HUNTING ISLAND — A drive along the low-tide beach last week prompted a weary shrug from Ray Stevens, a park ranger who knows more about coastal erosion than he ever expected.

In 13 years at Hunting Island State Park, he has seen the ocean destroy cabins, wash away roads, ruin sea turtle nests and chew up miles of subtropical jungle.

Government agencies have a plan to try to reverse that — widening the beach with extra sand in the next two years.

But the project has its detractors, including Gov. Mark Sanford.

The conflict arises because the Hunting Island renourishment project will rely on $8 million to $13 million in public money to artificially broaden a natural, undeveloped seashore.

Fighting erosion on a barrier island is ultimately a waste of money, critics argue.

But people such as Stevens look at the landscape on Hunting Island and worry.

Today, fallen trees litter the ever-thinning beach as waves cut into the maritime forest. Stumps protrude from parts of the strand, causing beachgoers to step gingerly in the water. In one spot, a septic tank from a wrecked bathhouse lies atop the sugary sand at South Carolina’s most popular park.

“It’s disheartening,” said Stevens, the park manager. “You see everything just washing away.”

Most beach replenishment projects in South Carolina have been pitched as a way to protect hotels and homes while widening the beach for tourists. The extra sand buffers expensive resorts from tropical storms, as was shown in 1989 at Myrtle Beach after Hurricane Hugo.

In this case, Hunting Island’s value as a park, a historic site and a nature preserve are fueling arguments to renourish the beach.

The island contains few major buildings, other than a historic lighthouse, some rental cabins and park facilities.

Sanford and renowned geologist Orrin Pilkey say the beach renourishment plan is not worth it. Erosion, they say, is a natural phenomenon on barrier islands. Taxpayers for Common Sense, a national group, also are skeptical.

Sand pumped onto the beach will wash away quickly since Hunting Island has some of the East Coast’s highest erosion rates, said Pilkey, one of the country’s foremost authorities on beach erosion. The island erodes at 15 feet per year, on average.

“Renourishment of the beach at Hunting Island is not the kind of investment that our state should be making, particularly during this current budget crisis,” Sanford wrote to state legislators this spring.

Others disagree. Project supporters note that Hunting Island has been renourished periodically since 1968 because of its value as a public park.

“If this were a wildlife refuge or a national seashore, yeah, you let nature take its course,” said Chris Brooks, who runs the state Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. “But if you’ve got a state park, it’s a whole different setting. A state park requires provision of services and amenities.”

This spring, the S.C. General Assembly agreed with Brooks and overrode Sanford’s veto of funding for Hunting Island renourishment. Lawmakers approved $5 million for the work.

Coupled with existing funds, that brings to about $8 million the amount of state dollars available for replenishing Hunting Island State Park.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, likely to oversee the work, also is considering $5 million for renourishment at Hunting Island. If project plans are approved this year and funding comes through, work could start during the winter of 2005-06, said the corps’ Jim Whiteman.

“There are not a lot of structures at Hunting Island,” he said. “But we have a unique ecosystem, the maritime forest, that needs to be protected.”

MARITIME FOREST

The forest at Hunting Island, a magnet for tourists, is a verdant thicket of pines, live oaks and palmettos — the latter of which give the landscape a tropical look.

Parts of five motion pictures have been filmed at Hunting Island, Stevens said on a recent tour of the island. Among those movies were “G.I. Jane” and “Forrest Gump.”

In “Forrest Gump,” filmmakers thought the scenery looked like Vietnam, Stevens said, nodding at a palm-lined lagoon where filming occurred.

Palmetto forests cover other South Carolina sea islands below Charleston. But unlike Hunting, few have bridges, making it hard for the public to reach them.

Stevens estimates Hunting Island has lost hundreds of yards of forest along the four-mile long beach since the mid-1990s. That has left roots protruding from the shore.

A renourishment project would add more than 30 yards of dry sand beach, Stevens said.

Rare loggerhead sea turtles could use the help because Hunting Island now provides little dry sand in which to lay eggs.

Since the mid-1980s, the number of sea turtle nests found on Hunting Island has dropped from about 140 to 50, said Sally Murphy, a turtle expert with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

Coastal regulator Brooks said the work is equally important to maintain a recreational beach in Beaufort County, where public access to the seashore is limited.

Nearby islands, such as Fripp and Harbor, are private resort communities patrolled by security guards. Hilton Head Island has access in some spots, but other stretches of beach are cut off from the public.

Hunting Island, which costs $3 per adult to visit, attracts more than 1 million people a year.

In the fiscal year ended June 30, the park earned about $2.4 million. That translates to an $800,000 profit that could be used to help maintain other state parks, Stevens said.

Sandra Fleming and Florence Brown, tourists from Halifax County, N.C., said they favor renourishing the beach if the project will maintain a quality seashore for the public.

In town for a leadership conference at the Penn Center, they brought a group of about 40 children to the beach Tuesday at Hunting Island after being denied access to Fripp Island. While on the beach, children played in the surf just a few feet from a fallen oak tree and palmetto logs.

“For your poor minorities in this area, this is the beach,” Fleming said. “If this is the only access they have, certainly it should be better.”

Columbia resident Mike Wheat leaned against a fallen tree last week and offered a different opinion: He is against renourishment. He said the beach is beautiful as it exists, and more sand will only wash away.

“There are so many other things that need state attention, like roads and bridges,” he said.

SEVERE BEACH EROSION

Sanford and Duke University geologist Pilkey maintain that renourishing the island is potentially wasteful.

Hunting Island, in contrast to many state beaches, is plagued by currents and waves that draw sand away from the main portion of the shoreline.

For the most part, only the extreme north and south ends of the island are building up. The rest of the island is being cut away by the surf.

Although the average annual erosion rate is 15 feet per year, parts of the beach are washing away at rates of 25 feet per year. In contrast, Myrtle Beach on the northern coast has an erosion rate of less than 1 foot per year.

“This is about the most unstable beach that you’ll find nationally,” Pilkey said of Hunting Island.

He noted that past beach renourishment projects at Hunting Island have washed away in just a few years at considerable taxpayer expense.

Since 1968, the government has spent about $10 million on shoreline widening projects at Hunting Island. Many washed away in four to five years.

In this case, the Corps of Engineers plans to install a series of groins, which are like jetties, to help hold the sand in place longer. The groins would be composed of boulders that run perpendicular from the beach into the ocean.

Pilkey said, however, the groins could make erosion worse at Fripp or Harbor islands by cutting off sand moving down the beach, a common problem with groins. Engineers dispute that.

Pilkey disputed arguments that a beach renourishment project is necessary because so few beaches are open to the public in Beaufort County.

“That’s South Carolina’s fault for allowing such terrible public access,” he said.

But for Stevens, a lifelong resident of Beaufort County, building up the beach will save Hunting Island.

“People come up begging for us to do something,” he said.

Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537 or sfretwell@thestate.com.