Even w/o SLR, Charleston SC Neighborhoods Flooding Just Fine From Overdevelopment Alone
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Activists have signaled alarm before over the pace of development on the island, including Dustan, who has described the island’s native vegetation as “sponge forests” adapted to soak up water. He said clear-cutting forests is “an irreversible process, and it leaves everybody more vulnerable.”
But in some cases, the drainage pipes and storage ponds developers have put in to compensate for drainage simply didn’t account for all the water that was to come. The Barberry Woods neighborhood, built in 2001, was designed to assume only 2.4 acres would drain water to the tract; in reality, more than 280 acres drain there. Issues there were compounded as new neighborhoods were built nearby over the next couple years. It came to a head in 2008, when a heavy rainstorm swamped streets for days, Fountain said. Charleston is now embarking on a study of how to retain water around the site.
Echoes of these problems are starting to bubble up elsewhere. Johns Island resident Tom Haylash of Maple Grove Drive, near Maybank Highway and Main Road, has watched water rise into his yard multiple times in the decade he’s owned his home. It’s gotten worse, he said, since a new housing development was built across the narrow strip of wetland across his backyard. The homes, which sold in 2017, are noticeably higher than his lot.
Haylash said he’s reached out to the state and the city of Charleston and was told by a city engineer a drainage fix for his lot could cost tens of thousands. He used a pump in the past to move water to the street in front of his house, where it will drain to a retention pond, but a flood in December swamped his back yard anyway, wiping out $700 of sod he’d laid himself after the flood before. He fears the flooding will only get worse and said he couldn’t sell his house and move on without telling the new owner about the vulnerabilities. “What am I going to do?” Haylash said. “Buy a raft?”
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https://www.postandcourier.com/news/johns-island-residents-worry-about-future-flooding-as-development-continues/article_3fa1b978-5402-11ea-b986-3f3f73ed53d7.html
