The A2 Times

Seawall Plan Divides a Community 

by Dorothy Terry

Susan Lyons tends to the pool in her backyard in Charleston, S.C. Photo by Dorothy Terry.

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“I used the ‘f’ word”

A visit to Susan Lyons’ backyard in Charleston, S.C., reveals an urban oasis. But looks can be deceiving.

“I live in a river,” laments Lyons, about a yard that has frequently flooded in recent years, often overtopping her swimming pool.

Lyons moved to the Harleston Village neighborhood of Charleston in 2004, during a drought in the city. She had no idea what was coming.

“I was pretty dry from 2004 to 2015,” Lyons recalls. Then a rain bomb hit in 2015 and the yard of her 120-year-old home, located about two blocks from the Ashley River, took on three feet of water. Ten days later, more water, after the city was hit with “king”  tides that can cause coastal flooding. “I was in shock,” says Lyons. “I had to redo the duct work under the house.”

Lyons thought the incident was a one-off because that’s what the locals told her. But she soon found out different.

Hurricane Matthew hit a year later in 2016. Again, Lyons’ yard took on three feet of water, requiring more ductwork. The next year was Hurricane Irma — same thing. “That’s three episodes,” says Lyons. “Now we have a pattern.”

Fed up, Lyons went from retired journalist to activist, gathered similarly frustrated neighbors in her living room and formed Groundswell Charleston, an early member of the grass roots coalition, Anthropocene Alliance. With the breezy motto “We can wade no more,” the group’s mission is to demand that city, county and state governments devote more resources to the rising flood waters that threaten Charleston’s existence.

Lyons then headed to City Hall to talk to someone and found that there was no one to talk to. “I showed up to a City Council public session and used the ‘f’ word — flooding,” she says. The response: “Their eyes glazed. There was no flood office. It was weird that flooding just wasn’t talked about.”

However, flooding has become an issue the city can no longer ignore. According to sealevelrise.org, the sea level around Charleston has risen by 10 inches since 1950 and in recent years has accelerated to about one inch every two years. Projections are that the city could experience 180 days of tidal flooding by 2045.

Seawall no cure-all

In 2018, a year after Lyons’ fruitless foray into City Hall, the city entered into a partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a federally funded study to determine the feasibility of a storm surge solution.

Noting that more than half of the city’s infrastructure, including schools and medical facilities, are in the 100-year floodplain, the Army Corps recommends, among other mitigation measures, a seawall be built around most of the peninsula, up to 12 feet in some places, based on the height of the storm surge that inundated the city during 1989’s Hurricane Hugo.

The estimated $1.3 billion seawall would feature multiple pedestrian, vehicle, railroad and tidal flow gates; hydraulic pump stations; an oyster reef-based living shoreline; and floodproofing or elevating for some structures, where construction of the seawall would be impractical.

But will it work? The Army Corps admits in its study that the recommended plan would greatly reduce, but not eliminate, the risk of future damages from coastal storm surge.

In addition, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cautions against relying on seawalls (like those proposed in New York City, Miami and Norfolk, Va., as well as Charleston) as a cure-all solution to coastal flooding. In a study released in 2020, they argue that seawalls may give communities a false sense of security, while allowing further damage to sensitive wetlands. They suggest coastal communities pair seawall construction with other measures, such as reigning in environmentally damaging development, promoting greener cities and embracing healthy ecosystems.

Relocation was also suggested, with the UN report stating that, “only avoidance and relocation can remove coastal risks for the coming decades, while other measures only delay impacts for a time.”

The Army Corps report, however, eschews relocations and buyouts for the Charleston peninsula, citing the city’s “unique combination of historical/cultural, natural and aesthetic resources, the presence of critical medical infrastructure, and as an economic driver for the Lowcountry.”

But buyouts are not new to the city and other coastal South Carolina communities. Whole neighborhoods west of downtown Charleston were bulldozed after residents received checks to abandon homes ravaged by repeated flooding.

Belvin Olasov (right) of the Charleston Climate Coalition (CCC) up a tree with former CCC project manager Rowan Emerson. Photo courtesy of CCC.

“I was decently persuaded”

Belvin Olasov lives in the Hampton Terrace area of the city, about a mile and a half north of Lyon’s neighborhood. Although he experiences only mild flooding, he supports the seawall. “Our advocacy angle is that it makes sense to pursue the seawall,” with modifications, says Olasov, co-founder and co-director of the Charleston Climate Coalition.

CCC’s mission is to “work creatively and compassionately to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis.” They were recently successful in getting the Charleston County Council to pass a Climate Action Plan.

“I was decently persuaded that the seawall is an important thing to work on,” says Olasov, “because if the projections all play out, the Charleston peninsula would not be habitable in a number of decades.” But he’d like to see priority given to a more “green versus” approach that creatively incorporates as much green infrastructure as possible into the design.

Before the Army Corps’ seawall proposal, such a “greener” plan had been suggested for the city. Launched by the city and the Historic Charleston Foundation in 2018, Dutch Dialogues™ Charleston, was a year-long collaborative effort that brought together national and international water experts from the Netherlands to work alongside Charleston’s local teams to create what they call a “Living With Water” future.

The plan called for the city to substantially invest in both green and gray infrastructure to include drainage, pumps, perimeter protection, flood plain and creek restoration, bioswales, complete streets, stormwater infiltration and detention in public spaces.

So, what happened to that plan?

“It made a big splash,” Lyons recalls. She describes the Dutch Dialogue plan as “aspirational and beautiful,” but notes that it’s also unfunded. “It remains kind of a dream in everyone’s mind,” said Lyons. So, the Army Corps’ billion-dollar, mostly federally funded seawall plan took center stage.

“No one ever talks money”

While Lyons is pleased that some movement is being made to mitigate the city’s flooding issues, she has some reservations. The $1.3 billion estimated price tag, for one. Olasov agrees: “But when you weigh it against what Charleston is worth in terms of tourism and property values, that’s a small investment that could have a big pay out.”

The city is supposed to take on 35 percent of the cost. But like the previously hush-hush topic of flooding, Lyons finds that the subject of how the city will finance its share is barely broached. “I talk about flooding with a lot of people, but no one ever talks money,” she says.

She’s also concerned about the seawall as a single-source solution — designed only to mitigate against storm surges, but not flooding caused by high tides or heavy rain, like what swamped Lyons’ backyard in 2015.

And then there’s the issue of race. Lyons represented Groundswell Charleston on a city advisory council about the seawall project and says their members were uncomfortable that the proposed wall stopped just short of Rosemont, a low-income, mostly black community in the city’s northern neck area.

“It wasn’t a good look,” says Lyons. “We weren’t happy with the idea that this whole white area would get protected but leave these black people out.”

Rodley Millet and Inka Bogdanski of Lowcountry Alliance for Model Cities outside of their office in North Charleston, S.C. Photo by Dorothy Terry.

“I’m trying not to think the worst”

Mention the seawall project and Inka Bogdanski doesn’t mince words. “I feel like I’ve been hearing about the seawall for years, and in my opinion, it’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.”

Bogdanski is the environmental justice director for the Lowcountry Alliance for Model Cities. LAMC advocates for environmental and community development for eight low-wealth neighborhoods that include Rosemont, all historic black communities settled after the Civil War.

“To spend that much money on infrastructure that is not even going to help the entire peninsula is just wild to me,” says Bogdanski, adding that she’s not sure what the thinking was that left Rosemont outside of the wall, “but I’m trying not to think the worst.”

Rodley Millet, chief executive officer of LAMC, has a theory. “High-tax base communities receive more attention than the low income communities,” he believes. “They would prefer these latter communities be industrial than residential because it’s a higher tax base.”

Like Lyons’ downtown neighborhood, the Ashley River borders Rosemont, but the similarities end there. Residents live in modest homes in an area long characterized by environmentally toxic industries. Formerly enslaved men worked mining phosphate along the river during Reconstruction. Later, other polluting manufacturers set up shop there. The construction of Interstate 26 in the late 1960s physically divided the communities and added yet another layer of environmental injustice.

“We continue to shake our heads because when planning is happening, there appears to be no consideration for these communities,” says Millet.

The Army Corps’ initial study cited Rosemont’s higher elevation as the reason for the community being left out of the seawall. But an independent study in which LAMC was a partner shows that Rosemont is beginning to take on water as well. Rosemont is the community that the Army Corps’ proposes raising the homes by at least 12 feet.

LAMC was recently awarded two grants — a federal grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Federation to develop a nature-based flood resiliency plan for Rosemont and Bridgeview (an affordable apartment community threatened by flooding on the city’s eastside); and a grant from the nonprofit Climate Smart Communities Initiative to conduct an inventory of brownfields in the neck area for redevelopment.

The proposed seawall (in yellow) will encompass most of the Charleston peninsula. Photo by the Management Support Branch, Charleston District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
(Neighborhood pinpoints inserted by A2 staff.)

“How bad it’s getting”

For now, “everything’s in limbo,” says Lyons. The Army Corps’ plan was submitted to Congress in 2022. Pending all approvals and funding, the wall is slated for completion in 2035. But Lyons worries, “A major storm could wipe us out before then.”

And yet another plan has been unveiled. Newly elected Mayor William Cogswell introduced The Charleston Water Plan at a recent City Council workshop. The plan proposes such measures as elevating critical roads to improve infrastructure corridors for utility and transportation resilience; restoring and protecting wetlands and urban green spaces; and inventorying the city’s drainage system and streamlining the permitting process for drainage improvements in sensitive habitats.

In the meantime, Lyons is reorganizing Groundswell Charleston in light of the new mayor. She and Olasov have publicly bemoaned the departure of the city’s resiliency officer, Dale Morris, who resigned in June shortly after Mayor Cogswell took office. Morris, formerly of the Royal Netherlands Embassy and later the Water Institute, was a chief architect of the Dutch Dialogues before he was hired by the city under its previous administration.

Susan Lyons points out one of two new water pumps recently installed in the backyard of her Charleston home. Photo by Dorothy Terry.

And while the political, financial and racial issues surrounding the seawall play out, Lyons continues to buy new water pumps to drain her backyard. The first one lasted 10 years before it burned out. The second lasted seven years before it, too, burned out. The third one lasted only three years. “It’s kind of a barometer of how bad it’s getting,” says Lyons. She recently installed two new pumps, just in case. Shortly after, Hurricane Debby hit in early August. Lyons’ yard and the city fared well.

The pumps came in handy a month later when deadly Hurricane Helene hit in September. Downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it blew through Charleston, Helene brought heavy rains and high winds that prompted tornado warnings.

The high winds hit during high tide, causing a storm surge that brought moderate flooding into Lyons’s street and her yard. But Lyons said the storm moved quickly, and her pumps did their job, moving most of the water out of her yard by the afternoon. But, she adds, “We are still early in the season.”

Hurricane season ends November 30. And as Charleston grapples with whether to erect a billion-dollar seawall, go “Dutch” with “greener versus” mitigation measures, execute the city’s new water plan — or all of the above — it’s clear something needs to be done. In the meantime, more storms are brewing in the Atlantic and the sea level continues to rise.

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