By: Arlie Porter of The Post and
Courier Staff
Originally Published on: 3/28/03
State environmental authorities have approved construction of a concrete-and-steel groin that will extend into the ocean at Folly Beach, the first new groin expected to be built along the state's coast in more than 20 years.
Stretching like a finger across the beach and several hundred feet into the sea, the $650,000 groin at Folly Beach County Park will hold sand in place, saving the heavily used park from rapid erosion, park officials say.
Until this week, environmental groups and the town of Kiawah Island had objected. They claimed a groin at the southern tip of Folly Beach would stop sand from flowing down shore, potentially causing erosion of a small island that is home to thousands of nesting pelicans and along the wide beaches at the exclusive Kiawah resort.
As a condition of the state permit issued Wednesday, the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission has agreed to monitor down-shore islands and set aside $200,000 to rebuild beaches if they erode. Those assurances in hand, opponents said Thursday that they will not challenge the permit, apparently ending a three-year battle.
"It's a wonderful day for the people who want beach access," said Jeff Schryver, director of planning for the park commission. "It's really heartening to know that we have saved a valuable resource that can't be duplicated anywhere else in the county."
Park officials proposed the groin more than six years ago, after it became clear that the Folly Beach park needed rescue from the advancing ocean. The sea rushed over the park in a storm in 1997, destroying boardwalks and wiping out half of its 440-car parking area.
Attendance has not recovered fully from a high of 116,000 visitors in 1995, Schryver said.Over the years, the parks commission spent more than $500,000 to pump new sand onto the beach to rebuild it. Within a year, the ocean washed that away.
Without a groin to protect it, the park was doomed, officials said. And without the park, the public would have less access to the beach.
Coastal engineers hired by the park commission said that sand trapped by the groin represented a minute fraction of the volume flowing through the vast and dynamic channel where the Stono and Folly rivers empty into the ocean.
Environmentalists, however, noted that a nationally recognized pelican nesting area in the channel was wiped out after the federal Army Corps of Engineers pumped sand out of the inlet to renourish nearly the entire Folly Beach shoreline.
The S.C. Coastal Conservation League is satisfied with conditions in the permit and will not appeal, spokeswoman Nancy Vinson said.
An appeal from the town of Kiawah is unlikely, added Town Administrator Allison Harvey.
Harvey and Vinson said they remain concerned about the groin's effects and will closely watch down-shore beaches for any sign of change.
"We're all anxious to see that it doesn't do any harm to Skimmer Flats," Vinson said of the sandy island refuge for pelicans and other endangered nesting birds.
Vinson credited the S.C. Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management for pushing for the conditions that made a compromise possible. The OCRM has maintained that groins are not prohibited by state laws regulating the use of erosion- control structures on the beach.
Also, state legislators changed the law last year to make it easier to get groin- construction permits.
In recent years, the coastal agency has permitted reconstruction or replacement of existing groins at Garden City, north of Charleston, and at Port Royal Plantation on Hilton Head. The OCRM also permitted new groins at Port Royal, but they have not been built because environmental groups appealed to the state Supreme Court.
The Folly Beach groin is the first new, isolated groin allowed along the state's coast at least since 1980, Vinson said.
Though the park commission has its permit, it still must find $1 million to build the groin, monitor its effects, set up an insurance fund and rebuild the park's parking lot.
Last year, commissioners proposed borrowing $9 million to pay for the groin and other park projects. After a months-long internal battle, commissioners whittled the size of the proposed bond issue to $3 million. The groin is still included.
The makeup of the seven-member commission may change next month when, for the first time, Charleston County Council appoints four of its members.
Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers is expected to begin dredging the Folly River behind the park next month. Sand from the river, which is 2 feet high in some places at low tide, will be deposited at the Folly park, Schryver said.
If the money is found, construction of the groin could begin this fall, he said.
