Local boaters could lose access to public boat landing on Hunting Island
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The Lowcountry has always had a special relationship with the water.
Local waterways and the ocean provide income for many who live here. And it is a food source and a large draw for the vital tourism that drives this area.
Access to the waterways and the ocean are vital to the way of life here, and following the posting of a sign announcing the closing one of those access points, many locals and their elected representatives are speaking out to try and protect it.
On Friday, March 15, 2024, a large sign was posted outside of Russ Point Landing, a popular Hunting Island access point at the base of the bridge to Fripp Island. The sign stated that the boat landing would be closing April 1, 2024.
This has caused many to take to social media to express their anger about the closing and the perceived impact that this is going to have on the local way of life.
Why close the landing?
The decision to close the landing came from South Carolina State Parks, and according to Sam Queen, a spokesperson for S.C. State Parks, it was not an easy decision for the organization to make.
“We’ve just reached the point where economically it’s not feasible for us to continue to provide the maintenance required to keep it open,” said Queen. “The road is deteriorating because of erosion and has continued to deteriorate at a more and more rapid rate as it’s getting beaten by the tides.”
She said that they made the decision out of concern for the safety of the public because currently it is not a safe place for visitors to access.
The landing will be gated off, according to Queen, and Hunting Island State Park staff will still have access to use the landing for any sort of park purpose as needed.
Queen said that because Hunting Island is a barrier island, it takes a rougher beating from nature than other islands.
The number of parking spaces have continued to shrink over time due to erosion, and the state’s most recent estimate to fix the more dangerous, washed-out parts of the road would be around $75,000, said Queen.
She reiterated though, that it would be a temporary fix, not a permanent one. Since the repair estimate was made, there has been additional damage as well, so that number will likely now be higher.
Additionally, it would also cost money to keep up with the day-to-day maintenance, such as clearing the road of debris following storms, small fixes to fight erosion and the cost of personnel to do the work.
Queen said that the decision to close the landing was made very recently, in the past few weeks, which is why the sign was just posted recently.
The local management at the park worked with the S.C. State Parks director and the agency director to finalize the decision to close.
While the decision to close was made internally, Queen said some local agencies and elected officials, such as S.C. Rep. Shannon Erickson, were aware of the state’s plan to close the landing before the sign was posted.
“This was not an easy decision at all for the park to make,” Queen said. “We knew that this would impact locals and local businesses who utilize that space. This is something we took really seriously.”
She added that the people who work at Hunting Island State Park are a really dedicated and “special team” and that they are taking the brunt of the backlash from the decision to close the landing.
“There is no physical way we can beat the water,” Queen said. “The erosion is just going to continue and any investment that we make is going to continue to be wiped away by the water.”
The sign alerting the public to the closing of the boat landing was installed at the landing on Friday, March 15, which set off a social media storm of community members who say they feel like they were blindsided and let down.
Why does it matter?
Russ Point Landing is the closest public boat landing to the ocean, according to Craig Reaves, owner of Sea Eagle Market. That makes it very valuable.
“Access to the water is very important in Beaufort County,” Reaves said. “I think a lot of our boat landings need work and attention, but to find out that they were just going to shut down Russ Point caught a lot of us off guard.”
Reaves said a lot of recreational boaters, as well as commercial boaters, utilize that boat landing and can easily access the Atlantic Ocean out of Fripp Inlet versus having to travel along waterways from a more inshore landing.
The next usable landing, Machette Flats boat landing on Butches Road on St. Helena Island, is also in desperate need of repair, according to Reaves, and it puts boaters further inland to have to boat and navigate through “treacherous stuff.”
Additionally, Russ Point provides the fastest water access to the ocean for search and rescue efforts by local agencies.
While this was a concern for Reaves and many of those who posted about the landing’s closure on social media, Queen said that they plan to have the ramp accessible to local officials with permission as needed as long as the ramp is able to be used.
Reaves said that while he understands that the ramp is owned by the state, he feels like the discussion surrounding the closing should have been made public instead of being held behind closed doors.
Erickson said in an email to The Island News that she toured Russ Point Landing with Hunting Island State Park Manager Zabo McCants, and he pointed out the main problem areas that lead to the decision to close the landing.
Erickson said that McCants showed her the critical line flag markers placed by S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control’s (SCDHEC) office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management (OCRM) and told her that they had only been given the option for an approved underlayment fabric and rip-rap to slow the erosion – which is not enough to stop the substrate from washing away the hard surface road, which if not mitigated, would lead to the bisection of the peninsula and cut off access to the boat landing from the road.
She said that she is doing everything she can to work with the different agencies at play to save the public water access at Russ Point.
“I am dedicated to helping S.C. Parks, Recreation and Tourism and our community maintain this public water access. We are at the beginning of discerning what that entails and no one can predict a timeline at this juncture,” Erickson said. “I believe our Beaufort County Legislative Delegation is on board to find ways to maintain this important resource.”
What about Beaufort County?
Russ Point Landing is owned and managed by Hunting Island State Park and thus S.C. State Parks, but this was not always the case.
Beaufort County maintains 25 boat landings and 17 public-access points, and until 2022, Russ Point Landing was managed by the county until former Beaufort County Administrator Eric Greenway sent a letter to the S.C. State Parks in June 2022 telling them that they would not be responsible for maintenance of the landing.
Beaufort County managed the landing for a very long time, but following a study done in 2021 on all the landings in the area, it was determined through ownership and title research that the landing was actually owned by the State of South Carolina.
The letter sent by Greenway to the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism states that since the land is not owned by Beaufort County and there is no agreement between the State and Beaufort County for them to continue to provide maintenance for the landing, it was requested that the State agree to take over maintenance effective July 1, 2022.
“It is the County’s desire to have Russ Point remain open and accessible to the citizens and visitors of the community to continue to be able to use the boat landing,” the letter reads, “but understand it is ultimately the State’s discretion as to how the property is used in the future.”
Erickson said that she suspects that “fluctuations in management at Hunting Island and the considerable previously existing park maintenance needs since receipt of that letter have added to some delay in strategizing and planning for repairs in the area.”
“The determination of the landing closure is a symptom of the great need, scope for repair and public concerns,” said Erickson.
Beaufort County Councilman York Glover, whose district includes the landing, said as far as he knows, he was not aware of the closing of the landing nor was he aware it being turned back over to the State, but he did know that Greenway had wanted to deal with property within the county that was not owned by the county.
Russ Point came up on that list of property, along with Port Royal Landing and Wallace Creek Landing, among others.
“The assumption was that the county was working on trying to get some agreements with landowners about leasing the [property] so that the boat landings would still be available to the public,” Glover said. “There was never a discussion about closing any of the boat landings, even though we didn’t own the landings and there was obvious maintenance that needed to be done.”
Glover said that when the initial boat landing survey was done, they did discuss how the public overwhelmingly wanted to keep the boat landings open and wanted additional boat landings to be opened to increase the accessibility to the waterways.
“It’s an excellent opportunity for tourism to keep these boat landings going because the public used them,” Glover said.
Glover said that he has had many constituents reach out to him about the closure and he has scheduled a public meeting for him to meet with and listen to the concerns that members of the public have.
Interim County Administrator John Robinson will also be in attendance to share an update on the Russ Point Boat Landing.
The meeting will be held on April 4, 2024, at the St. Helena Branch of the Beaufort County Public Library from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Glover joins Erickson and S.C. State Sen Tom Davis, who has also expressed a desire to help the landing remain open on his social media, in saying that he will do all he can to resolve this issue and hopefully keep the landing available and open to the public.
He said that while he is not an engineer, he cannot imagine a landing that will not have to deal with erosion happening that close to the ocean, but that does not mean that it is not necessary to have one.
Despite the actions taken by local elected officials and the outrage from the community on social media, for now, the sign remains and there is no change in the S.C. State Park’s plan to close the landing on April 1.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
