Feldman: Protect SC beaches from unstable development

Bills introduced by Rep. Bill Herbkersman (H.3378) and Sen. Ray Cleary (S.139) are the culmination of years of work by the state’s Shoreline Change Advisory Committee and Blue Ribbon Committee on Shoreline Management. They seek to update our state’s 30-year-old Beachfront Management Act to keep our beaches healthy for future generations. We don’t want to encourage development in unstable beach areas, and we don’t want to pay for beach nourishment or higher insurance premiums to fix or rebuild damaged buildings that should not have been built on an active beach in the first place.

Enter Kiawah Partners, wealthy, out-of-state developers who have hired expensive lobbyists to try to get special treatment. They want to develop Captain Sam’s Spit, a thin finger of sand at the far western end of Kiawah Island. Captain Sam’s Spit is a highly dynamic place, constantly eroding, accreting and re-forming itself. Over time, it has been a long peninsula, as it has today, and a stubby peninsula; as recently as 1949, the sea has broken through at its thin neck, and it has become an island. It has been completely submerged. It is so unstable that it is protected by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act, which makes it ineligible for federal flood insurance. The purpose of this designation is to minimize the loss of human life, wasteful expenditures and damage to natural resources.

The lobbyists for Kiawah Partners are working hard to convince our state legislators that the baseline — the line that determines where development stops — should be allowed to move seaward until at least 2021. A House panel voted to make it possible for them to build up to 50 houses on this shifting sand, along with a road very close to the ocean. This is a terrible idea. Just ask the folks in Rodanthe, on the Outer Banks, where N.C. 12 washes out in storms and has had to be rebuilt over and over again. Beaches are a public trust. We do not need precarious roads built on or adjacent to our beaches. The Kiawah amendment presents a risk to homeowners and taxpayers, and likely will raise insurance rates for all coastal properties.

If Sen. Paul Campbell and his friends prevail, our beaches will be jeopardized by out-of-state, moneyed interests from North Carolina and New York. Don’t allow this to happen. The Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee will consider S.139 on Thursday. Tell your senator to reject the foolhardy Kiawah amendment.

Columbia

This story was originally published April 21, 2015 at 7:00 PM with the headline "Feldman: Protect SC beaches from unstable development."