DOT chief responds to Packet report: Hilton Head has ‘seat at the table’ for US 278 project
The top leader at the S.C. Department of Transportation on Wednesday, while noting limitations built into state law, said the town of Hilton Head Island has a “seat at the table” for the design of the sprawling U.S. 278 project.
Secretary Christy Hall also called on the town and Beaufort County to “come together” with SCDOT to “continue to refine the scope of work” for the $290 million project.
“It is imperative that we all work together to design and build this project the right way, with reasonable accommodations made pending funding availability through our local government partners,” Hall wrote in a statement.
Hall issued her statement hours after The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette published an article online detailing how the island’s Town Council does not have the authority to veto the SCDOT proposal to build a new, six-lane bridge between Bluffton and Jenkins Island.
Pete Poore, an agency spokesman, in a Tuesday statement to the newspapers wrote that Beaufort County needs the town only to sign a document consenting to proposed U.S. 278 construction within the town limits and outside of the approaches to the new bridge.
The existing bridges, Poore wrote, do not cross into the town limits on Jenkins Island.
The project’s municipal consent process has been a confusing, hot-button issue for years.
“While we responded to yesterday’s media inquiries with a statutorily correct response,” Hall wrote in her statement, “it did not properly convey our commitment to ensuring robust engagement and meaningful collaboration with the local governments on this very important project. Of course, the Town has a seat at the table with regards to the design of the project.”
State Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, in a Wednesday statement also weighed in, saying he had discussed the issue with Hall.
“Let me be clear: the SCDOT will not shove bridge plans down the throats of the people of Hilton Head Island,” Davis wrote. “It will not ignore any changes to the project requested by the Town, which will be the byproduct of months of public comment by island residents and of some excellent work done by the Town’s engineer and land use planner. Those local voices must be and will be the ones given the most consideration and deference — not those in Columbia.”
Davis, one of 46 state senators, has represented Beaufort and Jasper counties in the Senate for a dozen years.
“I realize state law provides that only work on state highways within a municipality must be with the consent and approval of the proper municipal authorities,” he wrote. “But I am making a political statement, not a legal one, and the bottom line is this: If the Town requests changes, even as to areas of the project outside its municipal limits, they must be received, considered, and respected by the SCDOT; otherwise, the project is not going to move forward.”
Davis also urged Town Council members to “not feel the need to limit their requested changes to areas that lie within” the municipal limits.
Hall, meanwhile, stressed that the project “should be designed in a way that fits in properly with the needs of the community.”
“We recognize that the look and feel of highway corridors are analogous to the front porch of a home and can at times define communities,” Hall wrote.
