Keeping Lowcountry Growth in Sensible Bounds

Although the housing market has cooled, massive development proposals still threaten to bring explosive, leapfrog growth to Charleston, Beaufort, Myrtle Beach, and other areas on the South Carolina coast. The resulting sprawl would imperil some of the Southeast’s most valuable natural assets.

Shaping Decisions That Influence Growth

SELC and its allies are combining complementary skills and capabilities to provide a powerful counterweight to the region’s growth pressures. By working in close collaboration with the Coastal Conservation League and other environmental and land trust groups, we can deliver a one-two punch of advocacy and permanent land protection to safeguard coastal ecosystems and to promote compact development patterns that focus growth in and around existing communities.

Working at all levels of government, SELC and its partners play a critical role in shaping decisions that influence where and how growth occurs, such as the location of new roads and sewer lines. We also work together to secure broad policy reforms, such as a new law that compels the state to select its transportation projects based on genuine need rather than politics and to look seriously at the environmental impacts of proposed roads and bridges [See Reforming the DOT in South Carolina].

This should reduce the number of destructive, sprawl-inducing, and unnecessary highway proposals arising on the South Carolina coast. Projects we are currently striving to keep in check include the outdated plan to add seven miles to the Mark Clark Expressway [See Charleston’s I-526] and the so-called Southern Evacuation LifeLine. Touted as an emergency exit route during hurricanes, this 30-mile road would bisect the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge and would actually make hurricane evacuations more difficult by spurring increased development in the area.