MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - Lobbying Congress for more money may be the only option for South Carolina boaters and business owners to keep the Intracoastal Waterway from becoming too shallow.

The survival of the waterway is at risk without additional funding to keep the channel at its proper depth, boaters and business owners said Wednesday at a hearing in Charleston.

The Army Corps Engineers has said it needs $4.5 million a year to keep the South Carolina section of the waterway at its traditional 12-foot depth, said Rosemary Lynch, executive director of the association.

But federal funding for dredging and other maintenance on the waterway is shrinking as commercial traffic dwindles.

South Carolina will likely get about $269,000 in this year's federal budget, barely enough to keep the most trouble-prone sections of the route open, Lynch said at the hearing conducted by the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway Association and the Boat Owners Association of the United States.

"This waterway won't stay open without federal funds," Benjamin "Bos" Smith, operations manager for Yonges Island-based Stevens Towing Co. Inc. "If Congress doesn't hear anything from us, we won't have a waterway."

Without more support, the waterway probably will go from its depth of 10 feet to 6 feet or less within a few years as it fills with silt from eroding banks and sand bars at its ocean inlets, Smith said.

The boat owners association has asked the Sea Grant Consortium, a network of universities in coastal states, to put a figure on the economic role recreational boating plays along the waterway. But the $1.2 million study has no funding so far, said Tom Murray, a specialist in marine business and coastal development at the Virginia Institute for Marine Science.

Thousands of pleasure boaters sail the waterway each year, sustaining a growing business of marinas and docks along the Grand Strand.

"If they don't do this dredging, we won't be there," said Sherry Harrelson, manager of Osprey Marina in Socastee.

Information from: The Sun News