Bluffton, Hilton Head hero of environmental protection, Laura McIntosh, dies in Savannah
It was a quiet night in Bluffton when the you-know-what hit the fan for Laura McIntosh.
It was the early 1980s, and booming Hilton Head Island had run out of capacity to handle all of its sewage. Word leaked that developers proposed piping Hilton Head sewage over the bridge and spraying it into the woods along the Colleton River.
For many, this idea was the essence of Hilton Head’s view of its neighbors.
For McIntosh, it was a literal call to action.
“I remember quite well having a quiet, peaceful evening at home when a friend called and told me about the proposal, and asked if I would do something,” she told Jim Littlejohn for Island Events magazine.
“I didn’t really know very much about it, but I said I would help, and that’s the beginning of my involvement.”
Her involvement would last a decade. And it would turn quiet Laura McIntosh into one of the giants of Beaufort County’s save-the-natural-resources ethic.
We remember that critical decade now as we learn of Laura McIntosh’s death on Nov. 6 at her home in Savannah.
Those years saw state protections added to local rivers and creeks, citizens organizing to learn the minutiae of environmental permitting, citizens speaking out to kill plans for a boat plant on Victoria Bluff, zoning and land-planning arrive in the rural county where none existed, and early attention to the potential future gridlock and ugliness on U.S. 278 in Bluffton.
In mourning her passing, we also can celebrate the power of an individual to take a stand and make a lasting contribution against relentless opposition.
Generations to come can thank her for persuading the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control board to reclassify nine Bluffton-area bodies of water to Class SAA. That designation built in protections for the Colleton River and other outstanding recreational and/or ecological resources — preempting marinas and other sources of degradation before they could be proposed.
And the current generation should ask: Who is our Laura McIntosh today?
Georgia roots
Laura Barrow McIntosh had every right to be a snob, but she wasn’t.
Barrow and McIntosh are important names in Georgia history, business life and civic leadership. Every day of her life, Laura McIntosh felt it her duty to respect the Lowcountry’s land and water.
She was born in Savannah, where her family has owned Wormsloe Plantation on the Isle of Hope since it was a King’s grant in 1736. Her brother, Craig Barrow III, and his wife, Diana, are called conservation heroes for finding a way to preserve and study this rare jewel, using a private foundation, the state of Georgia and the University of Georgia.
Her husband’s grandfather, Olin T. McIntosh Sr., was a Savannah naval stores business magnate who was a partner in the milestone purchase of 20,000 acres on Hilton Head Island around 1950. The McIntosh, Hack and Fraser families then planned and executed Hilton Head’s earliest development.
Laura McIntosh was educated at Savannah Country Day and then the Oldfields School in Maryland. She was a good student who loved to read, but her passion was horses.
“I remember that my mother wanted me to become an accomplished musician, and I took piano lessons for a long time that I cared little for,” she told Littlejohn in 1985.
“Whenever I showed up for my lesson, I would have come directly from the stables, and I know I smelled like a horse and had dirty hands, neither of which did the piano teacher appreciate.
“I wasn’t very talented, musically, either, and to this day I have the ability to make ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ sound like ‘Silent Night,’ or vice versa. When I agitated to be allowed to stop my music lessons, I’m sure the teacher was on my side.”
The White House
Before agitating for clean rivers, Laura McIntosh studied political science and history as a ninth-generation Barrow at the University of Georgia.
She and James “Jimbo” McIntosh Jr. met at a party in Savannah as young adults. They were married in 1974 and moved to May River Plantation on the banks of the May River and Rose Dhu Creek south of Bluffton in 1977.
Laura McIntosh got involved in many things, including the Bluffton library board. She and Babbie Guscio won a chili cookoff fundraiser for library expansion when it was in a trailer. She, Guscio and Jenny Kelly opened the Deer Tongue Trading Co. in an historic building, offering local arts, crafts, antiques, even produce.
Laura and Jimbo McIntosh later moved across town to a 38-acre place in Pinckney Colony, with views of the Colleton River marshes.
When she got the call about Hilton Head sewage being pumped to a 700-acre tract near the river, she went to inspect. In her first act as an activist, McIntosh discovered that the land was full of clay just a few inches down, and the wastewater spray would clearly threaten the river.
The spray field never happened, and a 14-month sewer construction moratorium was imposed on Hilton Head to develop a comprehensive wastewater plan.
That successful fight also led to formation of the Okatie-Colleton River Association, which McIntosh chaired for four years.
She fought for countywide zoning and strong land-use planning. She instigated, then led, the Highway 278 Corridor Committee to push for buffers, beautification and frontage roads.
From that emerged the Southern Beaufort County Coalition, and a successful fight against a boat-building plant on Victoria Bluff on the Colleton River.
The S.C. Wildlife Federation named McIntosh the state Water Conservationist of the Year in 1984. She later served on its board, as well the S.C. Coastal Council’s blue ribbon committee on beachfront management, and the S.C. Commission on the Future and the Sea Grant Consortium in Charleston.
In 1990, McIntosh was one of 75 people to receive the national Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award at a White House reception.
About that time, the McIntoshes moved to the mountains near Brevard, North Carolina. She continued her passion for growing plants, both ornamental and edible. And she and Jimbo spent a lot of time on their sailboat in Abaco, Bahamas.
She gave countless hours to the Lowcountry, until it began, in her words, to have “too much civilization.”
An editorial in The Island Packet when she won the national award laid out precisely her true gifts.
“If all who feel in their hearts they want to save natural resources would follow her decade-long path, they would find a few surprises.
“Along the road they’d find file cabinets filled with documents, fat and thin; calendars filled with dates for meetings and hearings and public-comment periods; phone bills with long-distance charges; long, sometimes lonely trips.
“They’d discover, on the route to the national award, that serious environmental protection requires not only a lot of emotion but a lot of knowledge ...
“Along with work and study, and negotiation and participation, Mrs. McIntosh’s achievements have demanded patience and perseverance.
“She is truly a leader among us. How proud we are.”
This story was originally published November 20, 2019 at 4:00 AM.
