Property Owners Had NO Choice except to protect their property

State takes aim at unauthorized revetment on Daufuskie Island By JOSH McCANN jmccann@islandpacket.com 843-706-8145 Published Monday, August 1, 2011 State regulators intend to take action against someone who put "revetment material" on Daufuskie Island's eroding beach without authorization. The property in question is on Driftwood Cottage Lane, according to Dan Burger, a spokesman for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control's Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. "The party has not yet been officially informed by a notice of violation, so I cannot release any additional information at this time," Burger wrote in an email Tuesday. Details -- and the notice itself -- remained unavailable Friday. Brian McCarthy, who owns a home on Driftwood Cottage Lane, said he was not aware of the state's pending action. However, he said he and owners of other property nearby had no choice but to pile sandbags to ward off erosion that is rapidly claiming their land. He said that work was done about six months ago. A seawall protects much of Daufuskie's shoreline, but it ends just before the home in which McCarthy said he has invested $1.1 million. The property owners had been told developers of the nearby Melrose Club resort once planned to build a longer seawall, but that plan never materialized, McCarthy said. McCarthy said the property owners have applied to the state for permission to fix the problem but have so far been rejected on what he characterized as technicalities. "It basically is thumbing their nose at what is one of South Carolina's greatest assets," McCarthy said. "... They've basically forced the property owners to take some kind of action." McCarthy's home was slated to be in the second row of homes from the beach, but water already has overtaken the undeveloped lots in front of it and washed over the road, he said. He said 150 to 200 feet of land have washed away in the past two years. "Most of my front yard is gone now, if not all of it," said McCarthy, whose land holdings on Daufuskie also include the Bloody Point golf course. He thinks dredging the Savannah River to accommodate container ships might have contributed by building up the river's banks and pushing water back toward Daufuskie. Reached by email late Friday, Burger said he could not immediately respond. Follow reporter Josh McCann at twitter.com/LowCoBiz.