Tackling the Future: Two Charleston County leaders aim to safeguard flood prone zones

Tackling the Future: Two Charleston County leaders aim to safeguard flood prone zones

In the face of worsening sea levels threatening to engulf large regions of Lowcountry over time, county leaders of Charleston, South Carolina have started strategizing for a future-safe zone. As noted by County Councilman Larry Kobrovsky of Sullivan’s Island, leaders are currently hammering out a climate action plan. However, Kobrovsky voiced a preference to devote more of the budget to managing flooding, as opposed to the projected spending on expanding the Interstate 526.

Wide-spread Concern on Future Impacts

Despite numerous attempts to invite comment, six of the County Council members who have regularly backed the Interstate expansion initiative – which carries an estimated cost of $2.3 billion to county taxpayers – were not responsive. This group includes Chairman Herb Sass and council members Jenny Honeycutt, Brantley Moody, Joe Boykin, Kylon Middleton, and Teddie Pryor, in addition to fellow councilman Henry Darby.

Adding to concerns are the flood maps drafted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2021. The maps provide a possible glimpse into the future, portraying what the shores of the Charleston area might look like under scenarios of 1, 2, 3, 6, and 10 feet of water, based on gradual sea level rise predictions for the years 2030, 2050, and 2100, along with storm surge estimates.

Alarm over Rising Sea-levels

Dale Morris, the Charleston Chief Resilience Officer, shared a disconcerting report in November 2023 expressing that much of the mapping performed by FEMA may already be outdated, attributed to the rapid rate of development in the Lowcountry, and the accelerating sea level rise, which has already risen 13 inches over the previous hundred years, with over half of that increase occurring within the last thirty.

Call for Constructive Change

Councilman Kobrovsky has identified a need to rollback construction near the water’s edge, especially along the coastline covered by his District 2. Even a projected 1-foot sea level rise by 2030, as per FEMA’s map, could prove detrimental. He has expressed a desire to declare additional coastline in his district off-limits for construction.

The Councilman is calling for a unified county-wide effort to address the flooding problems and anticipates that the key factor in overcoming the challenge will be a substantial degree of buy-in from leaders across the county.

A Collaborative Approach to Mitigation

Similar sentiments were echoed by County Councilman Robert Wehrman, who highlighted that combatting rising sea levels will need cooperation from city, county, state, and even federal leaders to assure residents of a secured future. Wehrman’s District 3, extending from North Charleston to the peninsula and over the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge to Mount Pleasant, sees the implications of Charleston’s larger development patterns.

Emphasizing that sea level rise and development patterns are interconnected issues, Wehrman cautioned that reversing these patterns will be a significant challenge due to their embedded nature in the region’s planning over an extended period.

He underlined the importance of proactive strategy and warned of the necessity and difficulty of altering the basic infrastructure within a deadline as tight as a decade or less, emphasizing that it will require an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach from all levels of government.