Project to move inlet faces November deadline – Coastal Observer

Project to move inlet faces November deadline – Coastal Observer

Property owners at Prince George hope to start work next month to relocate Pawleys Inlet and rebuild the dunes in front of their community. The work needs to be completed by the end of November or it will have to wait until next summer, said Steven Traynum, president of Coastal Science and Engineering, which designed the project. The work follows the settlement of lawsuits brought by Prince George property owners after the inlet at the south end of Pawleys Island began migrating farther south. The suits claimed the shift was caused by a renourishment project completed by the town in 2022. The inlet is now more than half a mile from where it was located before the renourishment. PG Inlet Partners is seeking federal and state agencies to cut a new inlet 1,000 feet south of the public parking lot on the island’s south end.  The settlement between the property owners, the town, its contractors and two state agencies provided $4 million for the work, including the purchase of 16 acres south of the parking lot. Coastal Science designed the town’s renourishment project and was a defendant in the suit. As part of the settlement, it agreed to design the inlet relocation project and obtain the necessary permits. The firm is working on three other projects for the town, and Traynum this week gave Town Council an update on their status, along with that of the Prince George project and one at the south end of Litchfield Beach. If the permit from the Army Corps of Engineers and the certification from the state Department of Environmental Services are received in the next month as expected, Traynum said, the inlet relocation will start in mid-September. “The bulk of the project is really restoring the dune area along Prince George,” he said. The work will start by digging a channel across the south end of the island and using the sand to build a dike between the spit and Prince George. That work will be done from the island side. The work with excavators, trucks and bulldozers will then shift to Prince George, he said. Sand from the spit will be used to rebuild the dune. The new inlet will widen beyond the initial channel to about 300 feet. The water is expected to be about 5 feet deep at low tide. It will take about five days to excavate the channel, and Traynum suggested the town limit public access to the new inlet for another week as a safety precaution. Property owners at the Peninsula neighborhood on the south end of Litchfield also expect to get approval to scrape sand from the shoals along Midway Inlet to maintain dunes built during a 2022 renourishment project.  “Part of this project was the result of litigation you all went through,” Traynum told the council. “The concern there was that if sand is moving from Litchfield, could that sand be forcing the inlet closer to Pawleys?” The permit would allow up to 50,000 cubic yards of sand to be moved twice during the permit’s five-year life. That would only be done if there was erosion at the Peninsula or a threat to Pawleys from the shifting inlet, Traynum said. “Right now, the inlet’s perfectly fine,” he said. “There’s no need for a project.” The north end of Pawleys Island has been marked for decades by a timber and rock jetty. The town was concerned it would disintegrate and got $275,000 included in Georgetown County’s capital project sales tax referendum in 2024 for repairs. The jetty is now covered by sand. Whether that is a benefit or a drawback to restoration depends on the contractor, Traynum said. “There may be more work required,” he said. Coastal Science will draw up the plan to restore the jetty and obtain the permits for the town. If the town restores the jetty to its original condition, it will be about a foot below sea level, Traynum said, due to sea level rise. Coastal Science is also due to conduct a survey of Pawleys Creek within the next month to gather baseline data to determine whether it is filling in. “People say the creek is shoaling, I’ve never seen so much sand,” Traynum said. “Until you actually put some data to it, you can’t actually compare.” The town has federal and state funding to place 40,000 cubic yards of sand on the beach between Pawleys Pier and the Birds Nest section to replace sand lost to Hurricane Ian in 2022. Coastal Science is also working on that project with the town, but Traynum said the work should be timed to coincide with an Army Corps of Engineers project for the south end of the island, also triggered by damage from Ian. “You don’t mobilize a dredge for 40,000 yards of sand. It’s not cost effective to do that,” Traynum said.