More houses, more people, more businesses, more
jobs.
This is a surefire recipe for economic success to communities, individuals and
families. And more of it - a lot more, in fact - is headed this way, the Coastal
Georgia Regional Development Center in Brunswick is predicting.
That is all well and good, but there may be a price to pay if
communities are not careful, Coastal Georgia's most vocal environmental
organizations warn. There's the toll on the environment.
Glynn and other coastal counties where commercial fisheries once thrived
are already caught in the damaging
undertow of environmental change. James Holland, a former commercial crabber
who now heads up the Altamaha
Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog group based in McIntosh County, says the
consequences of failing to
protect natural resources are already evident.
Commercial fisheries, hit hard by foreign competition, are finding it increasingly
difficult to scrape up meaty enough
harvests to sustain their traditional livelihoods. The culprit is the absence
of significant rain, a situation compounded
by other factors that are man-made, he said.
"Many of the lost or lessened species of fish, shrimp and crabs can be tied
directly to high saline waters," Holland said.
"This very salty water is most easily recognizable and now predictable when
we are in even a minor drought."
That is because the coastal community's natural, fail-safe buffers against
the devious impacts of drought are
disappearing, he said.
"The swamps and wetlands that once allowed freshwater to trickle down
into our estuaries are, for the most part, gone
or highly disrupted by human activities," Holland said. "I
can still remember when our coastal freshwater swamps held
water, even in times of drought."
Marine life is not all that has suffered with the loss of wetlands.
"Gone are the bountiful numbers of wood ducks that used to almost darken
out the sky at daylight on Paulk's Pasture
(in Glynn County)," Holland said. "Gone are the fly ways where
we at least had some large ducks like mallards in the
winter time. Gone also are the major cypress swamps that held the fluid
of life - water - for all manner of life, including
human life.
"Today, these supposedly upland dry areas are being filled with large subdivisions
and more ditches to drain off storm water."
That storm water - runoff from the land - often cleanses the land of
man-made poisons and other contaminants that wind up in estuaries and
rivers.
David Kyler, director of the Center for a Sustainable Coast on St. Simons
Island, says failing to shield the environment from
negative impacts of growth will have a huge monetary downside.
"This will hurt us economically, too, since more than $1 billion a year
is derived from the natural environment - recreational
fishing, nature-based tourism, and commercial fishing," he said. "Beyond
that, lower water quality will be a deterrent to general
economic growth and diversification."
The loss of marsh will make the community vulnerable to storm surges,
he said.
The demise of marshes and other wetlands just opens the door to greater
flooding - a lesson already learned in Savannah, the
Glynn Environmental Coalition in Brunswick says.
"The stormwater must go somewhere, and often it is being pushed into areas
with long-established homes and businesses," said
Daniel Parshley, project manager for Glynn Environmental Coalition. "Realizing
the magnitude of the problem has been delayed by
our seven-year drought. When we do return to our typical annual rainfall
and the groundwater returns to normal conditions, many
homes will be unlivable.
"The question all citizens of Glynn County need to ask is, 'Will Glynn
County have to buy back these homes?' In Savannah to our
north, this is just what happened at great expense to taxpayers."
Environmental groups fear more wetlands will be lost in the future as
more people flock to the coast.
The Georgia Sierra Club paints a more frightening picture. Its main concerns
are wastewater disposal, unwise development in freshwater
wetlands and increased stormwater volume due to additions to square footage
of impervious surfaces, says Neill Herring, spokesperson
for the Sierra Club of Georgia.
"Coastal creeks and estuaries are going to be converted into tidal, brackish
sewers, people are going to live in decaying houses collapsing
into swamps and flooding is going to become common all over the coast
with each substantial rain," he said. "Salt marsh is going
to be killed with inundations of fresh water."
There are steps the community and state can take to offset doomsday predictions,
environmental groups say.
For instance, says Kyler of the Center for a Sustainable Coast, "(We
can) adopt strict stormwater control requirements with stiff penalties
for failure to enforce and failure to comply with them."
Other defensive steps proposed by Kyler include:
* Increase efforts to gather and analyze data on water quality, fisheries,
and wetlands to guide state and local policies governing
environmental protection and development.
* Require, as well as strictly enforce, natural buffers along all wetlands
and waterways.
* Prohibit development of environmentally critical and sensitive areas.
The Altamaha Riverkeeper, warning of worse problems to come, recommends
a more drastic measure.
"To the best of my knowledge there is precious little being done in the
Brunswick-Golden Isles area that will offset or even
slow down the chain of events coming our way environmentally," Holland
said. "Glynn County has a storm water management plan in place at this time; however, I do not believe Glynn County has
the intestinal fortitude to enforce this new storm water
ordinance until it is too late.
"What we need in the Golden Isles is a short moratorium on development
to assess where we are at when it comes to the health
and safety of the human coastal population."
The Glynn Environmental Coalition says the county needs a vision for
the future.
"Development in Glynn County is not guided by a vision for our community's
future, but rather zoning and planning variances
and extracting
the maximum short-term profit," Parshley said. " Short-term is short-sighted.
"Glynn County desperately needs a vision for our future and to implement
it."
Who are they
Glynn Environmental Coalition is a nonprofit organization of 475 members
based in Glynn County, dedicated to a clean
environment and healthy economy. Call (912) 466-0934 or go to gec@glynnenvironmental.org
Altamaha Riverkeeper is a nonprofit, grassroots organization based in
Darien, focused on protection of the Altamaha River and its
tributaries.
Call (912) 437-8164 or go to
Center for a Sustainable Coast is a nonprofit group based on St. Simons
Island focused on sustaining Coastal Georgia's natural,
cultural, and economic resources. Call (912) 638-3612 or go to susdev@gate.net.
Sierra Club (Georgia chapter) is part of a national environmental group
with a membership of 750,000. Call (404) 607-1262,
ext. 221, or go to georgia.chapter@sierraclub.org.
Glynn and other coastal counties where commercial fisheries once thrived
are already caught in the damaging
undertow of environmental change. James Holland, a former commercial crabber
who now heads up the Altamaha
Riverkeeper, an environmental watchdog group based in McIntosh County, says the
consequences of failing to
protect natural resources are already evident.