In most cases, however, there’s still little they can do to protect their pools.
The Council voted 7-2 at a special meeting Feb. 20 to pass an emergency ordinance that for 60 days will permit homeowners between 100 and 914 Ocean Blvd. to ignore the city’s regulations prohibiting seawalls and revetments within approximately 250 feet landward of the tide’s high-water mark. Residents will be permitted erect erosion control structures up to 20 feet beyond the maximum building line, a boundary established by the developer and adopted by the city in 1988.
According to Deputy City Administrator Douglas Kerr, along the designated stretch of Ocean Boulevard, there are 55 pools beyond the maximum building line, only six of them within 20 feet of the line and 31 within 35 feet.
Council members considered two prospective emergency ordinances, one that would temporarily do away with the city’s ban on seawalls and revetments and another that would permit seawalls and revetments within 35 feet of the maximum building line. With strong support from Council Member Blair Hahn, they finally settled on setting that number at 20 feet, effectively prohibiting most property owners from protecting their pools.
The ordinance will have no effect on the areas of the beach that are under the control of the Ocean & Resource Management division of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, and Kerr pointed out that OCRM will not permit heavy equipment to access beachfront properties from the beach.
“As we vote on the property rights of individuals versus everybody’s right to walk the beach, I’ve been reminded that the way one knows that a decision is a good decision or a bad decision is by looking at the consequences of that decision, both intended and unintended Do we remove all restrictions or do we say ‘no you can only build, in my mind, 20 feet from the maximum setback?’” Hahn commented.
He added that “some pools would be sacrificed. Those are the tough choices some people will have to make.” Hahn went on to say that removing all restrictions would create “a patchwork of seawalls.”
“If we have an erosion event, it will create hydraulic chaos as water moves between the seawalls between houses that don’t have a seawall,” he continued.
Although she said the Council was looking at “two bad options” and “not great choices,” Council member Elizabeth Campsen joined her colleagues Katie Miars, Jan Anderson, Jimmy Ward, Ashley Carroll, Hahn and Mayor Phillip Pounds in voting both for Hahn’s amendment to reduce the distance from the maximum building line from 35 to 20 feet and for the amended ordinance. Both measures were opposed by Council members Scott Pierce and John Bogosian.
“I think property owners should be responsible for protecting their own property,” Bogosian said later. “This restricts almost every homeowner from doing anything unless they tear up their pools. It’s unworkable and a senseless piece of legislation. After 60 days, we’ll look back and see that no one has done anything. Let the homeowners work with OCRM. They should be allowed to do what they want to do.”
“Eventually, it’s going to be fought in court. The city shouldn’t get in the middle of that,” he added.
Pierce later released a statement outlining his opposition to passing the emergency ordinance: “Isle of Palms has lost 1 million cubic yards of beach in the past two years. The proposed ordinances for hard erosion structures are an unfortunate reaction to a failure to proactively implement IOP’s and the state’s published stance of preserving public beaches and dune systems. After talking to several constituents, I wasn’t comfortable with any of the presented options. The approved ordinance results in impractical new legislation, layered on top of IOP’s 50-year-old obsolete ordinance. There were simply too many unanswered basic questions on the overall impact to homeowners and the beach and how the ordinance would be implemented.”
Under the terms of the temporary ordinance, which expires 60 days after being passed but can be extended by the Council, seawalls or revetments must be approved by the city, designed by a registered, qualified engineer and be covered by beach-compatible sand that is not taken from the beach. In addition, adjacent property owners must be notified in writing and construction must be coordinated with OCRM.
“We’re dealing with an emergency ordinance tonight to give some relief. The last thing we want to do is tee something up tonight and not have it pass,” Pounds said prior to the vote. “That’s like the worst-case scenario. There may be nobody take advantage of this thing, but we need to give some type of relief to homeowners, whatever it may be.”