly maintained drainage ditches might be contributing factors, says Bars.
“It’s just gotten pretty bad in this neighborhood,” Bars said. “I don’t know why. It never used to be like this. I’ve lived here 12 years and it’s never been like this before.”
Bars described the situation as “unbelievable,” with water to the front doors of some homes. The association, she said, has received many complaints. The county, she adds, has done a pretty good job of responding.
“But I think we’ve had so many complaints they may be a little overwhelmed right now,” Bars said..
Kellee Thomas, who lives on Telfair Drive, which is near the Royal Pines neighborhood, said her backyard has been flooded for months with “smelly, dirty storm drainage.”
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Recently, a green slime covered the water. The bottom half of a pink butterfly yard ornament was underwater. The persistent water is causing her white backyard fence to crumble. When approached, frogs jump in unison.
“It’s really disgusting,” she said.
She worries about health issues but says she’s contacted the county numerous times to no avail. The water has been high before but this time it’s stayed for a few months, she said.
“I completely understand we’re the Lowcountry,” Thomas says. “But I don’t have waterfront property so clearly this is an issue that needs to be rectified.”
As far as Nichols knows, no flooding has occurred inside houses.
Living with the problem
Besides the great egret, a green heron has been hanging around the Presnell’s property. They moved to the area in 2021 from a Pennsylvania community south of Philadelphia. The new watery environment also has prompted bugs to invade their house. When an employee of an exterminator company showed up recently, he was leery of driving a pick-up truck through the water to reach the driveway but agreed after Presnell assured him it was OK.
Carol Presnell is worried about alligators and cottonmouths, which are also known as water moccasins.
Presnell, an electrical engineer, is stuck at home much of the time because the carriage of his sporty Mazda Miata is too low to risk driving through the water and Carol needs the truck to get to work. He works from home.
As he spoke, the long-legged great egret patrolled the edge of the lake that once was his backyard. He’s so mad he’s trying to get appointed to the Stormwater Management Board. But he wonders about his chances.
“I think we’ve [angered] so many people it will be detrimental to my appointment,” Presnell says.
