'Joint use' docks draw foes

Conservationists, others oppose developers' plans

The Post and Courier

EDISTO ISLAND — More than 65,000 boats are registered now in the four counties around Charleston, and the numbers are growing. They all have to tie up somewhere. So each year more than 500 requests for permits to build new docks in the estuaries are filed with state and federal regulators.

Lately, more of those pilings are driven for "joint use" or community docks farther back in narrow tidal creeks, alongside rows of family docks that have been in place for years. Owners of the older docks and conservationists are fighting what they call "mini-marinas" for room and view.

Developers say the multi-boat docks are less intrusive than a row of docks for each new home. Opponents say they are built to provide more docks for more homes than environmental rules would allow otherwise.

Places such as Bailey Creek and Sand Creek on Edisto Island long have been family land creeks, narrow tidal ribbons where a few walkways stretch idyllically across the marsh to single-home docks.

Plans to build multi-boat docks for a 10-lot development on Sand Creek and a five-lot development on Bailey Creek have angered residents and the conservation organizations that have made a mission of keeping the island's scenic, rural character intact.

"These are at the (spear) point of a class of developers who are responsible for what happened at Folly Beach and up and down the coast. Edisto Island is trying to prevent that type of development from occurring," said Jeff Neumann, a Bailey Island property owner with a dock in the creek.

"I don't think we're going overboard when you talk about a dock for five lots," said Headon Thomas, of Fort Mill, who is developing The Preserve at Scanawah Bluff on Bailey Creek. "I think people usually don't like to see change. They fuss about change. We're trying to develop a community consistent with what's there. We're trying to be good neighbors."

Regulators make permit decisions partly based on what they have already approved for surrounding docks. But with thousands of permits now on file, and docks lining the creeks, they now find themselves making calls based less on a precedent than on which precedent applies for which dock.

"Applications are becoming more controversial, (and) we are beginning to see an increase in the number of dock permit appeals and denials," wrote Dan Burger, communications director for the state office Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, in an e-mail.

Plans for a "web" of walkways and docks for 10 homes proposed along Sand Creek are being opposed by groups like the Edisto Island Community Association, a long time group that had its origins among black families concerned about what would happen to their lands, as well as the conservation champion, Edisto Island Open Land Trust.

Sand Creek is the winding waterway that S.C. Highway 174 crosses in the marshes just over the Dawhoo River bridge onto the island. The creek bridge is a traditional spot for fishing and crabbing, a place where egrets preen as bait nets are flung.

The vistas are so prized by the islanders that seven large, privately owned tracts around the creek have been deeded into conservation easement, including the land along the scenic road.

"The proposed dock is right smack in the middle of the viewshed," Marian Brailsford of the Open Land Trust said.

A representative for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which approved permits based on keeping the rivers navigable, said frankly that the Army Corps prefers to see multi-use docks, although the federal agency, like the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, makes decisions case by case.

The Sand Creek permit will be opposed largely on environmental terms; the Bailey Creek dock will be opposed largely on a more technical battle over whether it's too big for the bend in the shoaling creek where it would be built and whether any more than one of the proposed five homes qualifies to have a dock.

The state takes both permits to public hearing on the island Thursday.

Reach Bo Petersen at 745-5852 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.