The S.C. Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management released its annual State of the Beaches Report on Monday, replacing Beaufort County's crown jewel of the state park system with other unfunded nourishment needs at Edisto Beach and Sullivan's and Pawleys islands.
Across the state one of the busiest hurricane seasons in years combined with a five-year drought in funding has left the state's beaches in their worst shape since Hurricane Hugo, officials with the state's coastal management agency said Monday.
"One of the reasons the beaches are in the worst shape since Hugo is ... very little money has been dedicated either at the state, local or federal level to maintain the beaches," said Steve Snyder, acting deputy commissioner for the agency.
Funding began to slow in 1999 as the economy worsened, Snyder said.
"We sort of got a little behind then and the quality of the beaches went down each year," he said.
But an emergency federal nourishment project planned for this month and a larger $8.2 million plan set for late this or early next year have eased concerns about Hunting Island's future, according to the report.
"In the meantime, Hunting Island remains one of the state's most critically eroded beaches," the report states.
Already losing an average of 15 feet of sand a year, Hunting Island's beachfront was one of the hardest hit during last year's violent hurricane season, with more than 40 feet of sand pulled from the center of the beach.
And while park visitors can now easily climb the island's historic lighthouse after recent repairs, dramatic erosion that has left 3-foot-high sand walls combined with slanted pavement and fallen palmettos makes the typical beach walk difficult.
"It's downright dangerous," said Roberta Gunderson, president of The Friends of Hunting Island, a volunteer group assisting the park with fund-raising and maintenance projects.
The mounting sand loss last year at a beach already seen as a top priority for nourishment forced the federal Flood Control and Coastal Emergency program to pledge nourishment funding to replace 77,000 cubic yards of beach.
A contract award for the project, expected to cost between $1 million and $5 million, should be announced this week, said Alicia Gregory, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"We want everything to be completed by the first of May," she said Monday, noting that the work shouldn't interrupt the loggerhead turtle nesting season, which runs from May through August.
The commotion and noise of a nourishment project can disorient nesting turtles, park officials have said.
Long-range plans for the beach include an $8.2 million nourishment project developed by the Army Corps and paid for by the state.
While replenishing the beach with fresh sand, the state effort also will include building groins, or sand-trapping structures, perpendicular to the beach at high priority areas, including the lighthouse and campgrounds.
The groins are expected to abate beach loss by as much as 9 feet a year.
Beaches are vital to the state's $14 billion tourism industry, South Carolina's largest.
"People drive hundreds of miles to use it," Snyder said. "What money we put in to maintain the industry is really just to keep that industry running."
Fripp and Harbor island's beaches also were listed in the state's beach report, but Hunting Island's neighbors appear to have only limited areas of erosion, a unique circumstance according to report author Bill Eiser, staff oceanographer for the ocean management office.
"It's not typical that one island would be highly erosional and neighboring islands aren't," he said.
Sizable sandbars off the coast and the island's shape are two assumptions offered for Hunting Island's lone erosion battles, Eiser said.
The beaches on Hilton Head Island weren't singled out as being in particularly bad shape, according to the report. The beaches are scheduled to be nourished within the next two years.
"I don't disagree with their assessment that we are not an at-risk beach," said town engineer Scott Liggett. "The beach here is in pretty robust condition compared to other places."