A new, nonprofit push to provide public ferry service to Daufuskie Island residents is gathering strength.
Conceptual materials lay out the pieces of a solution: Two high-speed ferry boats with the capacity for up to 50 passengers, terminal construction, and a turn lane at Hwy 278 at Pinckney Island.
A new group, the Community Preservation Zone Association of Daufuskie Island, would offer a nonprofit solution to the years-long quest for reliable ferry transit. They would do so with the blessing of Beaufort County.
If advocates win a federal transportation grant to pay for a ferry study, the next move could be to win a capital improvement grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The county contracts with a ferry operator to move provisions and passengers to and from Daufuskie.
But it’s not enough to help people commute to jobs, medical appointments, grocery stores and other life-sustaining activities on the mainland. The trip occurs at the mercy of the weather, and it can 45 minutes to make because of a no-wake zone.
There is a key dilemma for the bridgeless island between Tybee and Hilton Head: If you ride a ferry to the mainland, what do you do when you get there? You have no vehicle. Barging a car across the Calibogue Sound could cost $100 each time, by some estimates.
And besides, parking spaces on Daufuskie are so limited that islanders travel by golf cart.
There a lots of questions to answer about any future ferry system. Among them: Where vessels would embark on both sides, where people would park vehicles, how many boats would be needed, and how existing traffic would be affected.
Chuck Hunter, Daufuskie Island Council chairman, said there is a broad support for a solution to the public ferry problem.
“I know there will be a few people on the island who will say, ‘I like coming on my boat,’ but that’s fine,” he said. “Overall, most people embrace it very well.”
The way many people see it, a stronger ferry system would help the island attract future business and tourism, including eco-tourism, while protecting its vanishing Gullah history.
Already as many as 200,000 tourists visit annually.
Saving the past
Daufuskie has a special history.
In the beginning of the Civil War, Union soldiers landed there and freed the slaves before leaving the island.
Today there are only about a dozen Gullah families left on the eight-square-mile island. Officials numbers show only 150 residents live in the island’s historic district.
“This would provide an opportunity to the Gullah people who live here to share their heritage, and through sharing, to generate funds to preserve that heritage,” said Hunter.
Island property owner Don Newton described it more bluntly: “That lack of ferry drove away the Gullah Geechee folks,” he said.
“So if you’re not rich, you can’t live there. ... Yachts and boats, they do their own thing.”
Last week marked an encouraging event for supporters: Representatives of key groups with an interest in the ferry held a teleconference call, including Beaufort County administrator Gary Kubic, and leaders of the Beaufort County School District, Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, and the Daufuskie Community Preservation Zone Association to discuss the federal grant proposal.
On Friday county spokeswoman Joy Nelson said the county has started the application process for the U.S. Department of Transportation TIGER grant. The firm Moffatt & Nichol was hired to compose the grant application.
“The County Administrator has informed County Council of the effort to apply for the grant and received their consent to move forward,” said Nelson.
On Friday, Robin Townsend, executive director of The Binyah Foundation, emphasized the new strategy was a unified one.
In the past, that hasn’t always been the case. Attempts to solve the problems of an isolated island produced friction between groups, including some residents who questioned whether county officials cared or understood their challenges.
Townsend moved to the island 10 years ago and was struck by the difficulty of getting to the mainland.
“I realized it wasn’t just me that wasn’t being served,” she said. “It was all of my neighbors and other stakeholders.”
But Townsend said there’s a change afoot.
“We have a strong feeling now that’s in the past, and we have a positive sense now that we are moving forward.”
Message muted in Legislature
More than a year ago, Beaufort County lawmakers introduced resolution, H. 3773, as a way to urge federal officials to step in and orchestrate a comprehensive ferry system for Daufuskie.
“This wasn’t a funding request or (to say) ‘$50,000 isn’t enough,’” said the resolution’s lead sponsor Rep. Weston Newton, R-Bluffton, at the time.
“There is a problem with access to and from this island, and it is going to require a multi-level government approach.”
The resolution has been frozen in the S.C. Senate since March 20 of last year.
Don Newton, who is from Jasper County but now lives in Northern Virginia, sent H. 3773 to the Federal Highway Administration, and has been organizing the Daufuskie Community Preservation Zone Association with his wife Jean. The couple own property on Daufuskie, where Jean’s grandmother lived.
Past defeat
In 2012 voters rejected a proposal that would have raised their taxes in order to improve public ferry service. Haig Point, a wealthy residential neighborhood, already has private boat service, and would not have paid the increase.
There was also a sentiment that the tax burden would have favored commercial interests at the expense of poor Gullah residents and those who own property but live elsewhere, and had no right to vote on the tax hike.
The way Hunter saw it, people weren’t given a clear picture of what the tax hike would pay for, so they defeated it at the ballot box.
The new approach is different.
“In this case, we’d be handed a product — ‘this is what you’d get, and this is what the tax increase would be for,’” said Hunter.
“Maybe there would be some taxes and it may take a vote, but all that would be in the future.”
But he added: “You can’t be in paradise and not have to pay a little more once in a while.”