Wild Dunes to pay $18,000 for littering
Cost to property owners for sandbag violation could have been much higher
By Bo Petersen
ISLE OF PALMS — Property owners along the severely eroding Wild Dunes beachfront will pay a total of $18,000 for littering the coast and marshes with tens of thousands of small sandbags that washed away in storms last spring.
But an owner at one of the condominium complexes wouldn't call it a fine.
The "negotiated civil penalty" came after months of legal wrestling over a violation that could have cost property owners 10 times that amount. Owners claimed they placed the bags after being ordered by the S.C. Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management not to use larger, more stable bags, and the bags were torn apart in the wash of storm tides.
OCRM regulators avoided lengthy court hearings and rulings that could have weakened beachfront regulations. The agency had notified property owners in June 2007 that they could be fined $1,000 per day retroactive to June 1 until all the bags were cleaned up from all beaches and marshes.
"They wanted it over with. We wanted it over with. That's the way it came out. It's a 'negotiated settlement' because I told them we would not pay a fine because we hadn't done anything wrong," said John O'Hare, an owner and homeowner's association president at Seascape, one of a half-dozen complexes that agreed to the penalty.
"The most important aspect of this consent order is that the property owners recognize their violation of the regulations and are on a clear path toward compliance. The penalty is a negotiated settlement based on extensive records provided by the property owners that demonstrated an attempt to maintain the 5-gallon bags and collect washed-out bags," Dan Burger, OCRM communications director, said in an e-mail.
An environmental advocate with the Coastal Conservation League was outraged.
"These sandbags littered our beaches and creeks from Georgia to the North Carolina line. The minimum fine forlittering in South Carolina is $200. Yet these condo owners who were repeatedly warned and ordered to remove these sandbags are fined just 18 cents per bag. Something is very wrong with this picture," said Nancy Vinson of the league.
The owners also are required to continue cleanup of the bags; most of them appear to have been removed already. Condo residents, as well as beachgoers and boaters across the Lowcountry, spent months last summer pulling bag remnants from the sand and pluff mud.
The modest penalty is similar to a settlement negotiated in February that allowed owners to keep in place a wall of thousands of larger, more-stable sandbags, while agreeing to pay for part of a beach renourishment project expected to start this summer.
"Everybody here now is working really closely to get the renourishment going," O'Hare said.
Meanwhile, a resident on neighboring Dewees Island said a new problem has emerged.
"We're not finding the smaller bags, but we're getting the bigger bags, whole and still full of sand. They must be rolling along the ocean bottom," said resident Gary McGraw. Residents collected three or four in the past week, he said.
"According to our weekly monitoring reports and the reports submitted by the property owners, the sandbags are being maintained in good repair and washed-out bags are being collected," said Burger, of OCRM. "However, we will continue to monitor area beaches to ensure that sandbags do not persist in the environment."
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Comments
angryinjun (anonymous) says...
I'm waiting for that fateful tropical storm/hurricane that sits off the coast, churning, churning, churning, churning waves that eat up the SAND underneath these condos. You know, this isn't new-fangled rocket science, i.e. not building your house on sand. Just look at the Bible; TWO THOUSAND YEARS ago people knew not to build on sand. Reap what you shall sow...
April 12, 2008 at 1:03 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
moonpie (anonymous) says...
JohnQ is right the OCRM and DHEC are political hacks. Try to get something done in any one of these offices and you better plan on a year or better, I know I did.
But guess what they, and many more Gov agencies, all originally APPROVED this building so they too have some responsibilty to share for this disaster. FINE THEM!
Wait til after this storm season when the condo is about to fall into the sea once again, ha ha!
April 12, 2008 at 7:43 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
jifdeng3 (anonymous) says...
While I dont believe in the god theory, it is BS that theses rich people are pretty much getting off scott free. If you build on a barrier island then you should be prepared for the fate of the ocean. Those islands are always being reshaped and moved by the ocean. I hope they loose in the end and the all end up falling into the water.
April 12, 2008 at 8:23 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
FindingMyself (anonymous) says...
I agree that there's something fishy about this case. IOP is beautiful, one of my favorite beaches here; they need to focus more on keeping it that way, than on politics.
April 12, 2008 at 12:52 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mdtpace (anonymous) says...
"Could have been much higher"? Then why the hell wasn't it? This is ridiculous. Is the rest of the state trying to follow the pathetic politics of Mt Pleasant and its "mayor" Ted Kennedy, I mean Harry Hallman. Tough to tell which one spends less time swimming in a bottle. The fine should be the fine, not 10% of the fine. Penalties with no teeth are just wastes of paper.
April 12, 2008 at 4:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Goondar (anonymous) says...
mdtpace,
Do you know Hallman well enough to say he swims in a bottle? Or is that your own personal assumption?
April 12, 2008 at 5:12 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Smart_Enough_2_Know_Better (anonymous) says...
First, taxpayers are forced to pay $1.9M to bail out a PRIVATE community from what nature is trying to (and one day will) reclaim. Now, they are not completely but largely above the law for trashing the environment in a an early futile attempt to fight mother nature.
I wonder if Charleston County & the State of South Carolina will pay for hurricane shutters on my house. And then perhaps they can refund 90% of the money I have paid in speeding tickets over the years. Since I don't live in Wild Dunes it seems that I'm owed some of the priviledge those residents are receiving.
April 12, 2008 at 6 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mkris (anonymous) says...
DEVELOPERS AND MONEY RULE.
SCREW ALL YOU PEONS. A Bill of 18,000 divided between the condo-members is just a piss in the park..
April 12, 2008 at 6:28 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
UrGatorbait (anonymous) says...
Those with the money make the rules. Goosh people they just want your tax dollars to renourish their private beaches so they can pollute, don't be so mean. Then they fight and scrap to avoid paying fines for problems they created. I concur with the thoughts of other posters about a big storm stalling off shore.
This is the only reason I look forward to hurricane season...Man I'm gonna get struck down for that one.
April 12, 2008 at 10:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
auger (anonymous) says...
That's gonna put a dent in the petty cash box! It could be hours before they recover. Where is FEMA?
April 12, 2008 at 11:21 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
realscientist (anonymous) says...
The owners shouldn't have to pay anything in the way of "fines." They did exactly what OCRM forced (that's right--forced) them to do--use 5-gal sandbags, remove the 5-gal sandbags, then get fined for compliance! IOP was the only shore community in the state without an approved beach management plan for nearly 20 years, and the fine citizens who served all those years on the Beach Advisory Board failed to develop a plan--they are looking at some serious legal exposure. And Nancy Vinson is nothing more than a shrill Harpy, a watermelon, a phony do-gooder!
April 13, 2008 at 9:23 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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