Categories
Environment Folly Beach

WCSC: Folly Beach officials worry Michael could cause more sand loss

Officials on Folly Beach are preparing for impacts from Hurricane Michael while still recovering from sand loss due to Hurricane Florence.

Although Folly Beach dodged bad weather conditions from Hurricane Florence, a portion of the beach suffered from a loss of sand.

“The sand served its purpose,” Folly Beach City Administrator Spencer Wetmore said. “We sacrificed sand, but didn’t have property losses.”

Sand loss from Florence came during a $10 million beach renourishment project, which is targeted at replacing sand lost on Folly Beach during Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Irma.

That renourishment project was originally supposed to put more than 700,000 cubic yards of sand back on the beach.

Florence washed some of that replacement sand away.

On Monday, Folly Beach officials announced the crew behind the renourishment project agreed to replace sand lost during Florence while they continue to replace sand lost during Matthew and Irma.

“So we actually were able to put back all of the sand we lost during Florence,” Wetmore said. “It wasn’t a lot, about a quarter of what we put in that area.”

As another storm threatens South Carolina, all eyes on Folly are on the beach.

“Definitely. It’s a worry for how it’s going to affect the landscape of everything,” Johns Island resident Maggie Fitzgerald said. “Hopefully, by the time it makes landfall, it won’t be too hard and we’ll just get a lot of rain.”

Officials on Folly Beach said the same option of replacing new lost sand may not be possible for Hurricane Michael.

“We’d be on a fourth chance at this point in terms of extending or modifying the contract,” Wetmore said. “I don’t know if that would be an option. We’re going to have to hope for the best on that one.”

Officials on Folly Beach said they have not distributed sand bags.

For now, city officials are just encouraging people to watch the weather and remain cautious.

“They’ll have the hands on it. I’m not worried about it,” Folly Beach resident Regina Smith said. “They’ll keep Folly safe and beautiful, and we’ll be fine.”

Copyright 2018 WCSC. All rights reserved.

Categories
Environment Folly Beach

Carolina News & Reporter: Folly Beach reflects state’s battle to save coastal towns

By  | Apr 24, 2018

For South Carolina, Charleston’s Folly Beach is ground zero in the battle over coastal erosion.

“We never considered buying a house on the front beach because I figure, sooner or later, I will be front beach,” said Folly resident Joe Schmidt.

While erosion threatens many coastal cities, Charleston’s beaches face an additional factor in the equation – the Charleston harbor jetties.  The three-mile long rocky jetties that enable large commercial ships to enter Charleston’s harbor are also blocking sand deposits from longshore drift currents, resulting in many beaches around Charleston eroding at a highly accelerated rate.

The erosion has become so severe that parts of Folly have vanished permanently beneath the waves.

“That far end of the island, there are actually houses that are out there in the water,” Schmidt said.  “There’s one or two streets that are out in the ocean from many, many years ago that people are still paying taxes on.  They still hope that somehow, it’s going to come back.  They own the land on the street that’s in the ocean.”

According to a study done in the 1980’s, over 58 percent of the erosion experienced by Folly Beach is caused by the jetties, Folly town administrator Spencer Wetmore said.

To combat the erosion that threatens to sweep away the island community, Folly has implemented many projects and regulations.  Terminal groins – long structures of rocks and concrete – line the beach, holding sand in place that would normally be swept down the coast.  Residents are required to raise their lots to specific levels to fall in line with the most important part of combating the erosion process – beach re-nourishment projects.

Folly has a contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that secures federal funding for beach re-nourishment.  These projects involve transporting sediment from the Folly River through a pipeline down to the beach, where barges will help move it up and down the eroded areas.  The amount of sediment needed for these projects is massive – roughly equivalent to 60,000 dump truck’s worth for the upcoming re-nourishment project in late April.

Dredging sand from environmentally sensitive areas like coastal ecosystems can be a tricky process.

“We do an extensive amount of geo-testing and sediment tests to make sure it’s beach-compatible sand, and that we get the depth correct,” Wetmore said of the dredging process.  “We want to treat it like the environmentally sensitive area that it is.”

Although the process is extremely expensive, in the eyes of many, the fight for Folly Beach is well worth it.  Folly is a highly residential area, and the loss of the beach would displace thousands of people like Schmidt, who has lived there for 12 years.  But sand re-nourishment isn’t just a fight for people’s homes; it is a fight for a highly productive economy.

Folly Beach is a very popular tourist destination.  According to studies done by the city of Folly Beach in 2014, the beach generates around $117 million in sales annually, providing over 1,200 jobs and $40 million in salaries in the process.  It also generates over $17 million in state taxes and $5 million in federal taxes.

The loss of Folly would therefore be more than just a devastating blow for coastal residents; it would be the loss of a serious economic asset that would harm the entire state.

“It’s everything,” said Wetmore of the beach.  “It’s at the top of our strategic plan, it’s at the top of our budget…it’s just everything.  It’s the reason we have an economy, the reason we have a community, it’s why people want to live and visit here.”

While beach re-nourishment is crucial to preventing Folly Beach – and the community, wildlife habitat, and economy that comes with it – from vanishing entirely, coastal erosion is a global problem that cannot be stopped entirely.  Rising sea levels will eventually eat away at what is left of Folly Beach, and the looming threat of the next inevitable hurricane or tropical storm accelerating the process hangs heavily over many coastal communities.

The arrival of tropical storms Matthew and Irma greatly worsened the erosional damage to many S.C. beaches.  Both storms stole thousands of yards of cubic sand from Folly.  The sand dunes in front of Schmidt’s house used to be one of the highest and largest on the beach.  Irma obliterated the dunes, leaving behind only small mounds of sand.

“I was shocked after Irma,” Wetmore said.  “The storm surge was just incredible. Old, established dunes that had been there since the 90’s were gone.”

While the fact that the erosion cannot be stopped entirely weighs heavily on the minds of many residents, some, like Schmidt, have additional concerns about what happens when the contract with the Army Corps expires.

“I think it’s just going to get to the point where they’re going to say ‘we’re not paying for this any more.’ It always boils down to money,” said Schmidt.

Wetmore said that renewing the contract after the 50-year term plays out is a viable possibility, and that steps will always be taken to secure funding to protect the beach.

“We live with erosion every day, and we just do the best we can,” Wetmore said.  “In the end, we’re no match for Mother Nature.  There’s no perfect solution.  But we’ll continue to do the best we can to preserve our community and fight for it.”

Categories
Environment Folly Beach

Live 5 News: Folly Beach working on drainage projects to mitigate flooding

By Paola Tristan Arruda | January 8, 2020 at 9:21 PM EST – Updated January 8 at 11:38 PM

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCSC) – When you live in the Lowcountry, you can expect to see some flooding when it rains.

On Folly Beach, city officials say they also have to worry about the tides.

After applying for grants through Charleston County, the city now has funds for capital drainage projects.

Currently, they are working on raising the road bed and creating drainage outfalls on 9th Street West. Spencer Wetmore, the city administrator for Folly Beach, says the street is one of the worst flooding areas on the island.

“When it’s high tide, we really don’t have anywhere for the water to go because its on a barrier island. We have to keep that in mind at the forefront of everything,” Wetmore said. “The goal is to mitigate the flooding, especially in areas where you don’t have an alternate route.”

The city was also successful in getting a grant for the engineering and construction of a new drainage system.

The plan is to have it run from 2nd Street East to 6th Street East.

Engineers with Charleston County are in the process of engineering and permitting the project through the department of transportation. Officials say they are about a year out from construction.

For over a year, Charleston County and the city of Folly Beach have also been working on an island-wide drainage study.

In September officials held an open house, as part of the study, to hear residents’ flooding experiences.

“The goal is to make a priority list of capital drainage projects,” Wetmore said. “The projects on streets like 9th west and 2nd east are already in the hopper, so this study will create additional projects on top of that.”

City officials say they hope to have recommendations from that study in the summer of 2020.

They have already started setting aside funds for the potential projects.

Categories
Community Folly Beach

P&C: A vocal group of Folly Beach residents managed to get the speed limit lowered

By Chloe Johnson cjohnson@postandcourier.com

 

Drivers in Folly Beach will have to ease off the gas when speed limits on the island go down this summer.

The reduction to 25 mph was recently approved by the S.C. Department of Transportation and will affect the entire island.

There’s no set timeline for when the change will go into effect, but City Administrator Spencer Wetmore said the city will start to replace speed limit signs in the coming weeks.

A grassroots group of residents on the island advocated for the change for a while. Many people started to plant small, green men figures with “slow down” stickers in their yards, Wetmore said.

Last year, residents held a “Slow Down Saturday” event to create awareness around traffic safety.

“We’ve had petitions from hundreds of residents and emails and public appearances, and this is really important to them,” Wetmore said.

In 2015, the city asked DOT, which has authority over all of the roads on Folly, to lower the speed limit. The request was turned down because the state wanted a traffic study before it made any changes.

Folly was only recently able to complete a study with help from former Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority Director Howard Chapman and graduate students at The Citadel.

The results suggested many drivers were already traveling at around 25 mph, though the posted limit was 30.

Many residents preferred a limit of 20, but DOT stuck with the study’s suggestion, Wetmore said.

Mayor Tim Goodwin said the island has gradually changed to a place with more year-round families with young children, as opposed to its traditional status as a rental market. Those families were crucial in advocating for slower speeds, he said.

He added that the speed reduction will give drivers more reaction time when unaware pedestrians cross the street.

“It’s crazy,” Goodwin said of the walkers. “They think they’re in Disney World or something and just don’t pay attention.”

Categories
Criminal Justice

Taking a ‘restorative’ approach to justice

Princeton NJ — Working last summer in the public defender’s office in her hometown of Charleston, S.C., Spencer Compton was disturbed by the treadmill of drug-related cases she witnessed in the criminal justice system. That motivated Compton to pursue a unique senior thesis project incorporating her passion for justice with her work as a religion major.

“It was a frustrating experience to see these men come through with clear drug addictions, but nothing seemed to be addressing the cause of the problem,” she said. “It’s a revolving door — until you address that problem, they’re going to keep coming through.”

Combining research with field work at a Pennsylvania school for juvenile delinquents, she focused her thesis on the practice of “restorative justice,” an alternative method of dealing with crimes that involves mediation between offenders and victims and seeks to solve the root causes of illegal behavior.

Compton worked with the University’s Community-Based Learning Initiative, which incorporates community projects into courses, to find a nearby school and treatment center for juvenile offenders. In eastern Pennsylvania, the Community Service Foundation, in conjunction with Buxmont Academy, runs several schools that practice restorative justice with teenagers who have mostly been involved in drug- and alcohol-related offenses. Compton spent two days talking with and observing teenagers at one of those schools to see how the theory worked in practice.

Marie Griffith, an associate professor of religion and Compton’s thesis adviser, said her project skillfully blended academic work with a focus on real-life applications.

“In our department we tend to be divided a bit methodologically between the historians and those who address more contemporary questions. It’s terrific to see a student like Spencer crossing those concerns and using her training to come up with a quite fascinating analysis that has contemporary relevance,” Griffith said. “She put in tremendous amounts of time and energy doing interviews and balancing that with a great deal of research on theories of punishment and how this can really have an impact on the American criminal justice system.”

In her thesis, Compton notes that while the restorative justice concept requires offenders to be held accountable for their actions, it “moves beyond punishment and division to provide guidelines for healing and restoration to the victim, increased understanding of consequences for the offender and wholeness for the affected community.”

Common examples are victim-offender mediation programs, which give “interested victims the opportunity to meet their offenders in a safe and structured setting.” Most involve juvenile offenders, typically in cases such as property crime and minor assault. Restorative justice programs are primarily developed by community- or religious-based programs, but have received support from some state and federal agencies.

Through her research and her field work, Compton feels restorative justice works best with young offenders. “It seems to be most effective in lowering recidivism rates when you approach juveniles who have so much to learn and let them know how important community and relationships with the people around them are,” she said.

In her school visits, Compton observed how the students “continued to engage in restorative justice throughout daily conflicts.” She said the students worked hard to abide by standards of conduct agreed upon by the group and to resolve conflicts on their own.

Describing one incident in which a student who vandalized a bus on a field trip would not admit his actions, she noted that the teenagers were “quick to speak to each other about feeling personally disrespected because a student has violated a group norm. It’s very empowering because the students are responsible for one another — the counselors step in secondarily. The students themselves say, ‘I don’t think your behavior was appropriate, how are you going to repair this?’ and the offending student has to come up with a way to repair it.”

“You can tell they are really blossoming in this environment where they know there are people who care about their well-being. They know those counselors believe in their potential to achieve in life,” she said.

Compton, who organized a conference on criminal justice reform this spring with the Princeton Justice Project student organization, plans to eventually attend law school and focus on public interest law and youth advocacy issues. She said she appreciated the opportunity to develop a senior thesis through CBLI and the religion department that enabled her to engage her interests in other areas, such as sociology and politics.

“I felt like I was doing work that really mattered and that was tangibly important to a group of people. To me, that was the most exciting thing in the world,” she said.

Categories
Criminal Justice

P&C: Man convicted of rape, beating gets 6 years

A jury on Thursday found James Lewis Alexander Jr., 49, guilty of a 2008 beating and rape on James Island.

In Charleston County General Sessions Court, Alexander was found guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Circuit Judge Deadra Jefferson sentenced him to six years in prison.

Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said the jury reached its verdict after deliberating about two hours. Jurors had the option of convicting Alexander of the lesser offense of aggravated assault, but chose to convict him of the more serious offense, she said.

On Oct. 12, 2008, a beating and rape took place behind the Island Bar and Grill at 815 Folly Road. The victim, her sister and another friend had gone to the bar for a night of karaoke.

During the assault, the victim was knocked unconscious and suffered severe bruising. She was treated for more than 20 bruises and lacerations all over her body, Wilson said.

“The victim regained consciousness to find herself behind a wall in a trash pile with Alexander on top of her, forcing sexual intercourse,” Wilson said. She said the victim fought Alexander and begged him to stop.

The victim testified at trial that she thought she was going to die during the ordeal, Wilson said.

DNA evidence recovered from the victim helped secure the case against Alexander, Wilson said. Assistant Solicitors Timmy Finch and Spencer Compton prosecuted the case.

Categories
Criminal Justice

Live 5 News: Man sentenced to 30 years for stabbing music director to death

By Ray Rivera | June 7, 2011 at 1:31 AM EDT – Updated June 24 at 8:32 AM

 

CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) – A 30-year-old man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering a church music director who was found stabbed 92 times.

Tommy Montgomery pleaded guilty, but mentally ill to murder on Monday.

According to doctors, Montgomery suffered from depression and post traumatic stress disorder. Montgomery will serve the full sentence in the South Carolina Department of Corrections and will receive psychiatric treatment while in prison.

According to Assistant Solicitors Burns Wetmore and Spencer Compton who prosecuted the case, the victim, Brandon Jamison, was the music director at the church that Montgomery attended. In the summer of 2009, Montgomery needed a place to stay, and Jamison allowed Montgomery to live in his apartment.

Authorities say on the night of Dec. 7, 2009, Montgomery became enraged and attacked Jamison, stabbing him to death. An autopsy revealed that Jamison was stabbed 92 times which included several defensive wounds to the hands and 26 wounds to the back. According to investigators, after the stabbing, Montgomery stole Jamison’s vehicle and fled the scene.

Montgomery turned himself in at the North Charleston Police Department the next morning and confessed to killing Jamison.

“This was a completely senseless and particularly gruesome Murder,” Assistant Solicitor Wetmore said. “Montgomery lashed out at someone who had been kind to him. I hope that the victim’s family will have some peace now that this matter has been resolved.”

Copyright WCSC 2011. All rights reserved.