Coastal Zone Issues

We are completing our third annual coastal zone research in South Carolina.

The issues of beach renourishment and coastal development continue to dominate the environment. In spite of the risks and very elaborate rules regarding coastal construction (hurricane, wind, and storm surge building codes have been greatly improved) people keep building on the sensitive barrier islands.

Several big storms hit the Atlantic coast and we observed significant erosion in places such as Folley Beach, SC (our benchmark location). After a multi-million dollar renourishment project in 2005-06 we now again noted major erosion of sand structures along the beaches and observed another sand replacement initiative under way on the northern end of Folley Beach.

Clearly an active storm season even if no hurricanes materialize in the area, presents a challenge to beach residents, beach structures, and coastal governments (municipal and county) as further and continuous resources must be diverted to storm damage management.

In November 2009 a tropical storm sat over the area and once again created significant erosion from high tides, winds and heavy rainfall.

Another ominous development has been the shrinking away of private insurance from underwriting policies for shore property. Allstate, which suffered major losses in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida in the past years has withdrawn from many coastal areas. This increases the pressure on the federal and state governments to create subsidized insurance to preserve the economic development base of homeowners and attending retail trade on which coastal communities have become dependent.

We continue to study and monitor the growing dilemma of "fatal attraction" of coastal and beach areas which are the first choice for living and vacationing for Americans on the one hand and on the other hand the realization of high risk and high cost due to increased storm predictions.