, Charleston floods during high tide at least once a week, compared to once a month in the 1990s. Exacerbating the difficulties are the speed and placement of new homes and businesses. Those data points make the Gullah Geechee people who live here among the most climate-threatened in the world.
It may be too late, however. Since the mid-1990s new construction has taken place within a half-mile of the marsh. That contributes to the Mosquito Beach was farmland with no roads when Wilder’s uncle, Andrew “Apple” Wilder, built the large, wooden open-air pavilion and boardwalk in 1953. The area soon boasted a 14-room hotel along with several eateries, dance clubs, and bars.
A zoning change implemented after 1989’s Hurricane Hugo to protect properties made it more difficult for the original community to stay put in the face of the advancing waters. “In most of the Black areas you have to elevate the foundation of your home at least 15 feet,” he says, in order to avoid increasingly higher tides. That “puts a real bad handicap on our community because that would cost 20 to 30 thousand dollars.
“Planned retreat is a loaded term because vulnerable communities of color don’t have the same agency in planning as others in more wealthy neighborhoods,” says Mills. The scenario on James Island is happening through most of the Gullah Geechee corridor. Other islands like Amelia, St. Simons, Kiawah, Tybee, and Sullivan’s have become upscale vacation destinations. Hilton Head represents the most radical transformation. After the bridge to the mainland was built in 1956, the island went from a remote enclave with a majority Black population to the “Hamptons of the South,” complete with gated communities, shopping centers, and golf courses.
Many of the area’s environmental groups and advocates have undertaken a variety of different living shoreline projects like reducing marsh loss and rebuilding oyster populations. Marshes are essential for biodiversity; they serve as sea life nurseries for 75 percent of commercial and recreational fish species. Participants in the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative recently began writing the conservation plan and anticipate putting out a draft later this year.
Thirty years ago, it was predicted that the Maldives would be underwater in as little as twenty years. Their government staged a stunt to warn of it. The kickbacks they got from the UN went towards building a new airport and leisure complex. Their insurers were perfectly happy!
they are just living in the wrong place, just go somewhere else,