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Novelist decries sprawl

Pat Conroy addresses Beaufort annexation plans

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For anyone who's wondered how longtime Beaufort County residents view the growth that's turned the community into a sprawling Mecca for development, author Pat Conroy provided a passionate answer Thursday.

The veritable Homer of the Lowcountry, whose best-selling novels have put a national spotlight on the beauty -- and foibles -- of Beaufort County, had a sharply worded and often biting commentary published in The Beaufort Gazette on Thursday, lashing out at the perceived lack of growth control.

The author, who once ripped the county school system for abandoning children on Daufuskie Island and gave Beaufort a Hollywood appeal through his work, spared no harsh words for Beaufort city officials. By their actions to annex 5,000 acres and vastly increase the city's population, city officials "seem to loathe the exquisite and endangered town of Beaufort," he wrote. For all his outrage, he couldn't believe there aren't "riots in the streets" over the plans.

The problem started south of the Broad River, Conroy wrote, where traffic jams near Hilton Head Island and the clear-

cutting in the Sun City Hilton Head development have contributed to this area being "both lost and ruined."

Conroy said in a previous interview with The Island Packet that he wishes he set all his novels in Egypt so the world would not have caught on to the natural beauty of the Lowcountry.

The call to arms from Conroy, perhaps the most-documented Lowcountry lover, echoes the frustrations of many Beaufort County residents who would just as soon see a toxic-waste plant spring up on U.S. 278 as another housing development.

But it is likely to strike a sour tone with local officials who have said they're doing their best to get their arms around growth in a county gripped with crippling traffic, overcrowded schools and diminishing open space.

"Certainly our goals are the same," said Beaufort Mayor Bill Rauch, whom Conroy labeled "a mortal enemy of Beaufort" in his 600-word piece. "I think he will find, and I think most people will find, is, in the end, we're trying to do the same thing."

Rauch, a northern transplant who used to work for former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, responded to Conroy's piece by saying there has been a great deal of jumping to conclusions about the proposed annexations by Beaufort.

The annexations are being negotiated, and city officials slowly are cutting away at the proposed 16,000 homes the landowners want permission to build, he said. The city also is working to add deed restrictions that could keep 1,400 acres of the annexation areas as open space, Rauch said.

Rick Caporale, a Beaufort County Board of Education member who moved to the area

20 years ago from New Hamp-shire, forwarded Conroy's piece through e-mail to members of the school board and other school officials because its frankness stood out to him. He said Conroy is speaking with authority and righteous indignation about the area the author has seen go through a sea change in the last few decades.

For Caporale, the opinions of longtime Beaufort County denizens always make an impression because it's such a rare thing to hear in an area often derided for being a carpetbagger's haven.

"So far as Mayor Rauch is concerned, I certainly would not endorse Mr. Conroy's opinion of him, but I would certainly offer some criticism of him (or) anyone who goes about this annexation business and the way it's going," he said.

Conroy, a Fripp Island resident, was traveling to Athens, Ga., on Thursday, his wife said, and could not be reached for comment. But in the piece, he warned that unless someone puts a stop to the spread of development, "the utter destruction of the South Carolina Lowcountry will begin its race to the finish line."