Wetlands might sink state rule makers

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court said the states or their courts must regulate freshwater wetlands, South Carolina regulators are stuck in the muck, swamped by lawsuits.

Developers are pushing to fill more marginal land. Attempts to pass a statute or a specific set of wetlands regulations in the legislature get mired in committees or subcommittees over controversies about how strict the law should be. Meanwhile, state agencies are making permit decisions based on management policies, then giving ground by settling disputes when challenged in court.

S.C. Ocean and Coastal Resource Management dug in last year and denied a permit to a development partnership called Spectre. The partnership wanted to fill in 37 wetland acres off U.S. 17 in Georgetown County, and that much acreage was just too much for OCRM. Spectre sued and just won an S.C. Administrative Law Judge ruling saying, in part, a management policy is just that, a policy not a regulation.

If the ruling stands up on appeal, it could hamstring OCRM's ability to regulate coastal development.

Read more in tomorrow's edition of The Post and Courier