N. Myrtle Beach residents are furious over wetland destruction. It was perfectly legal.
After a life in lively, bustling places — from the Bronx to Germany — Shelia Leitner and her husband were ready for some peace and quiet.
The couple settled in a home at the back of Barefoot Landing Resort, just steps away from a 60-acre patch of forest.
The cul-de-sac was so nice, her sister bought the house across the street a few years later.
“It was beautiful and quiet and serene and Barefoot is convenient to everything,” Leitner said.
The longleaf pines create a lush environment. Deer and colorful songbirds are common. Spotted owls have also been known to visit.
That backyard forest was one of the big selling points.
“We were told those were wetlands and they would never be disturbed, and that’s part of why we bought where we did,” Leitner said.
Now though, Leitner and some of her her neighbors are learning one of Horry County’s harshest lessons: Every piece of land can be bought, sold and developed, no matter how lush or beautiful.
Even if part of a property is under state conservation — like a portion of the forest behind Barefoot — it can be subject to heavy machinery, building and change.
It’s not yet clear what developers might build on the land.
Keith Hinson, the land’s current owner, has cleared a wide swath of trees across the property.
Residents said it looks like it could be a new road. He’s owned the land for nearly 22 years and his company, Waccamaw Land & Timber, lists it for sale at $2.5 million.
A 2012 permit application Hinson filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suggested a new 50-foot-wide road and homes could be built on the property. In fact, Hinson’s company describes the land and neighboring parcels as a “potential residential community.”
Hinson did not return at least two phone messages seeking comment for this story. He also did not respond to three emails asking specific questions about his plans.
Leitner and her neighbors are now looking for ways to fight back, and raised concerns at a homeowners association meeting Friday evening.
One idea pitched would have the HOA erect a fence on its property that border’s Hinson’s land. That would prevent him from bringing more heavy machinery in. However, such a move would likely be illegal.
Since the Army Corps issued permits to Hinson, and since the property is not currently up for a rezoning before Horry County leaders, residents appear to have little recourse.
They contacted the South Carolina Environmental Law Project on Jan. 12.
A January 25 SCELP response letter suggested that “it appears something shady is going on.” But the group declined to offer assistance.
In the meantime, residents say they’re stuck with a torn up forest that’s exposed them to constant noise from nearby highways S.C. 22 and S.C. 31.
Destruction of Horry County wetlands legal
With the swatch of trees now gone from Hinson’s 60-acre property, resident Kim Mack said she can no longer enjoy sitting on her back porch.
“This here, this is nonstop, 24-7,” she said of the low drone of highway noise she and her neighbors can now hear.
“You can’t sit back there unless you’re sitting close together because you can’t hear your own conversation.”
However, removing the trees was perfectly legal.
According to the 2012 permit from the Army Corps, Hinson applied to build a road over a half-acre of wetlands on his property.
The federal agency, which oversees wetlands, approved the permit.
In exchange, Hinson purchased $40,000 in wetland mitigation credits.
The remaining wetlands on the property - about 3.7 acres - are protected, according to a spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Environmental Control.
Laura Renwick, the spokesperson, said DHEC’s Ocean and Coastal Resource Management program works with the Army Corps on wetland permits and placed what’s called a “restrictive covenant” on the 3.7 acres.
That means neither Hinson nor a future developer can build on that land.
That situation has rankled some Barefoot residents.
“There needs to be a brick wall or a big, tall retention wall built back here,” to block highway and future construction noise, said Karen Creighton, another resident who lives near the forest.
She and her neighbors are also upset about how the development has happened.
In order to access his property, Hinson needs to cross a small piece of land owned by the Barefoot Landing Resort homeowners association.
HOA head Jerry Saxon said beaver dams on an adjacent property that Hinson owns were causing flooding issues for residents. The HOA gave him permission to cross over the land to destroy the dams in 2021.
In addition, Creighton and other residents said, overgrowth from Hinson’s forest property was leaning over their backyard fences and they asked his company to trim it back.
Saxon said that residents who were surprised by the sudden tree cutting “got more than they bargained for” but that Hinson did nothing wrong.
“I think there were probably some mistakes made on a lot of people’s part and now we have a situation where a lot of people are pointing fingers,” he said.
“People will have to accept that the owner didn’t do anything wrong.”
Residents surprised, upset by development
Because of Hinson’s property rights, residents and the HOA aren’t likely to get their forest back.
Leitner, who’s in her 70s, noted that even if Hinson agreed to replant all the trees he cut down, she and her neighbors would likely be dead by the time they reach maturity.
The City of North Myrtle Beach, which has jurisdiction over the part of Hinson’s land that contained the beaver dams, sent him a letter demanding that he replant the trees. But the city later told Creighton and other resident that it had made a mistake and shouldn’t have sent the letter since the cutting occurred on land in Horry County’s jurisdiction.
Horry County Planning & Zoning said no rezoning requests have been filed for Hinson’s 60-acre property.
That means he or a developer can clear the property and build anything that fits the land’s current zoning - commercial forest agriculture. That zoning classification is historically broad and can contain structures from farms to churches to strip malls to houses.
County Council member Mark Causey, who represents the area, said he was looking into the matter.
Residents have found themselves reeling from the realities of living in one of the country’s fastest-growing counties.
U.S. Census data last year showed that more than 80,000 people moved to Horry County between 2010 and 2020, ranking it 29th in the nation.
Residents take little comfort in those figures.
“It’s a travesty, these were supposed to be wetlands,” Leitner said.
“This is criminal what they’ve done,” added Creighton.
Such attitudes have become more and more common as Horry County has grown, and it’s a similar story in other rapidly-growing parts of South Carolina such as Hilton Head and Greenville.
Some local politicians have a ready response for those who complain about new development: Get used to it.
“Folks, we’ve got to be able to learn to work with this growth because I hear it all the time: The last one to move in wants to be the last one that moved in,” Horry County Council member Al Allen said during one contentious development debate last year. “They want to shut the gate.”
The Barefoot development illustrates how rapidly land can change in Horry County, in part because the forest has been owned by the same person and left untouched for nearly 22 years.
That’s left Leitner and some of her neighbors worried about the future of their neighborhood.
“ I guess we’ll never bring back what we had. It’s going to devalue our property and that’s a shame,” she said.
“I guess we are out of luck.”
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "N. Myrtle Beach residents are furious over wetland destruction. It was perfectly legal.."
