UPDATE: Environmentalists file for hearing on International Drive; construction further delayed
The South Carolina Environmental Law Project filed a request for contested case hearing before the state Administrative Law Court regarding International Drive, prompting another delay in the paving of the road.
A date for the hearing had not been set Monday. Nancy Cave, north coast director for the Coastal Conservation League, said through her group’s experience, the process to review the appeal could take a while, delaying the project that should have been completed by 2013.
“I don’t think we’re going to have a date for a while,” Cave said. “We sent it by mail, and whenever they get that in Columbia, it goes through a process, and it’s assigned to a judge. I don’t think there’s going to be a hearing date in the next day or so. It probably will take a while.”
It was unclear if the S.C. Administrative Law Court received the appeal. Jana Shealy, clerk of the law court, could not be reached for comment Monday.
The law project filed the request Friday on behalf of the Coastal Conservation League and the Wildlife Federation challenging the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s authorization to fill or eliminate more than 24 acres of wetlands in the planned project. Though the focus of the law project’s most recent complaints have been about their request for bear tunnels, Cave said the wetlands issue has always been part of the discussion.
“Those permits are applied for because wetlands are going to be impacted,” Cave said. “As part of that process, under the National Environmental Protection Act… the applicant is required to look at direct, indirect and cumulative impacts. Certainly we would argue that direct and indirect impacts are going to be a result of the paving of the road. Among those impacts are the habitat fragmentation and the lack of the ability for animals, bears and others, to move across their habitat.”
Residents in the Carolina Forest and S.C. 90 areas of Horry County have been wanting a 5.6-mile stretch of International Drive paved since well before the project was funded by a 1-cent sales tax approved by voters in 2006. The problem the project has run into is the road is near the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve — a home to black bears.
Conservationists from the Coastal Conservation League and the Wildlife Federation have teamed up to try to get Horry County officials to stick to its original plan of constructing bear tunnels and fencing along the proposed road, a measure the state’s Department of Natural Resources said is no longer needed.
County and state officials have contended the bear population has thinned since the original studies, eliminating the need for crossings.
Mark Lazarus, chairman of the Horry County Council, said he was “sorry” to hear about the request for a contested case hearing.
“We have tried in good faith to compromise with this special interest group,” Lazarus said. “Their demands are more than any official regulatory agency has set forth and will cost unnecessary delays to re-engineer our entire project from what has been approved by every governmental agency.”
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, which is aimed at improving the flow of traffic between the Carolina Forest community and S.C. 90.
Authorities have said a major fire in 2009 thinned the black bear population through Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve, and by 2013, county and SC 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 45 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 earlier this month that the board will not review its staff’s recommendations, and so the law project filed a contested case hearing before the Administrative Law Court.
Earlier in August, Horry County officials met with environmentalists twice, and it resulted in Lazarus asking the group to leave the meeting for what he called a lack of willingness to compromise. Last week, Lazarus rekindled discussions with the group via letter.
The two groups continue to talk via letter.
The project includes filling and eliminating more than 24 acres of wetlands, including numerous Carolina Bays on the state preserve, according to a news release issued by the law project.
Steve Gilbert, senior biologist with the Wildlife Federation and former U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Biologist, said paving International Drive would result in the entire preserve being isolated and surrounded by roads, which he called in the release “an astonishing failure to adhere to basic scientific principles regarding habitat fragmentation and isolation.”
Cave said with the elimination of wetlands comes a mitigation plan the county had to come up with, which does not satisfy the desires of environmentalists.
“Those impacts to wetlands are our key to the opportunity to review the direct, indirect and cumulative impact of a road such as International Drive,” Cave said. “We don’t think that the mitigation that has been put forward is appropriate mitigation because it’s not in the Waccamaw Watershed, it’s in Georgetown on the Pee Dee. Also, the restoration values are questionable.”
Lazarus disagrees.
“It is in the Waccamaw Watershed by way of Bull Creek,” Lazarus said. “The Corps of Engineers approved it and have used another portion of it on other Horry County projects in Loris and Aynor.”
This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 11:43 AM with the headline "UPDATE: Environmentalists file for hearing on International Drive; construction further delayed."