COASTAL OBSERVER

A settlement in lawsuits over Pawleys Island’s 2020 beach renourishment project  will provide $4 million to relocate Pawleys Inlet and restore the eroded beachfront across the inlet at Prince George. A 13-page agreement is designed to let the town and Prince George property owners keep the inlet from migrating in the future.

The settlement signed last month by all the parties to the litigation came six years after the town of Pawleys Island began a project to pump 1.1 million cubic yards of offshore sand onto its beach. The work was completed in 2020. The first of three lawsuits was filed in 2022 after Pawleys Inlet had migrated 300 feet south toward Prince George.

The inlet has continued to move south, eroding the dunes in front of beachfront houses. It is now about 3,200 feet south of the public parking lot on the south end of the island. The settlement agreement calls for the inlet to be relocated within 800 feet of the parking lot, which is owned by Georgetown County. 

“I am very happy that we’ve come to terms on a mutually agreeable solution,” said Bud Watts, who owns the northernmost house on the Prince George beachfront. He and his wife, Melesa, filed the initial suit. “We’re anxious to get to work on it,” he said.

Twenty other Prince George property owners and  the Prince George Community Association filed two other suits against the town, two state agencies and the town’s two contractors. They alleged that the erosion was a result of the sand from the renourishment project drifting in the current along the shore and building up on the south end of the island. 

Among other things, they argued that the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, now Environmental Services, failed to consider the downdrift impact as required by state law in issuing a permit for the work.

That impact was foreseeable because the migration of the inlet was predicted in a 2010 study commissioned by the community association from Coastal Science and Engineering, they said. The firm also designed the town’s renourishment project.

Coastal Science and Marinex, which conducted the work, agreed to pay $1.65 million each toward the settlement. The town, Environmental Services and the state Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism, which helped fund the renourishment, were covered by the state Insurance Reserve Fund, which paid a total of $600,000. The town also paid an additional $150,000.

The money will be used to buy 16.6 acres at the southern tip of Pawleys Island. A 750-foot-long section will be used to create an “inlet management zone.” The remainder will be restored to the Prince George beachfront.

In addition to sharing the cost of the settlement, Coastal Science will also design and manage the work of shifting the inlet and restoring the beach at no cost.

The Prince George Community Association filed an application in 2023 for state and federal permits to relocate the inlet, but that was never put out for public notice. That application will be modified, according to the settlement agreement. It calls for the work to be done early this year.

While the agreement acknowledges Environmental Services maintains its regulatory authority, the agency agrees to expedite its review of the application.

The proposal calls for cutting a new inlet through the management zone up to 500 feet wide. The excavated sand will be used to rebuild the beach at Prince George.

The town will be able to use sand from the north side of the inlet and from the shoals for beach renourishment, up to 100,000 cubic yards a year.

Under the agreement, the town will ensure that any future renourishment projects include provisions for relocating the inlet within the management zone.

If the land on the southern boundary of the management zone is reduced to less than 4 feet above sea level the inlet will be moved north.  The town will pay for that if it occurs within four and a half years of a major renourishment. After that, Prince George Community Association will pay.

“Prince George has agreed not to raise objections to future renourishments because if the inlet moves, we have a plan to put it back,” Mayor Brian Henry said.

Access to sand that accumulates on the island side of Pawleys Inlet will benefit the town and help reduce the need for large-scale renourishment, he said.

After the 2020 project was completed, the town entered into an agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers that made renourishment on the southern portion of the island eligible for future federal funding. The Corps is currently working on a project to place up to 200,000 cubic yards of offshore sand on the beach to replace sand lost to Hurricane Ian in 2022.

“The town did not have ready access to this highly beach-compatible sand in the past, but we will going forward,” Henry said. “We believe more frequent, smaller scale renourishments will be more efficient, cost-effective, better-quality sand and less objectionable to our neighbors.”

And while the focus of the agreement is on keeping Pawleys Inlet from moving south, the town will be able to keep it from moving north.

“Within the last 25 years, that inlet was nearly adjacent to the parking lot,” Henry said.

The defendants denied the renourishment was to blame, and the plaintiffs agree in the settlement not to cite that as the cause of the inlet migration.

“Reaching a settlement was a challenge,” Henry said, but the result will be a long and mutually beneficial relationship.”

Watts agreed. “It was a ton of work,” he said.