Horry County, environmentalist meeting ends ‘very badly’ on International Drive

Talks between conservationists and Horry County officials have stalled on International Drive, which may lead to even more delays in the planned road project.

The two groups sat down Monday with the hopes of meeting a compromise on how to handle the bear population around International Drive, a proposed road between Carolina Forest and S.C. 90 that cuts through the Lewis Ocean Bay Preserve.

The meeting ended, however, “very badly,” as a conservation attorney put it, and with Horry County Council Chairman Mark Lazarus asking the conservationists to leave.

Lazarus said their requests included tall barrier fences, tunnels, an electronic detection system alerting motorists to approaching bears, and to re-write the already approved mitigation plan to include $1.6 million for nature conservancy used to purchase more wildlife land to protect.

“It would take years to get those pieces of property approved for mitigation to make it a mitigation bank” Lazarus said. “It’s not something that just happens overnight.

“We already have 12,000 acres of Lewis Ocean Bays, you just want us to buy more property to preserve for you is all you want, and it’s basically extortion. And I said, ‘Is that the stance that you have?’ and they said, ‘Yes, we see that as a way to make this happen.’ And I politely asked them to leave. I told them that I didn’t think they came in acting in good faith, and they’re demanding more than they asked for the last time or that we had agreed to the last time or that what we would work toward. I didn’t feel they were acting in good faith.”

Amy Armstrong, executive director and chief counsel of the law project, said the meeting “ended very badly” with Lazarus “standing up and yelling at us” and she said the county was “unwilling to really negotiate.”

Late Tuesday, she called the extortion claim “offensive” and “wrong” and said her client’s request was to change the current mitigation from Georgetown County to Lewis Ocean Bay, which is what International Drive would impact.

“They’re using a lot of rhetoric because facts aren’t in their favor, and facts and reality aren’t things they can rely on, so they got to use inflammatory rhetoric to try and sway public opinion when it’s been apparent that the county really has no desire to try and figure out a way to resolve our differences,” Armstrong said.

For nine years, the state, Horry County officials and the majority of voters in a 2006 sales tax referendum have been waiting for the construction of International Drive.

Authorities have said a major fire in 2009 thinned the bear population, and by 2013, county and S.C. Department of Natural Resources officials agreed that crossings would not be needed. In that agreement, the county said it would expand the road from two lanes to four lanes and reduce traffic speed from 60 mph to 35 mph.

As the county was securing the final permits for the project earlier this summer, the Environmental Law Project filed a request with DHEC to conduct a final review conference, which basically asks its board to review the work of its staff. In this case, the law project wanted the board to make sure the tunnels should not be a requirement.

DHEC ruled in late July that its board will not review its staff’s recommendations, and now the law project has until Aug. 29 to request a contested case hearing before the Administrative Law Court.

Armstrong said she and her client would be willing to sit down with county officials again if they would consider putting a bear tunnel in the plans, which is one of three the county and state originally planned to have in 2010.

“My clients haven’t said, ‘Yes, absolutely file this document,’” Armstrong said of the appeal to the law judge. “I don’t imagine that information would be released until it comes to the point where we decide we’re going to do it, draft the appeal and are ready to file it. I just can’t say that right now.”

The issue could also go as far as the state Supreme Court, which could delay the project for years.

“Looking at the fact that the county has given absolutely nothing when we tried to reach compromise, even though this is a road that’s going to close all three sides of Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve… I think the consensus among people in the state about the value of this resource is that it’s too important to just walk away from and protect.”

Lazarus said there has been a pattern of conservationists’ requests for mitigation.

“I was appalled at them requesting us to do wildlife mitigation, to purchase other properties and to pay to the conservancy,” Lazarus said. “I said this is the same crap that you all pulled when you did it in Charleston at Boeing, and the same thing you did with the Ports Authority and I’m not going to be part of that. So this meeting is over. End of discussion.”

Lazarus was referring to the dredging of Charleston Harbor earlier this year and the Boeing expansion in 2014.

The S.C. Ports Authority is working to offset harm to water quality, sea life and nearby fresh-water habitats that will be inundated with salt water as the authority deepens the Charleston Harbor to 52 from 45 feet. Working with the Lowcountry Open Land Trust, the Coastal Conservation League and the Southern Environmental Law Center, the authority plans to spend $5 million to buy 831 wetland acres to add to the Francis Marion National Forest.

For Boeing, South Carolina bought 468 acres, 153 acres of which is wetlands, for a future expansion for North Charleston’s Boeing plant. The company will lease the land from the state. In exchange, the company is preserving – for an undisclosed cost – 4,000 acres, more than 2,000 of that wetlands, near the Francis Marion National Forest. Part of the property is along the Cooper River in an area known as the Plantation Corridor.

Boeing is working with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Lowcountry Open Land Trust, The Nature Conservancy and the Open Space Institute. The environmental groups will own the land for five years, then transfer it to the U.S. Forest Service to be managed as part of Francis Marion.

“Here’s the reality of it,” Lazarus said he told Armstrong. “I’ve got citizens demanding that this road be built. They approved this road. We’ve been to every regulatory agency that needed to be gone through to sign off on this... Unfortunately legislation allows you to do this. We really shouldn’t be sitting at this table. The appeals process was long ago...”

“The last thing I told her was, ‘We’re not getting anywhere and y’all aren’t acting in good faith so the best thing I could tell you is when you leave here, go ahead and go downstairs, file your appeal with the [Administrative Law Judge] and let’s get this thing moving forward. Let’s see where we go with it. Why waste anymore time?”

Felicia Soto, a homeowner along S.C. 90 who has helped spread a petition to get the road constructed,

said the latest delay is frustrating. About 1,000 people have signed the petition online and in print.

“The bottom line is here we are, the residents, still sitting here waiting for this much deserved and needed road, and here we sit with a delay and God knows what’s going to happen,” she said.

This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Horry County, environmentalist meeting ends ‘very badly’ on International Drive."