When Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB 445 – a series of amendments to the Shore Protection Act – into law last week, reactions were mixed.
The bill underwent a long series of changes during its journey through the State Capitol, needing four Senate votes and two House votes before the final version was passed by a relatively narrow margin of 93-75. While the Georgia Department of Natural Resources gave the bill its blessing, other conservation groups such as the Center for a Sustainable Coast and One Hundred Miles argued that the bill did not go far enough in protecting the state’s beaches.
The Shore Protection Act, first enacted in 1979, laid out a means of measuring the jurisdictional line of public and private beach property. Previously the state used out of date markers including old buildings and trees to determine this “special zone,” in which property owners need state approval to build. HB 445, sponsored in the House by Rep. Don Hogan (R-St. Simons) sought to streamline that measurement process, creating a 25-foot zone between private developments and either the landward reach of a sand dune or the high tide line on beaches without dunes.
Sen. Ben Watson (R-Savannah), who carried the bill in the Senate, was pleased with the bill’s final version. He said in a prepared statement that “the updates made to the Shore Protection Act will help further protect our shoreline with more consistent and clarified boundaries and reduce confusion and unnecessary burdens placed on coastal property owners and businesses. We worked with the Department of Natural Resources on this measure and are sure that it will allow for better preservation of our coastline for generations to come.”
On the flip side, critics argue that the 25 foot zone is not nearly wide enough, claiming that the appropriate distance was not calculated using readily available data on erosion rates, as seen in neighboring North and South Carolina.
Karen Grainey, who works at the Center for a Sustainable Coast, voiced those concerns to the Savannah Morning News –
“Most people I have talked to about this recognize how foolish it is to weaken the Shore Protection Act. Some have pointed out that we have developed almost all of the beachfront that is available for development, and existing buildings are already too close to the beach. ‘Hasn’t the damage already been done?’ they ask. Yes, but these buildings are in peril for that very reason, and when a hurricane sweeps them away, we need to have a stronger Shore Protection Act in place to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Considering climate change and the inevitability of sea level rise, a genuinely responsible law would be contemplating retreat, but all we are asking is for the law to calculate setbacks using readily available data on erosion rates. The Georgia DNR’s endorsement of this law contradicts the lip service they give to the need to start thinking about making the Georgia coast more resilient to the effects of climate change.”
During the legislative session, the Georgia Conservancy, one of the state’s most prominent conservation organizations, kept a close eye on the bill’s many iterations. One version left in an exemption for a current project within the 25 foot protection zone, which the group argued would set a precedent for preferential treatment. That line was eventually struck from the bill, which received the group’s blessing with the caveat that it “would prefer to see the landward extension of the line to 50 feet, on non-state-owned land, from the toe of active dunes, or a receding shoreline.
