Senate bails out wealthy seaside landowners. But it could cost taxpayers $2 million

The state Senate has taken steps to help affluent oceanfront landowners avoid penalties for building seawalls on South Carolina beaches, voting for a measure this week that could ultimately cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Senators approved an amendment to the state budget requiring the public to compensate landowners accused of building seawalls in restricted areas but who are later cleared because the boundaries of the restricted areas changed.

The amendment says the state must reassess enforcement cases made against property owners for building seawalls since May 2018 to see if the property owners would still be in violation when the restricted areas are reassessed in coming years.

If new, less restrictive boundaries no longer show the property owners violate coastal laws, the state’s environmental protection agency must compensate landowners “for all costs incurred to defend’’ themselves in the enforcement cases, the budget proviso says.

Seawalls, which are effective at protecting property, make beach erosion worse when waves pound them and scour out the beach faster. That leaves less beach for the public to walk on. Seawalls also sometimes block access to beaches for the public.

All told, as many as 100 cases have been made in the past six years involving construction of illegal seawalls or other violations of coastal management law along South Carolina beaches, state Sen. Sandy Senn said this week. Those include cases at the Isle of Palms, Garden City and Debordieu.

According to one estimate, it can cost a minimum of $20,000 to pay lawyers to fight a single state enforcement action.

That means taxpayers would be liable for $2 million in payments if all 100 property owners won cases made by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

In addition to legal costs, landowners who violate the coastal management law can be fined thousands of dollars and told to remove illegal seawalls or other structures.

“This could cost the state a lot of money, a whole lot of money when you’re talking about 100 cases,’’ Senn, R-Charleston, said during the Senate budget debate Wednesday. “You’re talking about attorneys fees potentially on both sides.’’

“This is going to be an extremely expensive measure for the state of South Carolina,” said Senn, who opposed the amendment.

At the center of the issue is the state’s effort to protect beaches from development that worsens erosion. All along the coast, DHEC has identified areas that should be free of construction, including seawalls. The department reassesses those areas every seven to 10 years to account for the changing effects of sea level rise and beach erosion.

The budget containing the beach amendment now goes to the House of Representatives for approval. Gov. Henry McMaster would have to sign off on the spending bill.

The full impact of the budget amendment is not yet known. It will be at least 18 months before new building restriction lines, known as baselines and setbacks, are put in place. It’s possible that because the budget amendment is good for only one year, the impact could be limited, said Emily Cedzo, who tracks oceanfront issues for the Coastal Conservation League, an environmental group in Charleston.

But critics of the Senate’s action said the requirement that the state compensate landowners could chill efforts to protect public beaches from seawalls — and encourage construction of more seawalls. New seawalls have been banned on the beach’s protected areas in South Carolina for more than 30 years.

“My concern is that all this debate (in the Legislature) will signal to property owners that the state of South Carolina is OK with building new seawalls on the beaches,’’ Cedzo said. “I’m not suggesting that is the intention, but I do think this is a real concern we should be thinking about.’’

Leslie Lenhardt, an attorney with the non-profit S.C. Environmental Law project, said the compensation requirement in the provisos is worrisome. It can cost a minimum of $20,000 in legal fees to challenge DHEC, she said.

“An agency paying attorneys fees creates a burden on their already tight budgets,’’ she said. “So what is going to happen is they are going to cave and capitulate.’’

Despite criticism, the Senate defeated an effort by Senn to stop the budget amendment. Amendments were advanced by Sen. Stephen Goldfinch, a Georgetown County Republican who has been a leading critic of state enforcement efforts against beachfront property owners whose homes are threatened by the sea.

Goldfinch suggested that DHEC regulators are bringing more oceanfront property under state jurisdiction that had not been regulated before. The problems date to a change in coastal management rules from 2018 that he said “created an enforcement nightmare.’’

Goldfinch, who lives south of Myrtle Beach, said his plan is to “press the pause button’’ until the state updates oceanfront building restriction lines.

Goldfinch said the point is to give the state a year to determine whether the enforcement cases would still apply when new building restriction lines are set. Updated lines could be less restrictive than the existing lines.

And while the budget proviso only lasts for a year, Goldfinch said DHEC has “got an idea’’ of where the lines will be and can start working on the enforcement cases sooner.

He said the government is “coming along and saying, ‘This is our jurisdiction now, even though you may have a house there, even though you may have a landing there, even though you may have a gazebo, even though you may have an overwalk,’’ he said. “That’s now the jurisdiction’’ of the state.

If property owners win their cases against the state, they “deserve some relief because the government has literally deprived them of their property rights,’’ he said, noting that “most of the time, bureaucrats are wrong’’ in establishing restrictions.

In a recent interview with The State and the Island Packet, Goldfinch said he suspects many enforcement actions taken by DHEC against property owners would not be violations when new building restriction lines are set.

“It’s a bit like legalizing marijuana and then saying all simple possession of marijuana prior to the legalization of marijuana shall be expunged,’’ he told the newspapers.

The debate over state building limits along the beach and enforcement cases for violating the law is part of a growing dispute in South Carolina over how tightly the state should limit coastal development at a time of rising sea level.

Some politicians, and DHEC board members, have expressed sympathy for the oceanfront landowners who they say are just trying to protect their investments as the ocean creeps higher and storms become more severe. They note that high-end homes contribute millions of dollars to local tax bases.

One issue on the Isle of Palms has recently drawn plenty of attention since a property owner built a huge seawall on the beach. The property owner said the wall was built legally, but state officials disagree and have taken enforcement action.

Environmentalists and other critics say property owners knew the risk when they built or moved into oceanfront homes, and the state should not subsidize them by easing regulations or requiring compensation as sea levels rise..

The Legislature, in addition to the Senate’s action this week, is considering a package of regulations that could, in some instances, favor property owners who are trying to protect their homes from the rising ocean. Next year, the Legislature is expected to discuss changing South Carolina law to give more leniency to property owners along the beachfront.

Rob Young, a coastal geologist at Western Carolina University, said the issues now emerging on the South Carolina coast provide a glimpse of what appear to be efforts to weaken the state’s beachfront management law through legislation or by suing the state.

“I think the beachfront management act is about to be sliced to pieces,’’ Young said. “I don’t think people realize what you get if this happens.’’

Staff writers Sarah Haselhorst and Lauren Leibman contributed to this story.