The DHEC permit, now validated by the Supreme Court, is one of two authorizations needed to proceed, Maher said. The Army Corps of Engineers must issue a permit, too. And the mitigation plan to restore 20 acres of marsh further up the Ashley River, at Kings Grant, also must be approved, he said.
“I hope that, in the aggregate, the Friends of Gadsden Creek and the South Carolina Environmental Law Project will understand that they took their shots, but they were not able to convince very many parties that there was an alternative,” Maher said. “The best result is for us to go ahead and do this work and eliminate this (flooding) situation, hopefully forever.”
The Environmental Law Project, which represented Friends of Gadsden Creek, have argued that alternatives do, in fact, exist. Berms could be built floodgates installed, they contend, and Hagood Avenue could be elevated and the creek could be restored.
In a news release, Friends of Gadsden Creek said “the fight is far from over.”
“Our dedication to stopping the WestEdge development has not wavered,” the organization said. “We will continue to hold the City of Charleston accountable by demanding the restoration and revitalization of Gadsden Creek, and reparations for Gadsden Green.”
Law Project attorney Ben Cunningham expressed concern over what he considered the court’s too-limited ruling.
“We are disappointed by today’s ruling and we are surprised the dourt did not choose to address the many issues we raised on appeal,” he said in a statement. “The only small positive to take from the Order is that the dourt was clear that the ruling does not have any precedential value so it cannot be used to justify the destruction of additional public trust resources throughout South Carolina.”
The advocacy group pointed out that the ruling did not obligate WestEdge to destroy the creek for the purpose of new development.
“They can still choose to alter the plan and instead pursue a design that does not result in the total elimination of Gadsden Creek and its wetlands,” it said in the release.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)