Built on a Sandy Foundation: City Gets Ball Rolling on Renourishment Request
By Stratton Lawrence
Hurricane Irene may not have attacked Folly Beach head on, but it dealt a side swipe with its turbulent waters that ate away at huge chunks of the island’s beach. Folly Beach County Park was among the worst hit areas. The storm left behind walkways suspended eerily over a dozen feet of empty space where dunes once stood.
The county announced on September 2 that the park would be closed for the duration of 2011 for repairs, and dump trucks have since commenced shipping sand in to fortify what’s left of the sliver of beach.
That announcement came in conjunction with the kickoff of Labor Day weekend, a crucial tourist influx for Folly businesses hunkering down for the off-season. The city sent out a press release acknowledging “’hype’ going around” that the beach would be closed for the weekend, and denying those rumors.
But residents and those that have visited the beach since Irene are crowded into smaller areas than before. At high tide, waves clip at rocks at the Washout, where virtually no beach remains. Two homes at the island’s far east end suffered most from the storm, with at least one losing its A/C unit as waves washed underneath.
Even before Irene, Folly Beach already met the erosion parameters required to request funding for a renourishment project through the Army Corps of Engineers, says Mayor Tim Goodwin. The storm simply exacerbated an existing problem.
On Tuesday, September 6, Goodwin hosted state Sen. Chip Campsen (R – Isle of Palms), Jennifer Hightower, regional director for U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R – S.C.), and Kathy Crawford, district director for U.S. Rep. Tim Scott (R – Charleston) on a tour of the damaged beach.
“Folly is a unique case,” said Campsen, explaining the island’s agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that acknowledges the federal government’s responsibility for renourishing Folly, due to the detrimental effect that the placement of the Charleston Harbor jetties has on accretion on the island (a 1992 study attributes 57 percent of Folly’s erosion problems to the jetties, constructed in 1896).
The federal government pays 85 percent of renourishment costs, according to the agreement, while the city covers the remaining 15 percent. Folly first received renourishment in 1993, and sets funds aside each year for future projects. Currently, in conjunction with $660,000 supplied by Charleston County Parks and Recreation, Folly has $2,560,000 budgeted and ready for renourishment, just $140,000 shy of the funds needed for the projected $18 million project.
Although Folly could use renourishment immediately, the soonest Mayor Goodwin anticipates receiving federal funds is within the 2013 federal budget, determined at the onset of the 2012 fiscal year.
“The time is getting closer and closer to when we need to get everything really ramped up,” says Goodwin, who says that despite extensive damage from Irene, S.C. doesn’t qualify as a disaster area and thus has to wait on funding through the regular budget. “But when you look at the end of the island and the breakers are breaking directly into the river, you know you’ve got trouble.”
Tim Scott representative Crawford said that she would begin inquiring with the Army Corps about their 2013 budget, assuring that Folly Beach was included. Goodwin raised concerns that Folly could be overlooked, with priorities being placed on dredging Charleston Harbor to meet the completion of the Panama Canal widening.
“We don’t want to get lost in the shuffle,” says Goodwin.
Campsen reiterated the federal government’s obligation to Folly, clarifying that a contractual agreement written into a budget is not an earmark and that the project isn’t something covertly ‘slipped into’ the budget.
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