COLUMBIA — The commercial venture in Jasper County that prompted a lawsuit from environmentalists may double in size.
The Charleston District of the Army Corps of Engineers is now considering a new application by Florida businessman Murphy McLean’s South Coast Mitigation Venture LLC. The plan is turn about 350 acres of managed freshwater wetlands into tidal salt marsh.
The site, about 840 acres in all, is adjacent to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge.
South Coast wants to sell “Murray Hill” mitigation credits to developers to offset environmental destruction during unrelated projects. The plan would involve excavating an earthen embankment and removing water-control structures.
South Coast has repeatedly argued it’s salt marsh mitigation bank plans are good for the environment and merely serve to restore the area to an earlier form.
But like a related project that South Coast initiated close to the same spot nearly four years ago, natural resources officials argue it will destroy increasingly rare and finite freshwater wetlands.
The Savannah National Wildlife Refuge “strongly objects” to the new proposal and called South Coast’s prospectus misleading, according to a letter to the Charleston Corps from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Savannah Coastal Refuges Complex.
“We particularly object to referencing the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge as a beneficiary of the proposed mitigation bank,” project leader Jane Griess wrote.
“We fully believe the loss of managed freshwater wetlands will be detrimental to the resources of the Lower Savannah River estuary.”
Officials said the estuary has lost more than 8,000 of an estimated 12,000 acres of tidal freshwater wetlands over the years, due to the dredging of the Savannah River. That means remaining freshwater areas are particularly valuable for the habitat they provide for a diversity of wildlife, especially wintering migratory birds.
“The Refuge has stated repeatedly that freshwater wetlands, both tidal and managed, are the most important feature of the Lower Savannah River estuary, and any losses must be avoided,” said Griess.
The S.C. Coastal Conservation League, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, is also opposing the Murray Hill mitigation bank, just as it did for South Coast’s Clydesdale Club.
The latter commercial proposal is slated for land located west of U.S. 17 before the Talmadge Bridge and also adjacent to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge.
This month the South Coast’s Clydesdale proposal, which received a key approval from the Charleston District of the Corps in April of last year, dispensed with a lawsuit leveled by SELC.
A federal judge called the questions raised by the environmental advocates “moot,” since salt water had already invaded the impoundment, and dismissed the suit.