How David Harter’s love for clean water rippled through the Lowcountry | Opinion

David Harter is not a scientist or a rabble-rouser or even a fisherman anymore, now that he has eased past his 78th birthday and passed his 30-foot fishing boat to third-generation charter boat captain, Stratton Pollitzer.

Yet, he was honored as a great protector of the South Carolina Lowcountry environment by The Port Royal Sound Foundation with a surprise event attended by about 60 people Monday, May 19, at its Maritime Center in Okatie.

Harter is a paint store owner. He’s Joe Citizen. He’s not even from the Lowcountry, where the Port Royal Sound Foundation and others try to get everyone to understand that this ain’t Kansas and our environment demands a whole different outlook.

Well-educated and active citizens are crucial, and Harter’s decades of work for clean rivers and healthy fish proves it.

Harter was born in Minneapolis, the grandson of Norwegian immigrants. That’s a long way from Port Royal Sound, but fishing with family throughout the West taught him the value of natural resources and the care it takes to protect them.

That worldview came with him when he and his wife, Jeannie, now a retired middle school teacher, moved to Hilton Head Island in 1979.

In 1993, Harter joined the late Bill Marscher and 10 other local citizens to form the Beaufort County Clean Water Task Force.

“Everything else kind of mushroomed after that,” Harter said.

Marscher — a Beaufort native who combined his love of this county with the mind of an engineer and the tactics of a policy wonk — became Harter’s mentor.

What got them fired up was when 500 acres of oyster beds on Hilton Head Island closed due to water pollution in 1995.

But in months of regular meetings with local, state and federal government entities often led by Sam Passmore of the Coastal Conservation League, the task force saw a broader picture of the threats to clean waterways.

They devised a landmark document called the “Blueprint for Clean Water” with specific recommendations for who should do what to address each threat.

“Almost every one of them got done, over time,” Harter said.

The list included the formation of a county stormwater utility that funds myriad ways local governments cope with flooding and keep stormwater runoff from killing rivers and streams.

From that came a citizens’ organization to keep an eye on it all. Nancy Schilling founded Friends of the Rivers, and Harter was its chair.

“The goal was to inform our local citizens about our unique coastal ecosystems,” he said.

Their effort morphed into the Port Royal Sound Foundation, which created the Maritime Center, where its Citizen Science program is one of many ways it teaches locals and visitors how to be friends of the rivers.

Like 60-year Lowcountry resident and graphic artist Collins Doughtie, Harter wrote a column in a local newspaper for many years, harping on the value of clean waterways.

And, like Doughtie, he became a champion of the Waddell Mariculture Center in Bluffton, where research and stocking programs aim to keep healthy fish in clean local waters.

He established the Waddell Fund at the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry that has pumped $1 million into this rare resource.

“All of a sudden, I had money to buy equipment, get emergency repairs done and hire two to four summer interns per year,” longtime director Al Stokes recalled.

Harter can cite many people who have gotten the community to this point, including state legislators, teachers, activists and state scientists.

One person who helped Beaufort County move on from its days of the massive oyster-bed closure was the late Scott Liggett, who worked as director of public projects and facilities for the Town of Hilton Head Island to include environmental protection in the town’s stormwater plans

Another person Harter worked with was middle school science teacher Lois Lewis. They started Kids in Kayaks to take middle schoolers into the creeks to learn. Those kids are now passing it on, too.

“Today, these ‘kids’ are now mothers and fathers,” Harter said. “We have hopes that they are teaching their children to recognize and appreciate the value of our coastal resources.”

This story was originally published May 25, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "How David Harter’s love for clean water rippled through the Lowcountry | Opinion."