Pawleys Island
Town will reach across the water for ideas about preserving creek
The town of Pawleys Island is ready to take another look at Pawleys Creek.
“We’ve got to decide if the issue is the creek filling in or is it the health of the creek,” Mayor Brian Henry said.
Shoaling in the creek has been a concern of island property owners for decades. The Pawleys Island Civic Association commissioned a study in 1980 that found that shoaling was a natural process.
But the persistant concern led the town to include the creek as one of four focus areas for its strategic plan in 2020.
Town Council agreed this week to form a committee of island property owners and those who live outside the town on the west side of Pawleys Creek to consider the scope of a creek study. There is $46,000 in the town budget for Coastal Science and Engineering, the firm that designed the island’s beach renourishment project, to look at the creek.
That work will fit into the sea level rise adaptation plan that the town adopted in 2022 and the drainage master plan that it is now creating with state funding, Henry said.
He walked the creek with a south end resident earlier this year, starting from the Pritchard Street landing. He said the shoaling was much as he remembered it from kayaking in the creek 25 years ago.
But what he said concerned him was the hard bottom of shell and sand rather than oyster reefs and pluff mud.
“I’m concerned about the health of the creek,” Henry said.
The study that the town first proposed from Coastal Science in 2021 was for removing silt from the creek to improve access for boats. The town didn’t pursue that because it was unsure that it could get state and federal permits for that work.
The town dredged 15,000 cubic yards of sand from portions of the creek in 2007. It took eight years to get the permits.
“What exactly is a healthy creek?” Council Member Sarah Zimmerman asked. “What determines that?”
She noted that the 2007 dredging was restricted because of concern for the health of the creek and marsh system.
Based on anecdotal evidence from people who fish, the creek seems to be doing fine, Council Member Guerry Green said.
As for shoaling, “it really hasn’t changed that much in 25 years,” he said. Sand is washed in by storms and washes out over time.
Based on his conversations with Coastal Science, Henry said the first step will be to get current geological data on the creek and marsh. He proposed getting a committee together early next year from both sides of the creek to further refine the scope of the work.
