Tropical Storm Debby proved the value of one of Beaufort County’s greatest success stories | Opinion

It was a dark and stormy night, and I was working the late shift in Beaufort, getting another edition of the paper to the press. I barely noticed the deluge of rain outside. But by the time I drove home to Hilton Head Island around 1 a.m., the intersection where Sun City Hilton Head now stands was already covered by water.

The rain gushed all night and all the next day. It came so hard that the rain we got over three days last week from Tropical Storm Debby was like a yard sprinkler compared to the fire hose of that unnamed tropical disturbance of October 2-3, 1994.

Billie Hack, the island’s official weather observer for more than 25 years, recorded what was then a new record of 11.5 inches of rain in a 24-hour period in her yard at Honey Horn Plantation. Streets, homes and businesses were flooded. Island schools were closed. Sewer systems failed. Boats sank. Hilton Head Plantation was the hardest hit, with many impassable roads. Main Street looked like a lake. Palmetto Bay Marina workers were catching tarpon in the parking lot.

Then a week later, here it came again, with 10 more inches of rain swamping Beaufort County, felling trees and marooning people in their homes. Hilton Head Packet photographer Jay Karr got a famous shot of a man with his dachshund rowing a canoe down South Forest Beach Drive.

A burial vault floated to the surface off Spanish Wells Road. Down the street, the elderly Pheris and Laura Campbell tried in vain to keep water from soaking their bedroom and bathroom. Laura Campbell stood at the door with a worn picture of John F. and Jackie Kennedy hanging on the wall behind her and said it was the worst she’d seen since 1940.

“We had rain and wind then, but we didn’t have rain like this,” she said.

Tropical Storm Debby dumped between 10 to 12 inches of rain on Hilton Head last Monday through Wednesday, as its eye crawled right past our South Beach and out to sea, then back ashore up the coast. That’s the average rain amount measured in five gauges around the island used by Town of Hilton Head Island Stormwater Program manager Jeff Netzinger.

My neighbor across the street measured 12.5 inches in his yard rain gauge.

That’s a lot of rain.

But the town’s drainage system worked as planned, with four pump stations moving 265 million gallons of stormwater into island creeks, Netzinger said. It helped that the water came down in installments, you might say: 7 inches on Monday and 3 inches on Tuesday — which is a whole different situation from an 11-inch gusher.

But we have those old gushers to thank for the fact that not a single public road was closed last week on Hilton Head, Netzinger said.

The storms of 1994 were a wake-up call to Beaufort County — a watery expanse leaning into the ocean at the continent’s edge. Leaders recognized we needed a better plan. And when the state closed 500 acres of shellfish harvesting waters in the Broad Creek of Hilton Head in the fall of 1995 due to fecal coliform pollution, citizens took action.

The Clean Water Task Force chaired by the late Bill Marscher produced the landmark “Blueprint for Clean Water.” Among its recommendations was establishment of a stormwater utility to inspect, maintain and repair stormwater management systems in conjunction with the county’s four municipalities.

Beaufort County Council under chairman Thomas C. Taylor created the utility in 2001 and it created a countywide stormwater master plan . It has funded scores of upgrades countywide , including three new pump stations on Hilton Head, as well as new and larger pipes and constant maintenance.

This year, Hilton Head will get $5.5 million from the utility to keep improving stormwater management so we may never have to look back at 1994 — or 1940 — again.