South Carolina's beaches took one of their worst beatings since Hurricane Hugo, according to a state report on 2004 storms released Monday.

The annual State of the Beaches Report by the S.C. Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management says that although no single storm was catastrophic to the coastline, the cumulative effect of Hurricanes Alex, Charley and Frances and Tropical Storm Jeanne was severe, especially in the state's barrier islands.

Horry County's beaches handled the storms better than the rest of the state, but the report identifies the southern end of Pawleys Island as the state's No. 3 priority for beach renourishment, following Edisto Beach and Sullivans Island.

Grand Strand tourism leaders are confident tourists won't be scared away by reports of a battered S.C. coastline.

"The report is a warning signal that certainly raises concerns, but we don't anticipate any fallout in the level of visitation due to a report such as that," said Brad Dean, president of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce.

Tourism is South Carolina's largest industry and the important thing to take away from the report is that it reinforces the idea that beach renourishment is not a government subsidy, but an investment in the economy, Dean said.

"As we face increasing needs for renourishment over the next few years, we know if we don't protect the quality of our beaches, that will impact tourism," he said. "It may not be seen this weekend, but it will have a negative impact."

There were no major beach-renourishment projects in South Carolina in 2004, partly because of a lack of state funding. President Bush's budget calls for a reduction in federal funding for beach-renourishment projects.

A private renourishment project is scheduled to begin this spring on Debidue Beach in Georgetown County, and publicly financed projects are expected to start later this year in Hunting Island State Park, Folly Beach and Hilton Head Island.

Particularly endangered is the public parking lot at the southern tip of Pawleys Island, which regularly requires sand scraping to build a dune in front of the lot. After a bad storm several weeks ago with 50-mph winds, a sand-scraping project was needed to save the parking lot, which is the largest free public-beach access in Georgetown County.

"I think that was the worst impact we've had since Hugo," Pawleys Island Mayor Bill Otis said.

The island town received a beach-renourishment project in 1999, but that provided only temporary relief, the report says. The town is working to get a federal beach-renourishment project that Otis says he hopes will save the public beach access and several homes on the island.

"Where we're going with this is if there was a significant storm event it would cause major damage," Otis said. "It would probably wash out that parking area and it would cause major damage to the south end of island."

To stabilize erosion, Pawleys Island has a groin field, or a series of rock piles extending into the ocean perpendicular to the beach that traps sand going southward but deprives it from areas down shore.

The public-beach access in Pawleys Island is south of the last groin field.

Residents on the east end of Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., are experiencing similar rapid erosion.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers refuses to renourish the east end of the island because it is in an inlet-hazard zone and the state doesn't permit groin fields to trap sand.

Severe storms have caused enough erosion that one house has fallen into the ocean and others are close to it. The town has declared five other homes uninhabitable.

Although Ocean Isle Beach has suffered from a shifting inlet, severe storms and lunar high tides, other N.C. beaches fared well overall in 2004, said Jeff Warren, coastal hazards specialist for the N.C. Division of Coastal Management.

"It wasn't too bad. The hurricanes that hit gave glancing blows," Warren said.

Although Pawleys Island and Ocean Isle Beach have suffered in the past year, some beaches are gaining sand. In Myrtle Beach, sections of beach between 31st Avenue North and 82nd Avenue are accreting some sand. Sunset Beach, N.C., also gains sand each year.

The report says a 1997 renourishment in North Myrtle Beach is holding up well, except in a seven-block area south of the Cherry Grove Pier.