When Jim Connelly moved to Sullivan's Island 25 years ago, he liked to sit on his porch and watch other people enjoy the wide beach stretching out behind his house.

Nowadays, he rarely sees anyone out there because there's not much beach left.

"We've lost all our swimmers, and you can't walk on the beach unless you want to climb over rock groins," Connelly said. "Used to, you couldn't even see those rocks. It's a shame to see the beach deteriorate."

The state's office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management on Monday said that a vicious storm season and eroding support for renourishment funding made 2004 the worst year for area beaches since Hurricane Hugo chewed up the coast in 1989. The north end of Sullivan's Island ranked second on the agency's priority list this year.

"This area has been sand-starved for at least 10 years," said Steve Snyder, the Department of Health and Environmental Control's acting deputy commissioner for OCRM. "Many oceanfront homeowners use sand bags to keep the ocean water out from under their houses at high tide."

The attention of OCRM, which distributes the state's beach renourishment money, should bode well for Sullivan's. This year, however, the timing is bad.

Edisto Beach, the state's top priority, almost certainly will get nearly all of the $5 million the state will invest in beach rebuilding. It can't come too soon for residents of the quiet beach town, where 80 percent of the houses are rental properties, and where the surf washes onto Palmetto Boulevard during the highest tides.

"We're pretty optimistic there will be money for Edisto in the budget, and it will get most of the $5 million," said Bill Eiser, staff oceanographer with OCRM. "There might be some money left to go toward a study at Pawleys Island or maybe the Cherry Grove/North Myrtle Beach area."

Eiser and Snyder attribute the state's beach problems to four tropical systems that churned across the state in August and September. Winter erosion caused by harsh nor'easters does as much or, in some cases, more damage to beaches.

Beach communities have also been left to fend for themselves lately. In the last five years, beach renourishment money has been as rare as sand on Morris Island. The state, in dire financial straits, hasn't had the money to invest and at the federal level, President Bush is trying to eliminate all such federal funding -- which is usually 65 percent of beach rebuilding projects.

Folks in South Carolina towns along the coast call that a shortsighted position, particularly since beaches drive the state's $14 billion tourism industry.

Steven Gann, manager of the Cherry Grove Fishing Pier near North Myrtle Beach, says he's watched 100 feet of beach vanish from around the pier since 1998. Now, the tide is knocking on the dunes.

"We've got golf and shows and all those malls up here, but people come for the beach," Gann says. "It is the economy."

State lawmakers from along the coast are fighting to keep $5 million for beach projects in the state budget. They hope to make the money a recurring line item.

Last year, Hunting Island got $5 million from the state, which is leveraging a major renourishment due to start around the end of the year. Folly Beach just secured $16 million in federal funding for a major project that will start this spring. That's why neither of those chronically eroding beaches made the OCRM priority list this year.

The problem for Sullivan's is that priorities change from year to year. With another busy storm season or, worse, a direct hit from a hurricane, OCRM could reshuffle its priorities.

Locals say they can't imagine that happening. Now, underground cables stick out of eroded dunes and many yards drop off like a cliff onto the beach. Marty Ratke, who bags sand to shore up some threatened homes, said if any beach needs help, it is Sullivan's.

"It's always been bad here, always coming and going," Ratke said. "But these days it's going a lot more than it's coming."