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SEABROOK ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) - Seabrook Island is working with a local coastal consulting firm to develop a plan to monitor, protect and restore its marsh to fight erosion.

The Seabrook Island Environment and Wildlife Committee is in the final stages of reviewing plan drafts that balance property protection and marsh preservation since most of Seabrook Island’s marsh front lies on private property.

“What we’re seeing out in the marshes and in the tidal ditches over the last three years, actually is a lot of erosion that has been my main concern,” Dean Moor, a Seabrook Island Environment and Wildlife Committee member, says.

Nicole Elko, of Elko Coastal Consulting, is developing the marsh front management plan. She says Seabrook does have one water level monitor that reports higher waters and more king tides in recent years.

“The impetus for the plan was some erosion that the community has been experiencing along the marsh front, and the need to just monitor and document what is going on the marsh side. So, in South Carolina, we do a great job of monitoring our beaches. We measure and collect a lot of data. Very little information is collected on the along our marsh front,” Elko says.

Her firm is working with the town to change that. The management plan suggests partnering with Kiawah Conservancy to fully map the ‘critical line’ or official edge of the marsh. Then, the town can collect data like water movement and erosion to implement restoration precisely where it’s needed.

“A state permit is required to do any construction or altering below the critical line and then down in the marsh. So the town has an immediate opportunity to make changes, implement ordinances, construct projects upland of that critical line,” Elko says.

Her management plan suggests some regulatory changes for the town like transitioning the Agricultural Zoning to a more appropriate district along the marsh front to reduce development pressure and protect sensitive ecosystems. It also instructs the town to reduce impermeable surfaces in the community to minimize runoff into the marsh. But the Seabrook marsh front is unique compared to its neighbor islands.

“Most of the Seabrook marsh front is actually privately held, so that presents a new challenge as the town decides how to manage those lands, and a lot of the decisions and land management on Seabrook involves several entities,” Elko says.

One of the major players on the private island is the Seabrook Island Property Owners Association.

“My hope is that once we’ve got the clear Marsh plan, we can get with SIPOA, which is, I guess, the administrative part of the island, and make sure that they’re on the same page, and we adopt both the town and SIPOA adopt the recommendations for how to protect and restore some of the marshes,” Moor says.

Moor says as a property owner, he appreciates that the plan puts town-led efforts into place for private owners to follow so as to protect their property along the marsh front.

Due to the private ownership of much of the marsh front on homeowner property, the plan involves a lot of community engagement, like incentivizing homeowners to meet certain standards. For example, the plan suggests showcasing living shoreline projects on public lands such as oyster bed restoration and marsh front vegetative buffers.

Based on future data and grant application abilities, the plan says to work towards offering mini grants to marsh front property owners to support the installation of green infrastructure and living shorelines.

“We are seeing evidence of additional mud flats, decreased habitat and ecosystem health and also marsh erosion,” Elko says. “And the erosion piece is really because of development right the marsh normally could migrate. The oxbows of the marsh channels can move around, but when there’s private property involved, now that becomes a problem. So in order to address those elements, the plan is devised to do that.”

Elko Coastal Consulting and the Town of Seabrook Island have been collaborating on the marsh management plan for a few months. The Environment and Wildlife Committee is expected to review a final draft of the plan at its next meeting and will pass the plan along to the town council once it approves a draft.

“Part of it is if we do nothing, and we start destroying, or the climate and sea level rise starts destroying property, we’re going to have a little bit of an issue here,” Moor says. “It’s a real joy to sit in areas where we can look out over the marsh at different times during the day, see the marsh, see the watering of the high tide and marsh that sunset, see the marsh turn gold. It’s a real treat.”

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