LETTERS: Stop investing in ephemeral coastal infrastructure

To the editor:

The Folly Beach County Park restoration will benefit tourism and relieve parking congestion, and has received recognition from a trade association, wonderful! But the whole concept of building groins to relieve beach erosion, however the Army Corps of Engineers may wish to sell it, is a zero-sum game in which sands trapped on one side are excavated from the other.

Whatever we do, currents are going to push the sand around, and we might as well throw our money into the water for all the good it will do, even in the short run. We need to stop investing in ephemeral coastal infrastructure and learn to love the transitory nature of the littoral environment.

The pelicans and turtles that supposedly benefit from this project have been adapting to these shifts for eons and are better off without our interference.

– Katherine Williams, Charleston, S.C.

Charleston County Parks won award

To the editor:

Your piece on the award for restoring “Folly Beach” left out a critical piece of information: the award went to the Charleston County Parks and Recreation Commission (CCPRC) for restoring the beach inside the county park on the west end of Folly.

That was a private restoration, done with a great deal of care and some engineering innovation by CCPRC.  One critical piece was that they were allowed to draw sand from the adjacent Folly River, sand that came from the beach in the first place.

The rest of the beach was restored later by the Corps of Engineers.  I think everyone would agree that it was a pretty wretched job.  The borrow area was a limestone pit five miles out, and the beach was covered with sand mixed with pieces of limestone and fossils.  Just about everyone on Folly now has shark’s teeth.  The limestone occasionally turns the water Caribbean blue, but otherwise, it’s a pain.

We are on our second rock removal project – as the sand settles in (and moves seaward), more rocks surface.  The cost for this botch-up?  $30 million, with $4.5 million coming from little old Folly.

– Susan Breslin, Folly Beach, S.C.

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