Jasper County citizens can save ‘what is ours’ from developers in SC Lowcountry | Opinion

Our snake-collecting friends called it “turning tin.” We called it a ride through the country.

And in the mid-1970s, it was a beautiful ride in Jasper County, a quiet place deep in the South Carolina Lowcountry, where people ate rice, shot deer and talked funny.

We rode sandy trails through tall pines, looking for remnants of old homesteads. When our friends turned rusty tin roofs then lying flat on the ground, they often found prized snakes hidden below.

Not everybody cherished the snakes when we moved to the county seat of Ridgeland. But they cherished deeply the Lowcountry way of life wrapped around open spaces, clean rivers and wildlife.

John boats launched at Bolan Hall Landing brought home a cooler of creek shrimp on September nights to be frozen in quart-sized milk cartons.

It was a life of blue crabs boils, venison seasoned with garlic powder, “Boy” Daley’s handmade cane syrup, fish fries, catfish stew at the poker club, doves, ducks, quail, cooters and gopher tortoises.

When it rained, tree frogs were collected in Tillman. And dark clouds crossed over the green marsh grass, with thunder bellowing in a drama as fine as any on Broadway.

The Jasper County that locals know and love was the one supposedly left behind as prosperity came to their Lowcountry neighbors.

But soon, the newcomers to Hilton Head Island, Bluffton, Port Royal, Hardeeville, Beaufort and Charleston outnumbered the no-see-ums. And now they’re coming after Jasper County.

Developers and speculators are not looking to turn tin at old homesteads, but to turn cash on land they’ll jam-pack with houses. And they’ll leave Jasper behind to stew in traffic and dream about a time when boats didn’t need 150-horsepower motors.

That’s why the Nov. 5 election is crucial, not only in the precincts of Jasper County but for what it could mean for the besieged Lowcountry as a whole.

Jasper voters will have a chance to do something positive — something concrete — to help keep Jasper rural.

Jasper voters can — and should — vote “yes” on a county sales tax referendum. It will create the county’s first local land and water conservation fund, following huge successes in Beaufort County, Hilton Head Island and Charleston County.

Jasper County Council is proposing a 15-year, 1% local sales tax to raise $470 million for roads and conservation projects.

Of that, $94 million (20 percent) will go to projects that support healthy waterways and conserve open land and greenspace.

It is a case of urgency.

The wake-up call came with the sale of the 5,200-acre Chelsea Plantation off S.C. 170 in Okatie, which was quietly owned as a hunting preserve by the Marshall Field family for 85 years.

And then there’s this:

Jasper was the state’s fastest-growing county from 2020 to 2022, and in 2023 its year-over-year growth rate of 4.87 percent (to 33,544) led the state, even surpassing the growth that is absolutely exploding in the Charleston and Myrtle Beach areas. (Beaufort County’s growth last year was 1.44 percent.)

Jasper County Council under Chairman Marty Sauls earned the public’s trust by caring for the true birthright of residents when it imposed a temporary moratorium on new development last year and looked to strengthen rural zoning.

The Coastal Conservation League supports the Jasper sales tax referendum.

South Coast Project Manager Grant McClure said, “The stars are starting to come into line. They’ve got a rezoning effort going on. The referendum could raise $94 million for conservation. And they’re also starting a parks and recreation master plan.”

Beaufort County voters have a $950 million, 1% sales tax referendum on their Nov. 5 ballot, with $50 million (5 percent) going to land conservation and protection of natural resources. That is a good reason to vote for it, though most of the money goes for transportation projects spurred by growth. The $50 million would follow up on the county’s successful $100 million 1% sales tax for green space over two years approved by voters in 2022.

When Jasper’s temporary moratorium passed, Marty Sauls said it was the County Council’s way to “preserve what is ours.”

Now voters should do the same thing.