Council approves first reading on new tax district for dredging at Cherry Grove

The North Myrtle Beach City Council on Monday night unanimously approved a first reading of an ordinance defining the Cherry Grove Improvement District where property owners will be required to pick up a $16 million tab for two dredging projects to make canals navigable once again to the Atlantic Ocean.

The council met last week to consider the nearly 200 objections from property owners who say they should be excluded from the Cherry Grove Improvement District and not forced to pay a special assessment as high as $23,596 total over 10 years.

The new district excludes 25 properties, leaving the city to foot the bill for an estimated $600,000 of the dredging project’s price tag. But Pat Dowling, spokesman for North Myrtle Beach, says that isn’t all the city has or will pay for to get the project going.

“The city has already paid for several years of legal actions in trying to determine who actually owns the canals. And the city has also paid about $1 million prepping for the project, for its consultants and staff,” Dowling said after the meeting in which Cherry Grove residents complained of being the only ones to pay for the project.

Dowling estimates the city spent a few million dollars in a nearly three-year lawsuit to determine who actually owns the canals. The South Carolina Supreme Court ultimately ruled the center of the canals belonged to the state, but Dowling said the city has had no luck in getting the state to pay for the project.

In its original plans, the city agreed to contribute up to $800,000 for each of two anticipated dredgings. With the excluded properties, the possible price tag for taxpayers and each project climbs to $1.4 million.

The final reading of the ordinance is scheduled for Dec. 14, after which residents included in the assessment district will receive a notice from the city giving them 20 days to fight the tax in court. After the final reading, the city will send a letter to each of the property owners who submitted objections to inform them of the council’s decision, Dowling said.

The dredging project is slated to begin in October and conclude by March 2017, but city leaders say a second dredging might be required at a later date.

Residents, upset with the dredging project, learned Monday night that the city is not sure whether or not more dredgings will be needed in the future.

The price tag would be a little less for condo and townhouse owners. An estimated 700 property owners are targeted for inclusion in the assessment district.

“That’s the max,” Dowling said of the cost to property owners. “If bids come in lower, that’s great for everybody. If it comes in higher, it’s the city’s challenge to find additional money.”

The man-made canals were constructed more than a half century ago and the silt build-up has never been dredged. City planners have studied dredging possibilities for more than a decade.

The pipeline dredging will cut down more than three feet in depth and across 24 feet wide making the waterway navigable at mean low tide. The project will affect channels in and around Cherry Grove’s Ocean Boulevard strip and the center of finger channels along House Creek from 42nd Avenue North to about 62nd Avenue North.

Some property owners have objected to the cost of the work, while others want the channel cut wider.

Challenges have come from owners who say the dredging will not benefit them, because their undeveloped lots no longer meet certain criteria for construction of new houses.

Then there are homeowners who have benefited from the silt buildup, because they can walk to the ocean from their house during low tide and have marketed their property as oceanfront. When the silt is depleted, so will the property values, those owners contend.

“This process has been long. It has been in many cases tedious but in every case I am very happy with the way we have really tried to do the best possible job with the laws and the things we’ve had to work with,” said Councilman Bob Cavanaugh in his support of the ordinance. “I think Cherry Grove marsh is too critical an area to completely let go and be taken over again by silt.”

In his research, Dowling said he found the desire to have the canals dredged dates back to at least 1971 when property owners along the canal asked the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge. But the corps declined to pay for it and the matter was dropped.

This story was originally published December 7, 2015 at 12:45 PM with the headline "Council approves first reading on new tax district for dredging at Cherry Grove."