BRACK: State needs to stop kowtowing to developers

By Andy Brack |  Are there any sacred or special places in South Carolina that are safe from developers?

Sure, there are parks and land protected by owners, but it seems developers generally have the upper hand whenever there’s a way for somebody to make a buck — whether it’s to build another subdivision that will bloat sprawl in urban areas, add yet another hotel in a tourist area or pack another mega-mansion as close to the beach as possible.

At issue now is a plan by developers to build 50 new, expensive homes on Captain Sam’s Spit, a fragile, 150-acre, low piece of coastal land between Kiawah and Seabrook islands. This week, regulators at the state Department of Health and Environmental Control approved a plan permit that would allow a road to be built on the spit and would lead to development. The project won a stormwater permit from the state earlier this month.

“The decision to issue this permit is a repudiation of the law, three years of judicial rulings and basic common sense,” S.C. Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Dana Beach told us this week. “It is hard to imagine a more nonsensical action and discouraging to think that the agency that is charged with more complex questions of protecting our environment is so incapable of dealing with an issue this simple and straightforward.”

Hear, hear. But it’s even worse and crazier than you think: There’s just not a huge need for more homes in the area. A quick real estate check shows there are 46 million-dollar homes on Kiawah and Seabrook that are for sale right now. In other words, there’s enough rich people housing stock in place near where developers want to build, but they’re obviously blinded by maximizing profit on land that has a big “hit me, hurricane” sign on it. Their mission, it seems, is to fill as much space on the coast as possible — the hell with the consequences.

Retired state Sen. Phil Leventis of Sumter blames the federal flood insurance program as one of the big culprits. For years, South Carolinians had small getaway cabins along the coast. Few built because of the danger of being blown away. And when they did build, they didn’t spend much. In other words, they took a risk, but not a big one.

Then came the flood insurance program in the 1960s, which allowed people to build bigger homes and live at the beach, more or less, year round. But what the program also meant was that if these homes got smashed, the subsidized, federal flood insurance program fueled by all taxpayers would help them rebuild.

“That was the first in a series of developments that switched liability from individuals to the group, with the group being the rest of the citizens,” he said.

Do you imagine, Leventis wondered, whether these millionaires would build homes on Captain Sam’s Spit if they couldn’t get insurance, which banks now require before loaning money to build the homes? (As an aside, why do you think banks would require flood insurance? Because they know the “investment” could go south with just one storm.)

“People aren’t willing to admit that they’re in a dangerous place so they put these mechanisms in place so they could share the [financial] responsibility with folks who could never, ever afford homes in these places.”

State environmental regulators need to stop kowtowing to development interests and realize that the public interest trumps greed. They need to enforce the state’s tough beachfront management law, which includes moving setback lines seaward when beaches have built up, not delaying so developers like those at Captain Sam’s Spit can build more houses. Citizens should demand that the state follow the law, not put up with legislators who create exceptions, such as a measure last year that is allowing an exclusive Georgetown County gated community to build a new seawall — the first in 27 years.

If we don’t get a handle on the overbuilding of special parts of South Carolina, we’ll lose a part of our heritage that sets us apart from New Jersey and coastal blight. And that, my friends, will create the opposite of smiling faces and beautiful places.