The resort property near Charleston, S.C. has been using sandbags to hold back the sea from the signature 18th hole of its Tom Fazio-designed Links Course, as a temporary measure until the anticipated arrival of an offshore sandbar that’s still at least a year away. But permits allowing the sand bags expire December 31, and it’s uncertain whether extensions could be granted.
Permits that have allowed the Wild Dunes Resort in Isle of Palms, S.C. to use sand bags as a temporary measure to protect erosion of the signature 18th hole of its Tom Fazio-designed Links Course will expire at the end of December, reported The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C. The permits were issued in anticipation of a permanent fix arriving in the form of an offshore sandbar that has been moving toward the shoreline, The Post and Courier reported, but the current pace of currents will not bring that sand for at least another year.
“Again, we’re struggling a little bit with nature here,” Linda Tucker, Isle of Palms’ City Administrator, told The Post and Courier. “There is a lot of sand out there and it is moving in the direction we want it to move. It would just be nice if it moved a little faster.”
The sand bags are holding for the moment, said Tim Kana of Coastal Science and Engineering, who is overseeing management of the eroding beach on the volatile east end of Wild Dunes, where Dewees Inlet cuts and re-cuts through. There’s still more sand on the beach than there was in 2007, Kana said. “We just have to wait it out,” he told The Post and Courier.
The waiting, though, is the hardest part, The Post and Courier reported, because technically, state law prohibits using sand bags to protect beach golf courses. The sand bags at the Links Course are there as a state budget proviso and sort of a temporary work-around of the regulation that is overseen by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), The Post and Courier reported.
“The December 31, 2013, deadline for removal of sandbags from the golf course was established by the General Assembly,” Dan Burger, Director of the DHEC’s Coastal Service Division, told The Post and Courier.
“If the sandbags are not removed by the deadline, DHEC will leverage compliance through administrative processes,” Burger added.
DHEC has not received an extension request from Wild Dunes’ golf course managers, Burger told The Post and Courier, and the law isn’t clear about whether an extension can be sought.
“We hope to continue to work with the city and the state, whether it’s an extension or another means” to protect the course, Jeff Minton, the resort’s golf director, told The Post and Courier.
In 2007, while a controversial $10 million renourishment project for the private resort labored its way through the regulatory process, half of the golf course’s 18th green washed away, and the resort’s Ocean Club had waves washing into the carport underneath the complex, The Post and Courier reported. The club and nearby condominiums were facing condemnation, and tens of thousands of sand bags piled up to protect them washed away in storm tides, littering the coast and nearby marshes for miles.
The 2008 renourishment was wrenched from legal arm-wrestling between owners and state regulators after that sandbag fiasco, The Post and Courier reported. The $10 million was paid for largely by Wild Dunes property owners, with tax money paying $3 million. From the beginning, some people opposed using any public money to shore up the private resort, regardless of any potential effect that damages at the property might have on tourism tax revenue, The Post and Courier reported.
Within two years, high-tide surf again began scarping away sand from the condos and golf course, and more sand was hauled from the inlet beach to protect them, The Post and Courier reported. But that beach no longer has enough sand to implement that measure again, it was noted.
All along, the idea was that the offshore sandbar eventually would attach to the beach, bringing more sand, The Post and Courier reported. In 2010, Kana said, he expected the offshore sand bar to start moving in the next few years.
“It’s an ongoing management problem,” he told The Post and Courier on December 11. “We have to wait for [the sandbar] to attach.”
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