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Marsh Island Bridges in Flux

Posted on: Monday, 17 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

By Bo Petersen, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.

Apr. 16--The future of bridges to marsh islands comes down to 18 votes. A state House committee Tuesday will consider a subcommittee's stripped-down version of regulations that environmentalists say would gut protection for the islands.

The vote could well decide how many of the tiny coastal islands can be developed, a contentious issue in a regulatory war being fought by conservationists and property-rights proponents. Both sides are pushing hard and the outcome is considered too close to call.

"The fight is on," said Rep. Robert Brown, D-Hollywood, a six-year member of the Agriculture, Natural Resources & Environmental Affairs committee, who supports the original version of the regulations. "I've never seen the committee this divided."

Marsh islands are the small, wooded crown jewels of inland coastal waters. About 2,400 of nearly 4,000 islands in the state are considered undeveloped. Half of the 4,000 are in the Charleston area. Most are a few acres or less.

Getting road access to them has been fought over since a developer in 1998 proposed building a bridge to Park Island in the Wando River in Mount Pleasant. An ensuing lawsuit went to the state Supreme Court in 2005. The court threw out the old rules governing marsh islands.

Regulations were proposed in 2005 from the consensus recommendations of an adversarial ad hoc committee of developers and environmentalists formed by the S.C. Health and Environmental Control department.

Under those regulations bridges could be built to fewer than 200 islands. Under the reworked regulations moved to the committee, bridges could be built to about one-third more and bigger bridges built to smaller islands, said Nancy Vinson of the Coastal Conservation League.

The subcommittee also removed regulations restricting development on the islands. Developers had argued that local zoning regulations already govern building on the islands, that the new rules would extend state control beyond what current state law allows and the regulations would lead to lawsuits.

The debate became so combative that a subcommittee member asked state

Attorney General Henry McMaster for an opinion whether DHEC had the authority to restrict island development. McMaster said the agency does. The subcommittee also was given a private attorney's legal opinion that DHEC doesn't.

"What most people don't realize is that the regulations they were advocating for marsh islands could have carried over to the rest of the state," said Mark Nix, South Carolina Landowners Association director. "They could go back and rezone you completely. I'm all in favor of them regulating the (island) docks and bridges, just not the land use. Leave up to local government."

The committee can vote to approve, which would move the regulations back to DHEC for the changes to be incorporated. It can simply "adjourn debate" under the regulations. Because the Senate already has done that, the DHEC version of the regulations would become law May 20. Observers expect one of the two to happen.

Vinson called on the committee to "stand tall against a few special interests to protect the public trust tidelands. The fate of these critical safeguards for our salt marshes is in the hands of the (committee). The DHEC board and state senators already have voiced unanimous support for these critical regulations designed to limit bridges to marsh islands, protect public views, water quality, and wildlife habitat."

"The consensus regulations, I think, were not only the art of good compromise, they were good for the state as a whole," Brown said. "The subcommittee's regulations are totally unacceptable to me, and I think they will be totally unacceptable to the majority of the committee."

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Source: The Post and Courier

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