Charleston Currents

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.

by Fred Palm · 05/07/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Common Good, Focus, Views

BRACK: Keep your mitts off of our coast

By Andy Brack | State Republicans, often obsessed with spanking Democrats for backing a “nanny state” to take care of the less fortunate, are blind to their own frightening vision, an Anita Bryant free-market dream where just about everything goes, except what you do in the bedroom.

This worldview would find guns everywhere. Developers and big companies would overrule the public’s interest in preserving South Carolina’s special places. Public money would pay for private schools. People would be at their own peril in finding good health care, sending tens of thousands routinely to emergency rooms for primary care. And oil wells — well, they would be just off the horizon of our coast, free to spew gunk whenever humans make errors.