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Erosion is a constant battle for some South Carolina beach towns, threatening beachfront property and tourism-generated economies.<\/p>\n
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The Morris Island Light reflects the severe erosion that has plagued many of Charleston’s beaches since the construction of the harbor jetties in the 1800’s.<\/p>\n
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In the fight to save South Carolina’s beaches from erosion, sand-moving equipment is a familiar sight along the coast line.<\/p>\n
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Edisto Island is one of many locations affected by rising sea levels and erosion along the South Carolina coast. The Seaside building on Edisto Beach overlooks the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
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Steep drop-offs of sand indicate erosion on beaches, such as those on Folly Beach County Park.<\/p>\n
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First in a three-part series<\/strong><\/p>\n The Morris Island Light, a lighthouse located between the shores of Morris Island and Folly Beach, sits on a tiny, constructed island hundreds of yards out to sea.\u00a0 The lighthouse, with dull fading paint, has been decommissioned for years and now serves as little more than a photo opportunity for tourists.<\/span><\/p>\n What tourists, some locals, and newcomers to Charleston\u00a0may not know is that Morris Island Light once\u00a0stood more than 1,000 feet from the shoreline. Now\u00a0it is surrounded by water on all sides, a\u00a0stark representation of the severe beach erosion that plagues the South Carolina coastline and often\u00a0outweighs the devastation if hurricanes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe shoreline is getting increasingly compressed against our society,\u201d Coastal Carolina University expert Paul Gayes said.\u00a0 He pointed out that sand dunes, which help slow beach erosion and create habitat for animals like sea turtles, cannot form along the shoreline if that shoreline is encroaching on a heavily developed area, which increases as\u00a0coastal cities like Charleston continues to grow.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s a couple of drivers,” Gayes said on the causes of the erosion. \u00a0“In the long-term, over decades to centuries, the fact that life at sea level is rising\u2026and there are ways to overcome that. It\u2019s a balance between sea level rise and sediment supply.\u201d<\/p>\n Rising seas may be the long-term problem affecting shifting coast lines around the world, but College of Charleston marine geology professor\u00a0Leslie Sautter points out an issue specific to the Charleston area, one that Gayes refers to as a \u201ccomplicating factor\u201d in the system; the Charleston harbor jetties.<\/p>\n The harbor is a massive source of commerce for South Carolina, and the major reason for Charleston’s growth from a small colonial town to the cosmopolitan destination\u00a0it is today.\u00a0 As commercial ships grew larger throughout the Industrial Revolution, a wider, deeper channel was needed to provide access to the harbor for these ships.\u00a0 The three-mile long rocky jetties were built by the Army in the 1800s to create that channel, but their construction had a few unintended consequences.<\/p>\n Sautter, a coastal erosion expert, described a complex system of rivers, deltas, and currents that transport sediment from one island to the next, a migration that takes years.\u00a0 Longshore drift current is especially important in feeding the beaches sand, and the construction of the jetties blocked that flow of sediment.\u00a0 As a result, many beaches along the Charleston coast have eroded severely since the construction of the jetties, with Morris Island having been affected the most.<\/p>\n \u201cFolly has lost a tremendous amount of sand because Morris Island has lost it all, basically,\u201d said Sautter. \u00a0\u00a0\u201cAnd that means that Folly is going to be the one that goes next.\u201d<\/p>\n The thought of losing Folly Beach – and other beaches along the picturesque\u00a0Lowcountry coast\u00a0– is alarming to residents and city officials alike. \u00a0Beaches are not only home to thousands of locals, they are also a major source of commerce. \u00a0Tourism is a multi-billion dollar industry for South Carolina (topping a whopping\u00a0$20 billion in 2017), mainly due to coastal towns like Charleston and Myrtle Beach that draw millions of visitors and generate millions in state taxes and local revenue each year. \u00a0That makes the loss of these beaches a statewide crisis.<\/p>\n To combat the erosion, federally funded beach re-nourishment projects have taken place since the early ’90s, which involve dumping massive amounts of sand along the beaches to replace the sand that eroded away.<\/p>\n The process, while necessary to slow the erosion, is also extremely expensive.\u00a0 Gayes said that since the first re-nourishment project occurred on Folly Beach in 1993, the process of battling erosion along the coast has cost It also doesn\u2019t work. While replenishing sand does keep the beaches from being eroded away quickly, it is a short-term solution to a long-term problem.<\/p>\n Hurricanes add yet another complicating factor.\u00a0 Every time a powerful storm hits the South Carolina coast, sand is swept away from the shoreline – in Charleston\u2019s case, sand that cost\u00a0millions of dollars to put there.\u00a0 Hurricanes Matthew and Irma were the most recent storms that hit Charleston, and each stole thousands of cubic yards of sand from places like Folly, Edisto and Botany Bay.<\/p>\n The erosion process has also affected different islands in different ways; some beaches have seen only a slight increase in the erosion processes, while others are in danger of being entirely swept away.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really complex\u2026 it\u2019s a losing battle,\u201d Sautter said. \u00a0\u201cIf you destroy the jetties, then all the commerce of Charleston goes away.\u201d<\/p>\n Destroying the jetties would also not fix the problem, according to Gayes.\u00a0 While it might slow the erosion, it wouldn\u2019t stop the hurricanes from coming or the sea levels from rising.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s relentless, it\u2019s not going to go away,\u201d Gayes said.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s also expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the complexity of the erosion problem, experts and the U.S Army Corps of Engineers are not going to give up on at least making the erosion process manageable.\u00a0 Studies are constantly being conducted by universities and the U.S. Army Corps to enable a better understanding of the erosion and how to slow it down, and re-nourishment projects are completed periodically to slow the effects.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a lot of effort put in to protect our major coastal cities,\u201d Gayes said, of sea level rise.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re not going to lose New York, we\u2019re not going to lose Charleston.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=”3.7″ prev_text=”Read second article in series” next_text=”Read second article in series: Folly Beach reflects state’s battle to save coastal towns” in_same_term=”off” show_prev=”off” title_font=”|700|||||||” title_text_color=”#77000a” title_font_size=”17px” custom_margin=”20px|||” title_line_height=”1.2em” \/][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As sea levels rise and hurricanes sweep along the coast, South Carolina coastal towns wage a constant battle against severe beach erosion, which affects all areas of life for coastal residents and the economy of the entire state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":8845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[71,155],"tags":[125,124],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7788"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10879,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7788\/revisions\/10879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}ed<\/del> around half a billion dollars.<\/p>\n