The South Carolina Office of Resilience received the initial nod from a legislative oversight committee Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2024, to contribute more than $19 million to the purchase of more than 7,000 acres of Snow's Island in Florence County. (Photo by Jeff Blake, provided by Open Space Institute)
COLUMBIA — South Carolina is buying a Revolutionary War hideout, preserving parts of a pristine barrier island and upgrading outdated stormwater systems with the aim of preventing future flooding.
Since 2021, the Legislature, at the urging of Gov. Henry McMaster, has set aside $274 million in a reserve fund in an effort to reduce the impacts of flooding when natural disasters strike, as well as jumpstart the recovery process after a major storm.
The first $30 million remains untouched until it’s needed in the wake of a presidentially declared disaster. Those reserves could potentially be tapped in response to Tropical Storm Debby , depending on the extent of damages. (Reports are still being collected.)
Beyond that, only the $30 million legislators added to the fund in this year’s state budget is uncommitted.
The state has used the lion’s share of prior designations to buy and preserve thousands of acres of wetlands around the Palmetto State, “allowing the floodplains to do what they’re supposed to do,” according to Eric Fosmire, chief of staff for the state Office of Resilience.
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Pristine places
That includes parts of Waites Island in Horry County. It’s “one of the last pristine barrier islands that we have in South Carolina” that isn’t already protected, with a landscape that ranges from elevated bluffs to marshland, Fosmire said.
The state has pooled its funding with national conservation-focused non-profits. These non-profits then apply for grant funding that state government isn’t eligible for, helping reduce cost.
So far, the state has partnered with the Open Space Institute — spending $23 million from the reserve fund — to purchase 480 acres on Waites Island. An additional $8 million purchase of 118 acres is in negotiations, according to Fosmire and documents provided to a legislative oversight committee.
Coastal Carolina University’s Coastal Educational Foundation already owns more than 1,100 acres on the southern end of Waties Island that students use for research. The foundation received the land in 1995 as a gift from the same family, the descendants of Anne Tilghman Boyce, who are selling what’s left of their land for permanent preservation.
The undeveloped island stands in stark contrast to the high-rise condos, beachside restaurants and boardwalk of nearby Myrtle Beach.
The center of Waites Island remains in private hands, according to online Horry County property records , owned by Richmond-based Riverstone Group, which operates several golf resorts up and down the East Coast, including on Kiawah Island in Charleston County.
“What we really want people to understand, from a resilience standpoint, is that this isn’t about anti-growth, anti-development,” Fosmire said.
“It’s just about being smart in the development,” he continued. “And when you’re doing your planning, maybe don’t put a big box store on the most absorbent land in the county. Maybe look for another area, another place to put it that works to everyone’s benefit.”
In the Upstate, the state contributed $2 million from the reserve fund, as well as money from the state Conservation Bank, partnering with Naturaland Trust and Pickens County area government, including Easley Combined Utilities, to buy more than 1,000 acres along the South Saluda River, located near Table Rock State Park .
“The conservation community has had its eye on this property for many years. It is the single largest privately held and unprotected parcel in Pickens County,” according to Naturaland Trust.
The landowner had been getting immense pressure from developers and real estate agents to sell, according to the trust. Instead, it will be preserved.
Asked why money meant to mitigate flooding is buying land in areas not impacted by the catastrophic hurricane-related floods that prompted the agency’s creation in 2020, Resilience spokeswoman Hope Warren said the Upstate is “more prone to flash flooding.”
“While the Lowcountry, Pee Dee, and Midlands may come to mind first, flood risks and impacts are not limited to these areas of the state. The flooding risk in the Upstate, for example, just looks different,” she wrote in an email to the SC Daily Gazette.
New parks
Just outside Spartanburg, the Office of Resilience chipped in $20 million to buy some 950 acres known as Tyger Oaks. The land, once targeted for development, will become a Spartanburg County park.
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The office also played a part in adding acreage to the new Black River State Park in Georgetown County. Fosmire said the office helped by putting $700,000 toward buying property near the town of Andrews. For the town with a population of about 3,600 people, it’s a possible eco-tourism boost.
In the Lowcountry, the state Office of Resilience and Conservation Bank helped Berkeley County buy North Island from the state Ports Authority for a park, each group contributing about $1 million.
And in the Charlotte suburbs of Lancaster County, the state is investing $3.8 million to buy 600 acres along the Catawba River that are part of the Catawba Nation’s ancestral land ; $2 million of that comes from the Office of Resilience. The state is partnering with the Open Space Institute and South Carolina’s only federally recognized Native American tribe on the purchase.
According to Open Space Institute, builders in the rapidly growing area had targeted the property for a 1,000-home development.
“Our family has owned the property for over 100 years. Our father, William Oliver Nisbet, believed in family, fellowship, and community involvement,” the property owner, Caroline Nisbet Hewett, said in a statement. “We are proud and truly honored for the opportunity to continue Oliver Nisbet’s legacy by preserving this property for the use and enjoyment of generations to come.”
The property also contains an active vein of Catawba clay, regarded as sacred by the tribe.
The Catawba’s have been making pottery for more than 6,000 years, and during the Great Depression sold pottery to help Catawba people survive. The tribe will continue to have access to the clay pit after the state parks agency has taken control of the land, according to Open Space Institute.
Preserving the Swamp Fox’s hideout
Most recently, the state Office of Resilience partnered on its largest project to date — 7,600 acres in Florence County . It includes the Revolutionary War hideout of Francis Marion, which earned him the nickname Swamp Fox.
“The British couldn’t find him because it was swampy and wet for so much of the year,” Fosmire said.
Before this, Florence County had one of the lowest conservation rates by acreage of any county in the state, at 1.8%.
“This project alone will nearly double the amount of permanently protected land in our community,” Florence County Administrator Kevin Yokim said in a statement.
The state Department of Natural Resources will oversee the property. And Francis Marion University students will conduct archeology, history, and forestry research on the site.
The state Office of Resilience received the initial nod from a legislative oversight committee Tuesday to contribute about $19 million to the purchase.
What’s next?
Fosmire said the Office of Resilience is still working on a few more major conservation land purchases, which it hopes to finalize near the end of 2024.
In the end, the reserve fund controlled by the office will have doled out $200 million for these deals.
“You really get a lot of bang for your buck conserving wetlands,” especially as the state has been able to bring in private and federal dollars in addition to its own money, Fosmire said.
In addition to the state funding, the Office of Resilience is part of a multi-state partnership approved for a federal pollution prevention grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The office will get a $50 million share to continue its land-buying efforts, according to spokeswoman Hope Warren.
Beyond that, about $44 million has been spent on or is designated for stormwater improvements around the state.
“The need across the state is so great,” Fosmire said. “There’s literally billions of dollars of stormwater mitigation work that can be done.”
The Resilience Office oversaw $262 million in stormwater projects in the state, which was funded by federal disaster and COVID-19 relief dollars. But the office at that time received applications for $400 million worth of work to be done.
The office also is looking to the future, seeking to boost data used by cities and counties when deciding the size of stormwater pipes required to handle new development.
The data currently used, which comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, comes from 2008 and does not account for the series of heavy-hitting storms impacting South Carolina since 2015: Hurricanes Joaquin, Matthew and Florence, and tropical storms Irma and Debby.
Those storms and others are bringing more rain over shorter periods of time, Fosmire said. So, the Office of Resilience contributed $185,000, with additional funding coming from the state transportation and natural resources agencies, to speed up the data update process.
The state expects to receive an intermediate update within the next two years, rather than five or six years from now, Fosmire said.
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