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Web posted Wednesday, May
19, 2004
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Hunting Island gets bailout
BEAUFORT: State gives $5 million;
renourishment project won't begin until 2005.
By Lolita Huckaby
Carolina Morning
News
Good news for Hunting Island State
Park supporters: an additional $5 million needed
for the proposed beach renourishment project is
back in the state budget.
Rep. Catherine
Ceips, R-Beaufort, earlier this year had lobbied
to get the money included in the House version of
the state budget only to see it cut by the Senate.
But she was pleased Tuesday with the allocation
included in the $5.4 billion spending plan
approved by a joint Senate and House conference
committee late Monday.
"The Friends of
Hunting Island and local officials all did a great
job pushing for this, but it wouldn't have
happened without Rep. Bobby Harrell (R-Charleston,
chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee)
pushing extra hard during those conference talks,"
Ceips said Tuesday.
The money was
originally to come from the state's Land
Conservation Bank, and that drew enough opposition
to stop the proposal in the Senate. The money now
is included in the state general fund, Ceips
said.
Ceips said she expects no further
budgetary hurdles from the state House or Senate,
which both must approve the conference
budget.
"The next step is the governor's
office," she said.
Gov. Mark Sanford has
threatened to veto the budget package if his
concerns about deficits are not
addressed.
Roberta Gunderson, president of
the 800-member Friends of Hunting Island, said
Tuesday she was "elated" to get the funding
news.
"We were hoping they'd find the
necessary dollars in Columbia but I didn't expect
it to happen this week," she said.
The
erosion control and renourishment project, which
has been in the planning stages for several years,
has a $9 million estimated price tag. The state
has already budgeted $4 million for the project
and the S.C. Parks, Recreation and Tourism
Department, which owns the park, has worked with
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on design plans
for a groin system to be installed prior to the
renourishment activities.
The series of
five groins is designed to slow the erosion of
sand which is now moving offshore at the rate of
15 feet per year. That compares with Myrtle Beach
State Park to the north, where the annual erosion
rate is 6 inches.
The necessary engineering
studies have been conducted and permits are in
hand for the work, according to Phil Gaines, PRT
assistant director.
"Once the money is in
hand, we still have to go out to bid on the work
so the earliest we could possibly start is early
next year with an understanding that we have to
work around the spring turtle nesting season,"
Gaines said Tuesday afternoon.
Beaufort
County Councilman Weston Newton, who talked with
state parks officials last week about the county's
role in making sure the renourishment project
moved forward, said he was pleased to hear the $5
million is back in the state budget.
"We
were trying to let the folks in Columbia know how
much Hunting Island means to Beaufort County and
to what extent we were willing to go to make sure
that park didn't wash completely into the ocean,"
he said.
County officials had discussed the
possibility of using money from the county's open
space program to purchase the park, using the $2.3
million annual revenues from admission fees and
rental cabins for part of the purchase.
PRT
Director Chad Prosser later said the agency was
not interested in selling the
park.
Reporter Lolita Huckaby can be
reached at 524-5448 or
lolita.huckaby@lowcountrynow.com
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