The Council on Coastal Futures, a diverse mix of developers, businessmen and environmentalists empaneled by the state, submitted the fruits of its 18 months of work Thursday to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control board.
The recommendations in the report, endorsed Thursday by the DHEC board, provide pragmatic guidance and realistic advice on how to ensure the economic and environmental sustainability of the coast as it continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
"The most important part of the whole document is the planning for sustainable economic growth," said Chris Brooks, deputy commissioner of DHEC's Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, which helped to start the Coastal Futures panel.
In short, the report says if state regulators and lawmakers don't take more proactive steps in managing the growth, the economic vitality provided by the coastal area of the state may degrade. And that could be bad because it currently pumps in more than $40 billion annually to the state and provides a third of all new private-sector jobs.
Why bad?
Because if growth isn't managed as more people move in to attain South Carolina's great quality of life, then the state could suffer the consequences of unplanned growth -- sprawl, congestion, less eventual economic growth and an erosion of the very qualities that brought people here.
"The environment is good for business," Brooks said. "That was a strong chord throughout the process. Businesses won't locate in a degrading environmental area."
For Wes Jones, the Bluffton lawyer who chaired the Coastal Futures panel, finding a balanced way to deal with the sometimes competing natures of development and environmental management was key to the process.
"People are drawn to South Carolina," he said. "There is a balance that has to be reached between the economic development side of it, the private property side of it and the environmental resource that brings us here in the first place."
It's important to note that for those who issued the report and studied how to make the coast sustainable, "managed" growth doesn't mean overriding governmental impediments and control. Management means using the planning tools that are available to ensure economic growth is happening in ways that don't savage the environment.
A look at the recommendations in the Coastal Futures report highlights just that. Several of the recommendations, particularly those on permits for developers, call for improved flexibility and decision-making based on best practices. Many can be implemented administratively by DHEC. On Thursday, the board asked staff to provide a plan and budget ideas on how to implement recommendations in the report.
And that's where state lawmakers come in.
While the report encourages some specific legislation, such as adoption of measures to protect freshwater wetlands, it suggests the biggest way legislators can help in the future is to provide funding to do the things that are needed to promote economic and environmental sustainability.
In other words, once DHEC figures out how much it will cost to implement recommendations from the report, state lawmakers need to figure out how to pay for them. If they don't, growth will continue to happen and it might get so out of control that it starts declining.
Managing economic growth is an investment in continuing South Carolina's quality of life. To fail to fund management is to slowly kill the goose that lays one of the state's golden eggs.
Charleston Realtor John Settle III, who served on the panel, says he believes the Coastal Futures report will provide helpful guidance to lead lawmakers toward better management of the coast. Unlike many government reports that end up sitting on shelves, this one won't, he says.
Let's hope he's right.
Note: The report isn't yet online, but you can learn more about the Council on Coastal Futures by going online to: www.scdhec.net/ocrm/ html/ccf.html.