County looks at $1 million plan to help Dunes Club beach

This story has been updated to correct a previous version of the story and reflect that money is budgetted for the project in question.

Horry County spent more than $120,000 on consultants to develop a million-dollar proposal to preserve the Dunes Club’s beach.

But that plan is dead — for now.

The county hired engineering firm Coastal Science and Engineering in 2011 to develop a plan that would place a 250-foot long and 20-foot wide concrete culvert in Singleton Swash to redirect the water, that’s currently encroaching on the Dunes Club swimming pool, according to Horry County Stormwater Manager Tom Garigen.

The consultants also worked to help get the necessary permits from the Corps of Engineers and the Department of Health and Environmental Control, said Garigen.

The purpose of the proposed culvert is to permanently redirect the swash. The county has spent more than $856,000 since 2000 to redirect the swash every time its flow changes path, according a presentation given to a county council committee this week.

Although there’s money budgetted for the project, county councilmen weren’t thrilled with the plan, which would cost up to $1.5 million for the concrete culvert and another $500,000 for a monitoring plan over a five-year period.

Because of the cost, county staff did not recommend the project, and the county Infrastructure and Regulation Committee Chair Harold Philips said the committee would accept staff’s recommendation and no vote was taken.

But councilman Johnny Vaught, who’s against the proposal, said that there was nothing preventing another councilor from bringing up the proposal at a later date.

“Singleton Swash is down there right in front of the Dunes Club and it changes its path as waterways do,” he said. “It wanders around basically, and right now it’s down in front of the Dunes Club’s swimming pool complex.

“Even without the cost, that’s something that’s messing with mother nature,” he said of the proposal. “And I don’t think you can really stop it.”

Garigen said that it’s been theorized that the north side of the swash was built up too high during a 1999 beach nourishment project, which could have caused the problem.

“However, ocean dynamics are such that there is a natural long-shore current flow along the Grand Strand beaches from north to south,” he said in an email. “That current transports sand in a southerly direction, which is what pushes the swash opening to the south.”

Because of the price tag, “it does not seem to make economic sense to pursue this solution,” he said.

Environmentalists don’t like the plan either.

“Nothing like this has ever been done in South Carolina,” said Dana Beach, Executive Director of the Coastal Conservation League, citing regulatory barriers to the project. “From a geologic perspective, you would end up with half of a concrete pipe that was eroded away on both sides because that’s what these structures do. You’d have the thing perched there on top of the sand.”

Swashes are important from an ecological and environmental perspective, Beach said.

“Tidal creeks curve around and when they hit the beaches, it’s very nice feature to have, there are wading birds that use it,” he said. “I’m just stunned that an idea even made it as far as being included in a council meeting. It’d be harmful for fish habitat.”

This story was originally published December 8, 2017 at 12:31 PM with the headline "County looks at $1 million plan to help Dunes Club beach."