For many people in the small communities around Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, the best thing about living on South Carolina’s rural coast is also the hardest.
The marshes and creeks bring jobs, fresh seafood, and a sense of place. They are where families gather for weekends of fishing and crabbing along the Intracoastal Waterway and in the wildlife refuge.
For many, this setting is also central to their Gullah Geechee heritage, where descendants of enslaved Africans have maintained enduring ties to the land and water since the era of rice plantations.
But the same water that defines these close-knit communities is increasingly threatening them. Heavy rains overwhelm aging ditches, while rising seas and higher tides push water onto roads and drown habitat. Development and wetland loss have reduced the landscape’s ability to absorb water. Storms leave families wondering when the next flood will reach their homes.
A years-long initiative by residents and Audubon South Carolina brought communities together to map these challenges and develop nature-based solutions that reduce flooding while restoring habitat for birds.
Called the Building Resilient Communities with Nature initiative, the project reached a major milestone this year when Audubon and community leaders identified priority restoration projects and a broader resilience roadmap for the region.
“From the beginning, the idea was to start with questions rather than a plan,” said Sherri Fields, conservation director at Audubon South Carolina. “What are the biggest flooding and resilience issues you’re facing? And how can we work together to help you fix them and preserve what makes this place so special?”
Listening First
The project started with a walk. Residents, like retired teacher Barbara Singleton, led Audubon staff, engineers, and partners at The Asiko Group and Surculus around their communities.
For Singleton, the issues start next to her home, where she pointed out nearby clogged ditches. “All it takes is some rain, and my yard is flooded,” she said.
Over by Highway 17, the main thoroughfare to Charleston, Singleton and others showed a blocked culvert that regularly backs up during storms, making the road impassable.
In Ten Mile, a rural community right at the edge of the Charleston sprawl, residents showed where routine high tides can push water into homes and driveways, and even moderate storms leave vegetation piled on the road.
Nearly every conversation about flooding led to reflection on a single event: Hurricane Hugo. The Category 4 storm devastated the region in 1989. For many, the memories remain vivid.
Singleton remembers sitting in a rocking chair holding her three children close as the waters rose. Fellow Tibwin resident and Navy veteran Tommy Colleton recalls his sister being trapped in Lincoln High School in McClellanville as the gymnasium flooded.
They also remember what came afterward. Storm debris was never removed from canals and many remain clogged today.
“Flooding didn’t come front and center until Hugo,” Colleton said. Since then, it has intensified, and so have community frustrations.
Mapping Solutions
After tours by foot and boat and listening sessions in churches, restaurants, and community centers, project partners identified 68 flooding hotspots.
They ranged from choked culverts to eroding shorelines to the loss of access to boat ramps and other waterfront gathering spots. Engineers mapped this data alongside local hydrology and the historic network of streams and watersheds to come up with a final analysis.
A project steering committee made up of community leaders like Singleton and Colleton worked with Audubon and partners at Robinson Design Engineers to sketch potential nature-based solutions. The result was a detailed map of problems and potential ways to address them.
The steering committee ultimately selected two projects to advance to more detailed concept design and cost estimates, so that Audubon can pursue funding for implementation. The initiative also connected residents with other agencies and resources so they could continue advocating for fixes, including a Community Resource Fair last spring that included a dozen state and county organizations.
Building Infrastructure and Capacity
One of the final nature-based projects selected by the steering committee would restore marsh in the Ten Mile community to reduce flooding and improve habitat along a prominent waterfront road and nearby neighborhoods.
The second, in Tibwin and McClellanville, would reshape an existing canal system to more closely mimic a natural stream and floodplain, allowing for increased water storage while improving habitat.
The restoration will help better manage floodwater and connect the community with the restored landscape via trails and observation points, all while also creating habitat for coastal birds like egrets and rails.
For steering committee members, however, the biggest accomplishment extends beyond any individual restoration project. They now have a resilience roadmap backed by engineers, science, and local knowledge that they can bring to elected officials and agencies.
“We now have real science,” said Lewis Porcher, steering committee member and retired pastor. “We have maps. We have projects. We have tangible things we can present.”
Colleton agreed. “You’ve given me a handful of stuff that I can go put on the table at the county council,” he said.
For others, the initiative was as much about empowering people to take action on their own.
“I got to see folks at these agencies eye to eye, tell them what I see, what I think, what I know,” Singelton said. When flooding issues rise in the future, she’ll know who to call.
