A state lawmaker from Aiken has filed the second bill designed to remove state hurdles to dumping dredge spoil from Sea Pines marinas into Calibogue Sound, over the protests of the Bluffton area representative.

The House bill, which mirrors a version now in the state Senate and filed last week, would speed up the lawmaking process next year by getting the measure moving through both chambers at the same time. Under General Assembly rules, neither the House nor Senate version is expected to move out of committee this year.

State Rep. Robert "Skipper" Perry, R-Aiken, said Monday that he filed the bill to ensure the House had a part in a public hearing on the bill the state Senate's Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee has promised to hold on Hilton Head Island.

"I don't live on Hilton Head. It's obvious," said Perry, who is vice chairman of the House Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee. "There's a problem down there, and we're just working out the best way to fix it. We need to come up with a solution, and I'm not interested in picking sides."

But state Rep. Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, said he didn't like the fact that the bill was introduced by a lawmaker from outside Beaufort County.

"It poses a question, why are (bill supporters) going for people outside the area," Herbkersman said. "It's obvious they're trying to get someone to put these bills in, and they're not getting it from us in the Lowcountry."

State Rep. JoAnne Gilham, R-Hilton Head, could not be reached for comment. State Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head, removed his name from the original Senate bill after constituents complained and has said he wants a hearing to be held on Hilton Head. No date has been set for a hearing.

Herbkersman, who also serves on the House Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee, said he plans to stop the bill in committee.

Chris Brooks, deputy commissioner of the state Office of Ocean and Coastal and Resource Management, the regulatory agency that now oversees dredging permits, said Monday that he was not surprised a bill had been filed in the House.

"We fully expected them to pursue it in both houses at the same time," Brooks said.

Dennis Gerwing, who represents Harbour Town commercial interests and the Harbour Town Boat Slip Owners Association in the South Island Dredging Association, said the association did not ask Perry to introduce the bill in the House.

"We've asked for a bill to be passed," Gerwing said. "We're really not part of that process."

But the dredging association has been working hard to get the measure passed. Gerwing has traveled to Columbia to testify before a Senate subcommittee, and the group has hired a lobbyist and a public relations firm, CNSG, where Richardson works as a consultant. The association also paid for two full-page ads in local newspapers to make its case to the public. The association wants to do annual dredging and dump the dredge muck into Calibogue Sound instead of hauling it to an offshore dump site or to an upland onshore site.

In 2000, the association tried to get state and federal approval to dispose of dredge spoil in Calibogue Sound. But state and federal agencies, along with many local residents, opposed the idea. That request was withdrawn in 2001, and the association received a permit to dump dredge spoil at a federally controlled offshore site.

The association is completing a dredging project to remove about 200,000 cubic yards of spoil. The muck is being barged to a federal dump site near the mouth of Port Royal Sound.

Perry said state Sen. Robert Waldrep, R-Anderson, the Senate bill's main sponsor and chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resource Committee, asked him to sponsor the bill in the House.

The push from lawmakers outside the county has some local residents crying foul.

"We, the people of Beaufort County, did not elect the representative from Aiken or the senator from Anderson," said Bluffton Oyster Co. manager Larry Toomer.

Toomer said he worries that dumping dredge spoil into the sound would harm the shellfish he harvests.

"The people in Aiken will not be affected by (the bill)," he said. "This is a Beaufort County, Bluffton, Hilton Head issue. ... It could be devastating not only for the shellfish industry, but also for the shrimping industry. And it could have adverse effects on recreational fishing."

Bluffton Town Council member Jacob Preston said he thought the bills weren't about the environmental impacts of dumping the dredge spoil into the sound, but were about politics. Residents, as well as state and federal agencies, have been against dumping spoil into the sound since the dredging association originally proposed it in 2000.

"This is ultimately a political issue," Preston said. "The subject matter is a publicly held resource, but how it is treated as a political issue. Water quality is not something you experiment with. If it goes away, it never fully comes back."