Another chance to build it right, go taller, leave more open space, reject sprawl, get on the right path … 10% impervious surface cover should be the goal.
Developer wants to build 400 homes on SC HWY 170
Another Chance To Build It Right
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The Science Is Undeniable!
The science is easy to understand and long-proven.
“The clearing of land for sprawling suburban development is directly linked to the impaired waterways because without enough natural land cover left intact to serve its filtering function, stormwater carries sediment and pollutants across impervious surfaces and directly into the rivers.” (Schueller & Holland, 2000).
“With a few exceptions, the settlement pattern south of the Broad River has been comprised of conventional suburban sprawl: single-use, single-family detached subdivisions, strip-commercial, and auto-dominated thoroughfares which brings with it a high percentage of impervious surface.” (Schueller & Holland, 2000).
“If the greater Bluffton area is developed according to the approvals as they currently exist, impervious surface will exceed 20% in the May River watershed and edible May River oysters will be a thing of the past.” (Coastal Conservation League)
We are already over 10% and we add to the problem nearly every day. We can continue to grow, but we must conform to the simple science above.
“Over the past (two) decade(s), various stormwater management techniques have been employed in an attempt to mitigate the impacts of stormwater runoff caused by impervious surface without altering the conventional suburban settlement pattern. These techniques include, but are not limited to: stormwater management ordinances, Best Management Practices, devices at the end of outfalls, and maintenance and repair of stormwater retention ponds. However, the current inventory of on-site safeguards does not allow us to ignore the ten-percent rule. The only aquatic systems that will retain the full range of species and ecological functions will be those where less than ten percent of the watershed is impervious.” (Schueller & Holland, 2000)
Septic Systems Are Only A Small Part Of The May River Problem
About a decade ago, as part of an environmental restoration grant application, about 500 homes near the river were reported to have septic tanks. That number has not changed significantly in the last ten years, in part because most home construction since then have been connected to sewer systems rather than septic tanks.
Yet, we have an increasingly damaging problem with pollution entering the May River.
“The clearing of land for sprawling suburban development is directly linked to the impaired waterways because without enough natural land cover left intact to serve its filtering function, stormwater carries sediment and pollutants across impervious surfaces and directly into the rivers.” (Schueller & Holland, 2000).
While efforts to provide sanitary sewers as broadly as possible are encouraging, these efforts can also divert attention from the leading cause of polluted runoff – poor planning and inappropriate development patterns leading to sprawl.
Similarly, the limited focus of current testing is hindering our monitoring efforts. Testing that is infrequent or that is restricted to only fecal coliform provides little information about safety risks and long term pollution trends. Because of these testing limits, we actually don’t know how safe it is to swim in the headwaters of the May River. Per the Coastal Conservation League, “if the greater Bluffton area is developed according to the approvals as they currently exist, impervious surface will exceed 20% in the May River watershed and edible May River oysters will be a thing of the past.”
So, while the removal of septic tanks is a small part of the solution, it is not, in and of itself, the total solution. We need to focus on smarter land use. Without correcting our problems with suburban sprawl, we will not succeed.
Save The May River
Recent decades of development have brought an influx of impervious surfaces, such as parking lots and roads. Now that impervious surfaces cover more than 10 percent of our watershed area, it is a widely held scientific fact that the water quality within has declined. Poor water quality leads to medical illness in humans and decimates oysters, fish and other marine life.
With a few exceptions, the settlement pattern south of the Broad River has been comprised of conventional suburban sprawl: single-use, single-family detached subdivisions, strip-commercial, and auto-dominated thoroughfares which brings with it a high percentage of impervious surface. The clearing of land for sprawling suburban development is directly linked to the impaired waterways because without enough natural land-cover left intact to serve its filtering function, stormwater carries sediment and pollutants across impervious surfaces and directly into the rivers. The impacts of impervious surface are exponential: a one-acre parking lot produces 16 times the volume of runoff that comes from a one-acre meadow (Schueller & Holland, 2000). Therefore, developing under a conventional suburban sprawl settlement pattern guarantees enormous stormwater volumes while amplifying its negative impacts on our waterways.
“The clearing of land for sprawling suburban development is directly linked to the impaired waterways because without enough natural land cover left intact to serve its filtering function, stormwater carries sediment and pollutants across impervious surfaces and directly into the rivers.” (Schueller & Holland, 2000).
Moreover, the streams, creeks, marshes and rivers surrounded by filled and impervious watersheds are less diverse, less stable, and less productive than those in natural watersheds. (Schueller & Holland, 2000) Streams in watersheds with more than ten percent hard surfaces become physically unstable, causing erosion and sedimentation, (Booth, 1991; Booth & Reinelt, 1993) and habitat quality falls below the level necessary to sustain a broad diversity of aquatic life. (Booth, Booth &R; Shaver et al., 1995) In sum, a watershed’s diversity, stability and quality become increasingly compromised as percentages of impervious surface increase. As a general rule, a ten-percent [impervious surface] threshold establishes an empirical point beyond which ecosystem function, in general, declines because of individual and cumulative stresses. (Beach, 2002) Studies specifically focusing on coastal estuaries have confirmed that general degradation begins at the ten-percent impervious threshold. (Taylor, 1993) There is an indisputable positive relationship between the traditional development pattern (compact, mixed-use, traditional neighborhood development) and its minimized impervious surface that ultimately results in greater water quality.
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How Robert Smalls sailed his crew and family to freedom during the Civil War
During the transatlantic slave trade, Charleston, South Carolina was one of the largest slave ports in the United States. But at the height of the Civil War, Charleston’s waterfront was the backdrop of one enslaved man’s daring escape. In part two of our series, “Hidden Histories,” we get the story of Robert Smalls, who stole a Confederate ship and sailed to freedom.
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Record number of Beaufort County students honored as National Merit semifinalists for 2023
BEAUFORT– Nine Beaufort County School District students have been announced as semifinalists in the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program and will advance to the next level of competition.
Selected as national semifinalists were Michael Dennison and Susan Livesay (Beaufort High), McKenzie Morgan and Jason Ni (Bluffton High), Cynthia Gudaitis and Benjamin Lewis (Hilton Head High), and Sarah Nunez, Lucy Peltz, and Brooks van Esselstyn (May River High).
These students entered the 2023 National Merit Scholarship Program competition by taking the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. They are part of the nationwide pool of semifinalists that includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state, placing them in the top one percent of all U.S. high school seniors.
As semifinalists, they will compete with 16,000 national finalists for 7,250 college scholarships worth nearly $28 million.
These are nine extraordinary students, I am confident they will represent Beaufort County exceptionally well in the next phases of this national competition.
SUPERINTENDENT FRANK RODRIGUEZ.
In order to become a finalist, each semifinalist and their high school must now submit a detailed application that provides information about the student’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards. In addition, each semifinalist must be endorsed and recommended by an official from their high school, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier score on the qualifying test.
The National Merit Scholarship Corp. is a nonprofit established in 1955, and its scholarships are underwritten by NMSC with its own funds and more than 340 businesses and higher education institutions.
Seventh Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival Scheduled For October 28th to 30th
The Pat Conroy Literary Festival began as Pat Conroy’s 70th birthday celebration in October 2015 and now continues as an annual signature event of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center. This year’s Conroy Festival will be held on October 28th through 30th as a series of free and ticketed events in Beaufort and Bluffton featuring author discussions, writers workshops, a storytelling and musical performance, and a screening of the film Conrack in honor of the 50th anniversary of Pat Conroy’s 1972 teaching memoir The Water Is Wide.
Advance registration for all events is now open at www.patconroyliteraryfestival.org.
This year’s presenting authors and workshop instructors include journalist and novelist Thrity Umrigar, author of Honor; Edgar Award-winning novelist and founder of The Moth, George Dawes Green, author of The Kingdoms of Savannah; four winners of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction: Nathan Harris, author of The Sweetness of Water, De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills, Bren McClain, author of One Good Mama Bone, and Mindy Friddle, author of Secret Keepers; memoirist Judy Goldman, author of Child; Will You Grow founder Angelique Medow; Pat Conroy’s Beaufort High School student Valerie Sayers, author of The Age of Infidelity; Conroy’s Daufuskie Island student Sallie Ann Robinson, author of Sallie Ann Robinson’s Kitchen; and children’s authors Rebecca Dwight Bruff, author of Stars of Wonder, and Susan Montanari, author of The Halloween Tree.
SPOTLIGHT on FRIDAY EVENTS, 10/28
3:00-4:30 p.m.: AUTHOR EVENT: Panel discussion with four winners of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction: Nathan Harris (The Sweetness of Water), De’Shawn Charles Winslow (In West Mills), Bren McClain (One Good Mama Bone), and Mindy Friddle (Secret Keepers). Book signing to follow, at the USC Beaufort Center for the Arts (free event, donations welcome)
5:00-6:15 p.m.: THE WATER IS WIDE PANEL DISCUSSION: Honoring the 50th anniversary of Pat Conroy’s 1972 teaching memoir The Water Is Wide, the panel discussion will include Conroy’s Daufuskie Island student turned celebrity chef and cultural historian Sallie Ann Robinson, historian Larry Rowland, and two of Conroy’s teaching colleagues, George Westerfield and Peter Walter, moderated by Ellen Malphrus, at the USC Beaufort Center for the Arts (free event, donations welcome)
6:45-9:00 p.m.: FILM SCREENING OF CONRACK, also featuring live vocal performances by Marlena Smalls, teacher recognitions, and a new scholarship announcement, at the USC Beaufort Center for the Arts (free event, donations welcome)
SPOTLIGHT on SATURDAY EVENTS, 10/29
11:00-noon: VIRTUAL AUTHOR EVENT: Judy Goldman, author of the memoir Child, live-streamed on the Conroy Center’s Facebook page and also accessible on Zoom with advance registration. (free event, donations welcome)
1:00-2:30 p.m.: AUTHOR EVENT: Thrity Umrigar, author of the novel Honor, in conversation with Margaret Evans. Book signing to follow, at the USC Beaufort Center for the Arts (free event, donations welcome)
2:30-4:00 p.m.: AUTHOR EVENT: George Dawes Green, author of the novel The Kingdoms of Savannah, in conversation with Scott Graber. Book signing to follow, at the USC Beaufort Center for the Arts (free event, donations welcome)
7:00-9:45 p.m.: STORYTELLING EVENT: With Moth founder George Dawes Green, featuring MC Jon Goode, Scott Gibbs and the Beaufort Mass Choir, Alibis with Peter Zamuka and Steve Faulkner, plus several local storytellers. Followed by a champagne and cake reception celebrating the Moth’s 25th anniversary, at the USC Beaufort Center for the Arts ($25/person, $10/student discount)
SPOTLIGHT on SUNDAY EVENT, 10/30
2:00-3:30 p.m.: AUTHOR EVENT: Children’s Authors Rebecca Dwight Bruff (Stars of Wonder) and Susan Montanari (The Halloween Tree) in conversation with Sally Sue Lavigne of the Storybook Shoppe. Book signing to follow, at Lowcountry Presbyterian Church of Bluffton (free event, donations welcome)
The 7th Annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival is made possible by the generous support and collaboration of the Robert S. Handler Trust, the Reba and Dave Williams Foundation for Literature and the Arts, the Willie Morris Awards at the University of Mississippi, the Rhett House Inn, the Anchorage 1770 Inn, the Best Western Sea Islands Inn, Susan DeLoach Photography, Hahn Family Wines, Oyster Cay Collection, Eugene A. Rugala & Associates, University of South Carolina Beaufort, Lowcountry Presbyterian Church, the Beaufort Bookstore, the Storybook Shoppe, NeverMore Books, Annie Powell – Welcome Home Beaufort, Allen Patterson Builders, Foolish Frog, Zippy Lube of Sea Island Parkway, Lynn & Wheeler, CPAs, PA, Marly Rusoff & Mihai Radulescu, Carol Dawson, Patricia A. Denkler, and others.
Learn more about the Pat Conroy Literary Center online at www.patconroyliterarycenter.org or in person at 601 Bladen Street in downtown Beaufort, where the Center is open to the public Thursdays through Sundays from noon to 4:00 p.m. or other times by appointment.
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South Carolina 2022 Bridge Profile
National Bridge Inventory: South Carolina
• Of the 9,395 bridges in the state, 499, or 5.3 percent, are classified as structurally deficient. This means one of the key elements is in poor or worse condition.
• This is down from 781 bridges classified as structurally deficient in 2017.
• The deck area of structurally deficient bridges accounts for 4.4 percent of total deck area on all structures.
• 17 of the structurally deficient bridges are on the Interstate Highway System. A total of 88.6 percent of the structurally deficient bridges are not on the National Highway System, which includes the Interstate and other key roads linking major airports, ports, rail and truck terminals.
• 1,983 bridges are posted for load, which may restrict the size and weight of vehicles crossing the structure.
• The state has identified needed repairs on 2,042 bridges at an estimated cost of $2.0 billion.
• This compares to 1,591 bridges that needed work in 2017.
Full report
Autumn Fine Art Show at Palmeto Bluff Gallery
The Fall Show will be held in the FLOW Gallery Courtyard at Wilson Village in Palmetto Bluff.
10am – 11am Member Preview + Sales
11am – 4pm Public Show + Sales
11am – 4pm Public Show + Sales
Over twenty artists will be featured in this popular annual event. A portion of the artists’ proceeds will be donated to The Palmetto Bluff Conservancy.
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