Environment
Planners still like natural resources plan adopted in 2022
The Planning Commission is sticking by its goals for Georgetown County’s natural resources element adopted two years ago. Members voted 6-0 to send those goals back to County Council, which had asked them to review proposed changes made by staff and council members in 2023.
“I see no reason to change any of it,” commission member Marla Hamby said at the meeting earlier this month. “Seven people approved it and sent it to County Council.”
That was in November 2022. At a retreat the following January, the council agreed changes were needed to remove goals that were outside the county’s authority, such as improving water quality for shellfish beds, and that could prove expensive, such as managing land set aside for conservation.
After public outcry, the council tabled the measure in July 2023. It restored it to the agenda last month and this month asked the commission to review its recommendation.
Monica Whalen, staff attorney for the S.C. Environmental Law Project, urged the commission to keep its original goals or at least restore key provisions to the version proposed by the staff and council.
“The revised draft removes language that any restrictions should be stricter than state and federal regulations and the mention of protections for ‘any wetlands,’” said Whalen, who represented the Coastal Conservation League. “It is essential that the original, stronger language be restored to provide comprehensive wetlands protection that goes beyond minimum regulatory standards.”
She also cited proposed changes to goals of restoring shellfish harvesting, securing grants for environmental initiatives, considering a green space sales tax and creating a natural resources committee.
Holly Richardson, the county planning director, reviewed the changes with the commission last month.
“It wasn’t the intent to weaken the document,” she said. The goals “should be aspirational and hard to reach.”
But she added that they should also be “achievable.”
Hamby pointed out that “96 percent of the entire population of Georgetown County said natural resources was the most important thing to them,” referring to a 2021 survey by the county that garnered 1,852 responses, 1,289 from the Waccamaw Neck.
While she had proposed dropping the green space sales tax in light of the county’s current plan for two other local sales taxes, she said that and any other “tweaks” could be done once the council has adopted the commission’s original goals.
The plan, one of 10 elements in the county’s comprehensive plan, has to be updated every 10 years and reviewed every five years, but can be amended at any time.
“I would like to see it go back to them as we originally sent it to them,” Hamby said.
With one member absent, the commission agreed unanimously.
