Environment
Council will take another look at resource plan it tabled in 2023
Natural resources will return to Georgetown County Council’s agenda this month after 14 months in the wilderness.
The council tabled the natural resources element to the county’s state-mandated comprehensive plan in July 2023 after deferring discussion for six months. The element approved by the Planning Commission in November 2022 was revised by county staff before it reached the council to soften language that mandated action and remove goals that fall within the purview of state and federal regulators.
The changes prompted an outcry from citizens and conservation groups.
Council Member Clint Elliott moved to table the issue until the county could update its land use element. That was adopted in July.
It will be up to Elliott to move to bring natural resources back for two additional votes by the council. He said he doesn’t envision any changes.
“There were no actual changes to the body of the document,” Holly Richardson, the county planning director, said.
The changes to the goals and objectives reflected council members’ priorities and areas where the county doesn’t have jurisdiction, such as septic tanks and shellfish beds, she said.
“We’re looking for some direction,” she told the council at a workshop this week.
The land use element drew opposition from residents who said it will increase the density of future development on Waccamaw Neck. The consultants who prepared the plan said if the Waccamaw Neck is built out as the plan envisions there could be 10 percent more dwellings than envisioned in the former plan.
But they also said that number would be half of what could be built under the current zoning ordinance. The county now plans to rewrite the ordinance.
Richardson told council that the goals in the updated land use element mirror those in the proposed natural resource element for protecting wetlands, preserving open space and keeping development out of environmentally-sensitive areas.
“There is a lot of overlap,” she said.
Both documents call for the adoption of a wetlands ordinance.
“That’s something we’ve talked about in our office a lot,” Richardson said.
The county zoning ordinance currently requires a 15-foot setback from saltwater wetlands. There is no setback requirement for freshwater wetlands.
Both documents talk about clustering development on property to reduce impact on natural resources. While that was endorsed by conservation groups, opponents to the land use element said it would increase density.
In the Planning Commission’s version, there was a call to create a management plan for the Murrells Inlet estuary modeled on the county’s beachfront management plan.
That was cut in the council’s version and replaced with a call to “review and consider” recommendations from the existing Murrells Inlet Watershed Plan, which residents have said the county has ignored for years.
The land use element calls for creating a “special area plan” for the Murrells Inlet Marsh Walk area that would consider stormwater runoff along with parking and zoning.
Council Member Bob Anderson said he wants to make sure the natural resources element will allow the county to limit impervious surface for residential development the way it does for commercial development and restrict the placement of fill on vacant lots prior to development.
He asked Richardson how many ordinances are affected by the natural resources goals. “If it’s like the land use element, it’s a lot of them,” he said.
Richardson said there are several that she could think of. But she said afterward that she believes the natural resources plan would support the changes Anderson wants to make.
