Rising Sea Level Big Concern Along S.C.
Posted on: Thursday, 7 December 2006, 18:42 CST
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Global warming and a rise in sea levels could dramatically affect South Carolina's coast, according to scientists and environmental officials meeting at a conference in Charleston this week.
The rising ocean is "going to shave off a ton of landscape along the coast," which could drown marshes that act as buffers for storm surge, raising the likelihood of major flooding when the next hurricane hits, said Jim Morris, marine studies professor at the University of South Carolina and director of its Belle W. Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences.
Morris was at the Southeast Regional Workshop on The Nation's Coasts, hosted by the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. The organization wants to help communities deal with rising sea levels associated with global warming.
The state's beach management law calls for a gradual retreat of new development from the seashore, but building pressures continue from Cherry Grove to Hilton Head Island, said Braxton Davis, a scientist with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control's coastal office.
That could be dangerous with scientists warning the ocean could extend 100 feet or more inland in the next century.
Water temperatures also are rising and that could bring additional problems to South Carolina's coastal waters.
Three summers ago, a married couple became ill from eating a toxin-polluted barracuda that had been caught off the South Carolina coast.
The poisoning is normally associated with species in more tropical Caribbean waters, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But as warm waters expand northward, tropical fish, and potentially new hazards, are following into the South Atlantic's waters, experts said.
Source: AP
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