Sunday’s editorial weighs in on the
proposal to allow local municipalities to raise the accommodations tax to pay
for beach renourishment projects:
Beach renourishment will always be a
concern for our area, as it will for every developed coastal community.
Especially if the recommendations of the recently completed report of the
state’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Shoreline Management are adopted,
abandoning the state’s 20-year policy of beach retreat, continued renourishment
will be a given.
But do we need a higher tax to pay
for it? No. Not now. Hopefully not later.
Thursday’s first editorial praises the recent vote for
Hurricane Sandy relief and urges our delegation to support next week’s recovery
funds as well:
Kudos to Rep. Tom Rice for breaking with the rest of the
state’s GOP delegation last week and supporting federal funds for Superstorm
Sandy relief.
The
nearly $10 billion bill approved Friday goes to the national flood insurance
program to help pay claims associated with the massive storm that devastated New York, New
Jersey and other parts of the Northeast. It’s a good
start.
We’re getting tired of waiting for
updated coastal policies. Especially as development picks up again after the
recession, it’s time to get moving, as Thursday’s editorial explains:
Few things in government move
particularly quickly. We’ve accepted the reailty that delays in public
initiatives are inevitable and progress is painfully slow. But South Carolina’s
plodding efforts to prepare new guidelines for managing the state’s shoreline
are trying our patience.
Five years after the state’s
Department of Health and Environmental Control began its Shoreline Change
Initiative to update coastal policy, the policies are still being developed,
discussed and haggled over. Meanwhile, the coast continues to require
expensive, regular renourishment, development rules are still fairly lax and
misunderstood, and instead of the state’s hoped for retreat from the coast, builders
have continued to erect or redevelop property seaward of the line drawn in the
sand 25 years ago.
As hurricane season opens, Friday’s editorial urges us all not to give in to thoughts that we’re safe.
The hurricane experts at NOAA, who spend all year studying the dangerous storms, are forecasting “near-normal” activity this year in the Atlantic, with nine to 15 named storms, four to eight of which will be hurricanes. Kind of nice to know. Useful perhaps for somebody starting an office pool to guess how many storms there will be. But that’s about the extent of that prediction’s utility.
After all, the forecasters are the first to admit that their models are only probabilities. Reality could be wildly different. And they don’t even bother trying to guess how many of those storms might make landfall or where. Nobody knows until one forms and we can see where it’s headed. So if you’re one of the 37.3 million Americans living on the Atlantic coast and you’re trying to plan your summer around the storms, there’s not much to go on. What we can know for sure is something that has never changed: Whether the season produces 25 storms or five, it only takes one to ruin our summer.
As a region built on beach tourism, we should be doing all that we must to protect that asset. That’s the bottom line when it comes to the ongoing discussions about coastal development rules. But there are plenty of questions to answer first.
Tuesday’s editorial reminds us not to get complacent about storms just because Irene was pretty tame:
Grand Stranders dodged Irene’s bullet this past weekend, escaping the storm’s wrath with only minor damage and no deaths. After watching the storm approach for days, some residents and visitors may be wondering what the big deal was. It was just a little rain and a bit of wind, after all. Now let’s get back out on the course; the World Am tournament’s under way.
Twelve years ago, a similar story was playing out. The World Am was about to start up as Hurricane Dennis churned offshore. The mayor warned people to stay off the streets before it arrived, shelters were opened, and police were warning beachgoers to stay out of the water. A few days later, it all seemed for naught, as The Sun News explained on Aug. 31, 1999:
The day’s second editorial urges readers to not take any chances this hurricane season:
The apocalyptic devastation that laid low the Midwest last week should offer Grand Strand residents a grim reminder of Mother Nature’s capricious fury.
Friday’s editorial urges our state's senators to push through a quick fix on FEMA flood insurance rules before it turns into a larger and more costly hassle.
The federal government might never have known about Myrtle Beach’s temporary pool enclosures had it not been for North Myrtle Beach.
Tom Leath, Myrtle Beach city manager, said hotels on the beach had been putting up the structures, designed to enclose pools in the colder months, since at least the 1970s. Later, when the city joined the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood insurance program, it assumed the structures fell under the same rules as those permitting break-away walls in the floodplain. “What is more break-away than something that actually is taken down in the summer?” Leath asked. It wasn’t until a property in North Myrtle Beach recently tried to follow suit that the structures became an issue.
A highway from the South Strand out
past Conway has long been the stepchild of HorryCounty
transportation planning. Residents of the southern part of the county have
watched for years as farsighted county leaders secured innovative financing to
build the massive Conway Bypass (S.C. 22), most of the Carolina Bays Parkway (S.C. 31) from
Little River to Socastee and a host of major improvements to more local routes.
Thursday’s editorial describes the urgency of preparing for
this year’s hurricane season.
“Be Prepared” has been the official
motto of generations of Boy Scouts and those two words are much in the minds --
and on the tongues -- of emergency management officials along the Carolina
coast as they urge everyone to be ready for as many as 14 hurricanes before the
end of November.
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