FOCUS, Palm: Moving flood control beyond more trees 

By Fred Palm, contributing editor  |  The Post and Courier editorial team (April 27, 2018) advocated that the City of Charleston plant trees to start to address flooding. That is a start. Here is what got left out.

We know that the outer lands, when properly employed to protect ourselves, buffer, reduce inundation and wave height that flood the inner uplands. We also know the flooding follows the rivers and floodplains going inland to Goose Creek and Mount Pleasant to the Francis Marion National Forest and other parts of the lowlands. This is a threat going well beyond the city of Charleston and addressed well beyond planting trees, though it helps.  It could also be a way to have the Dutch dialogue that the P&C editorial writers endorsed recently.

Flooding is a coastal threat. Comprehensive plan funding is needed by all the S.C. state coastal counties and cities; and where the lion’s share of state revenue is drawn. We urgently need the state to act by funding a statewide plan including the coastal waters’ edges and upland rivers. Protect your funding sources and yes, its people — rich and poor — as we are all at risk. High water only knows geography, not your current economic status.

Locally, a subordinate, comprehensive flood mitigation and control plan for Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties does not exist to identify the supposed natural ways, going beyond planting trees, to address how we protect ourselves. The BCD Council of Governments has no flood plans to offer its residents. It has transit plans that do not get implemented. They are planners. but not doers, who need to rally all the governments and approval holders to serve and act for the common good. One common good is to stay dry by getting out of harm’s way of flooding.

BCDCOG fulfills the legislative mandate mission as to assist local governments in planning for common needs, cooperating for mutual benefit and coordinating for sound regional development. Come up with a real regional flood control plan that puts every square foot of parks, marshes, swamps, floodplains, historical rice fields and plantation lands at the barricades, as part of robust flood defense that will actually work across all the land, not just those with means buy higher land and flood insurance. Step on some toes if you have to get a good workable plan that protects us all.

All city of Charleston residents need to move quickly — beyond planting trees — to come up with a full-scale, integrated flood control plan that this writer is nudging the elected officials of the city to think about. The going part-of-the -way advocacy reveals that P&C boosterism is part of the problem. So instead of blasting you for your failures and irresponsibility for failing to act as swiftly as the waters will come upon us in the night, you are cajoled to take a token step of planting trees of unspecified caliber, as if you are doing something. P&C writers need to talk constructively talking about the dilemma of a $2 billion drainage plan that is now all talk and advocate more features beyond increasing the tree canopy. Talking is not action. In between is needed the very best flood control plan designed to work as promised — control flooding.

Hilton Head Island flooding. SCDOT photo

Take the $2 billion dollars for pipes and pumps and divide it by the number of households, residents, workers, visitors and obviously the build-out will not occur soon enough. However, the just-talk strategy of flood control will continue; until the time comes to abandon ship — as it is then too late. Mayor Tecklenburg talks about looking for funds to address the dilemma. So is every coastal community. Flood protection is expensive. Consider New Orleans, Miami and New York which have expressed genuine flood control plans designed to contain real water, not concept water. Show us the financing plan that is going to build out the drainage plan — before the waters come.

Charleston County planners will be rewriting the county’s 10 year comprehensive plan this year. Do you think that since the county surrounds the city of Charleston the flood plans should be linked and comprehensive? Do you think a county comprehensive plan should protect the entire county for the next 10 years as it will be used for to justify its decision-making of what and where permission to build is given? Do you think more residents should be placed near the water’s edge so they can be flooded out, only to be rebuilt or bought out with our tax dollars – that we now need instead to keep all of us dry?

Right now, all we have The Potemkin Village Comprehensive Flood Mitigation and Control Plan Title Page. We need to do much more, quickly.

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