‘Preserving what is ours’: Encouraging signs in the fight for the Lowcountry | Opinion
Bring your dancing shoes.
That’s what they’re telling people in an invitation to a free celebration of a Beaufort County Council vote that will help save the soul of St. Helena Island.
A feast of fried fish, barbecue and local vegetables on Saturday, May 27, at the Penn Center will mark the day a developer was told “no.”
“We STOOD UP for Gullah/Geechee people, self-sufficiency, cultural heritage, and rural lands,” the event flyer reads. “We STRENGTHENED the St. Helena Island Cultural Protection Overlay!”
But there’s more to celebrate.
Jasper County Council voted unanimously May 15 to place a nine-month moratorium on applications for large subdivisions and commercial development in a rural slice of the South Carolina Lowcountry that is about to lose its soul.
Chairman Marty Sauls, vice chair Barbara Clark and council members John Kemp, Alvin Adkins and Coy Garbade enthusiastically supported the ordinance on first reading. A public hearing on it will be held at the June 5 council meeting.
They are responding to citizens who are appalled at the tsunami of development now proposed for an area with unique environmental, historical and cultural significance.
The people don’t want their quality of life – their Lowcountry birth right – taken from them.
They’re calling it the Euhaw Broad River Planning Area, or Cultural Heritage Area.
County Council wants to give the staff time and resources to reassess its planning, zoning and by-right land-use designations in light of new demands.
Jasper County Council doesn’t want be get swamped by the march of over-development sprawling from Hilton Head Island to Bluffton to Hardeeville.
Time is of the essence. Jasper County Council has listened to the people and acted as good stewards.
Who to blame
A reader said I was wrong to point a finger at developers in a recent column on the slow death of the South Carolina Lowcountry.
“ ‘Developers’ are certainly an easy target but blaming them is incorrect,” Douglas Storrs of Beaufort wrote. “It is not the developers who are killing the Lowcountry’s magic star.
“The development community simply follows the rules and regulations contained in the zoning ordinances that govern development in each town and dictate what can and cannot be built on any particular piece of land.
“If you want real change and you want the average citizen to help effectuate real change then the ordinances that developers are required to follow must be changed.”
Or, as a different reader commenting as “Wither Courage” posted below another recent column:
“When our political leaders are Realtors and developers, sprawl and disregard for leaving natural areas is exactly what one can expect. It’s all about $ and corporate profits, never about foresight and proper planning.”
That’s why the action by Jasper County Council, and the vote on St. Helena, matters.
The right example
The area of Jasper County being considered runs from Chelsea to Coosawhatchie, and from Broad River to Grahamville, with S.C. 462 coursing through the middle.
That’s a two-lane road where Great Awakening evangelist George Whitefield once preached to the lost, where George Washington spent the night, where signer of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Heyward is buried.
It’s where Rusty and Oregon Cooler sell gas and boiled peanuts.
It’s where you can stand in a warm breeze and drop a crab line in the creek and nobody will notice except an osprey high in a blue sky.
It’s where a small seafood store would, in effect, be run over by an oil tanker if developers get their way – or if county and municipal leaders won’t protect our way of life.
Jasper County Council chairman Marty Sauls gets it.
“This rejuvenating is something that all of us up here on council are passionate about,” he said at a recent council meeting. “It’s our home, Jasper County. We love it and want to preserve it and do everything we can to make sure our kids and grandkids and on down the line get to enjoy the parts of it that we’ve gotten to enjoy.”
He hopes to set an example for Ridgeland and Hardeeville.
But it wasn’t until he said this that the crowd of old Lowcountry salts reached for their dancing shoes:
“I just want everybody to know that this council is committed to preserving what is ours.”