Almost a year ago, on Sept. 23, 2024, I published in this column Trainwreck on the Beach. Almost everything in that column has played out, and the destruction of the beaches continues unabated. The Isle of Palms City Council in general, and the mayor in particular, can no longer keep putting lipstick on a pig. In the past four years under their watch, the beaches have substantially deteriorated, driven largely by bad policy and a hoax that prevents citizens from protecting their property by threatening them with illegal laws often rooted in ideology. COVID, anyone?
1. In 2014, the Legislature passed the Beach Preservation Act. The law required 1% of the accommodations tax to be diverted to beach preservation, which was specifically defined as three exclusive items: beach renourishment with new sand, dune maintenance and vegetation, and maintenance of public beach paths. Would it surprise anyone to learn that not one dollar has gone to these “exclusive” uses? Instead, funds have been wasted on incessant beach scraping, sandbags, and other unauthorized uses. Advising this council for a decade has been a coastal “engineer” who is not an engineer, has a record of being 100% wrong over the long haul, faces no consequences, and is awarded essentially no-bid renewals for “experience.” Valuing experience over competence and results went out almost 40 years ago in the private sector.
2. Instead of relying on metrics such as beach depth and wave run-ups, we have no measurements at all—only rhetoric spouted to council members who believe in radical ideologies with little basis in science or the real world. Instead of recognizing the need to build beach levels to retreat water and maintain dunes that protect the ecosystem and shoreline, we operate with no dunes and years of “emergency” scrapings that lower the beach and pull water in. Scrapings have been banned or heavily restricted in many states. Several engineers have said there is a formula for maintaining a beach that directly correlates to the amount of new sand placed on it. This is literally formula-driven.
3. In 2018, the Legislature amended the Beach Management Act (Act 173) to abandon preservation through “retreat” and adopt preservation through “replenishment and renourishment.” Why? Because the Lucas case in the 1990s, and several since, required that retreated land be purchased by the state and the tax base be shrunk. The state and the city, though, still operate under “retreat,” not recognizing the long-term liability. Unfortunately, it will take courage for citizens to fight lengthy and uncomfortable legal battles to assert these rights. Not everyone is prepared to do so, but it is starting to happen.
4. In the interim, the government intimidates citizens with arcane laws not based in fact. The state essentially says it is no longer governed by the setback line jurisdiction and instead will claim jurisdiction over private land based on where vegetation is spotted—regardless of the reason. In other words, if you intentionally take out your shrubs and let the property go natural, the state can claim your land for free while you continue paying taxes. Insane. The city is equally problematic. Its ordinance, originally set up to prevent building on accreted land, is now interpreted to claim unlimited private land from an arbitrary mean high water (MHW) line. By this reading, jurisdiction could extend up to Ocean Boulevard in some cases—at no cost to the city. However, they forgot to read statute 48-39-120 B, which says public trust land is seaward of the MHW mark, and that the MHW mark remains as it was when the property was first developed or subdivided. That makes sense because all oceanfront owners continue to own and pay taxes up to the original MHW mark. Instead, the city intimidates citizens into thinking the MHW mark for property lines constantly moves. Another hoax that will be easily overturned when citizens stand up and challenge these bullies. Our founders said, “Freedom and property rights go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.” We must defend this.
5. We must stop the misleading rhetoric from our local leaders. First, they said the Army Corps project was a $10 million “free replenishment.” More recently, they said it was a $4.5 million free replenishment. The Army Corps, to its credit, always denied this, saying it was simply trying to dispose of spoils from Intracoastal Waterway dredging. As predicted, this has been a disaster. The heavy equipment on the beach 24/7 compacts the sand, lowers the beach, and destroys the ecosystem within the sand. The “spoils” are dirty. Beaches have turned into oil baths in some areas, with garbage such as goggles pumped onto the shore. Visitors are visibly shocked. The sand itself is too fine to stay in place. As a recent resident-sponsored study showed, placing sand on these southern beaches is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. It washes into the Sullivan’s Island party shoals or into the channel on the other side of the bridge, creating bigger problems. This must be fixed first with a groin or equivalent. Prior to the Army Corps project, the beach was beginning to stabilize. Six-foot tides stayed back. Now, six-foot tides reach many escarpments and have largely washed out the so-called “dunes” created by the city with Corps sand—promised as the solution. Another colossal waste of money that enriched the contractor and engineer.
6. Finally, the very idea that homeowners cannot protect their property—and that the city or state will not, or are too incompetent to do so—is frightening. The false narrative that property owners only care about themselves and not the beach makes no sense if you think about it. Why else would someone live on the beach if they did not care about it? In my case, several elected officials spread the false narrative that my protective structure, built landward of the setback line (identified in my deed as a jurisdictional line), would damage the beach and neighboring property. Almost two years later, there is little damage to the beach. Both immediate neighbors have publicly said my structure helped them, and one even wrote to all council members confirming this. Not one dollar of public money has been spent on scraping or sandbags, and most visitors comment on how much nicer my yard looks compared with the rest of the beach. Would we stop for a minute and question our assumptions—or why Florida, Georgia, and many other states follow different strategies? No. Instead, we follow the definition of insanity: doing the same failed things with the same failed people and expecting different results.
There is only one solution: for property owners and beachgoers to wake up, examine the assumptions they have been operating under, and realize there are better solutions than failed policies that are destroying the beaches for the public and property owners. Maybe vote these folks out and replace them with a less ideological group. Our only other option is the courts. Maybe we don’t prevail at first, but prevail we will. The stakes are too high.
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Reddy or Not represents the opinion of Lucky Dog Publishing owner Rom Reddy but not necessarily the opinion of the newspaper. In keeping with our philosophy of publishing all opinions, we welcome responses, which must be limited to 400 words and will be published on a space-available basis.