‘Welcome to hell:’ Severe weather brings more flooding woes for Island Green community

Colleen Oliver trudged across her water-logged front yard on Aug. 19, just a year after moving into the home she bought inside the vast Island Green community.

“Welcome to hell,” the Maine transplant said as she mulled moving, relocation or possibly taking legal action. She and other neighbors desperately need fixes to design flaws they believe are responsible for powerful and dangerous flash flooding.

“They’re filling in the swamps and there’s no place for the water to go,” Oliver said. “We could smell sewage. The water was gray. So there is something very, very, very wrong here.”

Oliver’s backyard was soaked even as the rain stopped and sunshine began drying up the water that just a few hours earlier had crept to her front door.

With a single access road for the sprawling Burgess complex that hosts 1,800 homes and more in the works, Island Green is often pointed to by long-time county officials and residents about what can happen when overzealous planning collides with a local fragile ecosystem.

Located outside of Myrtle Beach, Island Green is largely a retirement community centered around a now-closed golf course. Within its area, there are more than 20 separate HOAs in operation, with Sunnehanna Road the only way in or out.

Current county development regulations require two exits for any neighborhood with more than 100 homes to control traffic flow and provide access for public safety.

But building within Island Green started before the rule was adopted, so Sunnehanna is a private road outside the county’s maintenance.

“There are people out there whose lives are in danger,” Island Green resident Cathi Hallock told a County Council subcommittee on Aug. 9. “I’m depending on you to help us out.”

In 2019,the developers of Island Green won approval to build more homes in the area without building another entrance into the neighborhood.

In exchange, county leaders asked the developers to fix and improve Sunnehanna Drive once the new homes were built. At the time, the developers argued that they would need the revenue from selling the new homes to afford the road upgrades.

Some current County Council members wonder if stronger action is needed to ensure those upgrades happen.

“Even if the planning commission did grant them something, we control the building permits, I would think there would be some method or some way so that we could stop until another entrance is made,” councilman Al Allen said last week.

At the same time as Oliver and other Island Green residents watched rain course down their streets, County Administrator Steve Gosnell put his name to a three-year, $3 million feasibility study with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that will examine flood mitigation tactics for the entire Waccamaw River watershed — a 1,600 square mile system that spans both Carolinas.

It’s the largest effort of its kind in nearly 50 years.

“If you ask folks around here, it’s not just one specific (flood) event, there have been multiple events. The frequency and the intensity has increased since 2015,” said Lt. Col. Andrew Johannes, commander of the corps’ Charleston-based 89th District.

Strong rains sat atop Horry County for much of Friday, and climbed to as much as six inches in three hours, according to a gauge in Ray Juszkiewicz’s backyard pool.

The Mauldin Road resident used a leaf blower to clear culverts and push water back from the road.

“We never really had a problem with the drainage until they started doing stuff back there,” Juszkiewicz said, nodding to the south.

That’s where a huge mound of earth is piled up, creating a makeshift berm that just adds to the worry of residents like Bernadette Sandlass. The dirt was carved out to make way for new homes, and loomed over a flooded-out portion of the road that Sandlass navigated in rubber galoshes.

She refused to drive through it, but fears what happens if the 80-year-old aunt she shares a condominium with needs help during a weather emergency.

“Is there an ambulance that’s going to get through there? No. A fire truck?” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2022 at 5:00 AM.