Up the Wando River, past the looming towers of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge and hulking container ships in the harbor below, beyond the dense traffic and sounds of the city, lies the Cainhoy Peninsula — home to some of Charleston's last wild spaces. Rising dozens of feet above sea level, the area is viewed by city leaders as a potential migration point for residents seeking to avoid rising seas and stronger hurricanes.
"The high ground on Cainhoy creates an opportunity for development safe from sea-level rise and storm surge," Charleston's recently released Water Plan notes. "This will be sustainable if sensitive ecologies and the drainage function of the landscape are preserved."
The Cainhoy Peninsula is the focus of a complex, yearslong legal battle between several conservation groups, one of Charleston's most-successful development companies and multiple federal agencies.
At the core of the dispute is Point Hope — a massive, new development which calls for up to 9,000 housing units, an estimated 45,000 residents and substantial public infrastructure and businesses along Clements Ferry Road. Construction is well underway. Shopping centers, golf carts and food trucks along Clements Ferry have already replaced much of the woods and wildlife in the area. The sounds of hammering, sawing and rattling heavy equipment echo through the area.
Chris DeScherer, South Carolina office director with Southern Environmental Law Center, and Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Faith Rivers James take a tour down Hopewell Creek, where the future Point Hope development will be on the Cainhoy peninsula, Sept. 24, 2024, in Charleston.
Environmental groups say there's a pressing question playing out on the peninsula: As Charleston retreats from rising seas, how will it responsibly balance housing needs with conservation? The Water Plan and Charleston's forthcoming zoning code overhaul include strategies to pull new and old development out of the lowest-lying, often-flooded areas across town — places which also are vulnerable to sea-level rise.
"None of us are saying that there shouldn't be any development out there," said Chris DeScherer, who leads the South Carolina office of the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is representing the conservation groups in the suit. "We're just saying let's do it in a more resilient way."
Into the wetland weeds
Conservation groups argue that the federal government improperly permitted Point Hope and skirted environmental reviews that would have more clearly illustrated the alleged threat to the Cainhoy ecosystem and downstream communities.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the destruction of about 180 acres of wetlands, while the Fish and Wildlife Service approved the "taking" of two vulnerable species: the threatened red-cockaded woodpecker and the endangered northern long-eared bat. The project also will entail clearing about 3,900 acres of forested habitat. Point Hope encompasses about 9,100 acres, of which 3,900 will be developed.
"Just because they received local approval back in 2014 doesn't entitle them to state and federal permits under state and federal law," DeScherer said. He pointed out that nearly half of the new housing development would be located within the FEMA 100-year floodplain — even as city leaders are trying to limit development in such areas.
A sandpiper rests on a pine in Hopewell Creek, Sept. 24, 2024, in Charleston.
"No one has taken away their right to build," said Faith Rivers James, executive director of the Coastal Conservation League, one of the plaintiffs in the case. "We're suggesting that they can accommodate that same number of buildings with less impact."
The conservation groups proposed a design alternative that Rivers James said would have significantly limited wetland impacts and disruptions, but which ultimately was rejected. Point Hope's developers and lawyers contend that the current project is a model for responsible construction.
Upon completion, it will include a 650-acre nature sanctuary (which they say will be the largest such conservation easement in the city,) a protected buffer zone between Point Hope and the Francis Marion National Forest and a close partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor endangered species on the property. Rhett DeHart, the developer's attorney, also argued that the 180 acres of wetlands to be lost is relatively small given the large size of the project.
Two federal regulatory agencies — the Army Corps and Fish and Wildlife Service — agreed and granted permits for the project. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for administering the Clean Water Act, didn't object to the Army Corp's approval of the wetland destruction. (Fish and Wildlife and the Army Corps declined to comment, and the EPA did not respond.)
A pelican flies low on Nowell Creek near the Point Hope development on the Cainhoy Peninsula, Sept. 24, 2024, in Charleston.
An order signed Sept. 19 by U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel sided with Point Hope and the agencies, blocking the Southern Environmental Law Center's request for a temporary halt on construction as the lawsuit progresses. The judge argued that the conservation groups were unlikely to prevail in the case, partially because the judicial system is to "be at its most deferential" when weighing science-based decisions by federal agency researchers and experts.
Bats and woodpeckers
Point Hope shares a roughly 2-mile border with the Francis Marion National Forest, one of the Lowcountry's most-diverse ecosystems and home to the federally-threatened red-cockaded woodpecker and endangered northern long-eared bat.
The bats, DeHart said, haven't been documented in Berkeley County for several years. But DeScherer said that the landscape could provide an important refuge for the bats, whose populations elsewhere have been ravaged by white nose syndrome, a fungal infection that can kill off affected colonies. DeScherer said that because bats in Francis Marion preferring nesting in trees, the spread of the fungal infection can be significantly limited.
That argument didn't convince Gergel, who noted that the development would result in the destruction of 0.003 percent of the bats' potential woodland habitat in South Carolina.
"Northern long-eared bats have never been seen or detected at Cainhoy, yet we are providing mitigation for this species anyway," DeHart wrote, adding that those protections could also help protect more-common species of bats on the property.
As to the woodpeckers? Gergel held that the project would result in the potential taking of about 2 percent of the bird's population in the area. In an email, DeHart added that Point Hope's developers have successfully relocated 27 red-cockaded woodpecker groups from the property to new, protected refuges during construction.
In this photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a red-cockaded woodpecker clings to the side of a pine tree in April 2023.
"We monitor these translocated (woodpeckers), and they are thriving and reproducing," he wrote, adding that DI Development covered the costs of those relocations.
Going forward, federal officials can perform "spot checks" to ensure that any woodpeckers on the property are safe. DeHart said DI Development has developed a "smoke easement" and a unique restrictive covenant, which prevents residents from objecting to the prescribed burns necessary to preserve the woodpecker's habitat.
The Law Center now is challenging Gergel's order in federal court.
A tale of two peninsulas
Charleston experienced more tidal floods in the first nine months of 2024 than it did in the entire 25-year period from 1922 to 1947 (the first full-record years), according to the National Weather Service. Floods this year ranged from relatively minor nuisance puddling to major washouts, and indicated a clear trend of sea-level rise, city leaders and climate scientists say.
Ocean levels are predicted to rise about another foot in the next 25 years — or as much as they did in the last century. Tidal flooding will become more frequent and severe over that time, while the Lowcountry risks the impacts of climate change-altered hurricanes.
When they filled tidal creeks, pushed downtown's boundaries outward into the harbor and paved over salt marshes, Charleston's builders likely didn't fully understand the ecological debt they were incurring. Those land-filled areas — now home to apartments, businesses and multimillion-dollar homes — typically are first and worst to flood.
A few houses without docks have oaks growing near the shoreline along Captains Island on Daniel Island's Ralston Creek, Sept. 24, 2024, in Charleston.
Rivers James sees similar decision-making unfolding on Point Hope.
"Once you fill the (wetlands), you don't get them back," she said. "Once you lose them, you lose the ability to hold water. The wetlands are really a sponge that help us contend with flooding and rising sea levels. It's going to have a big impact on the ecosystem out here."
A single acre of wetland can capture up to 1.5 million gallons of floodwater, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they save coastal communities about $23 billion annually by mitigating storm impacts. Point Hope's planned removal of 180 acres of wetlands also would remove up to 270 million gallons of floodwater storage capacity from the area — more than 400 Olympic pools-worth of water.
In legal filings, Point Hope developers note that the project's flood-control infrastructure is similar to the one found on Daniel Island, an area with similar topography that was developed by the same company. That system has won praise from city leadership and planners for its ability to capture and control stormwater flooding.
Homes under construction on on Daniel Island in Charleston, Sept. 24, 2024.
"A much smaller percentage of Cainhoy and Daniel Island are located in the FEMA 100-year floodplain than either the City of Charleston or Berkeley County," DeHart, the developer's attorney, wrote in an email. "The companies that will build homes on Cainhoy are experienced and reputable, and it would not be in their self-interest to build homes in danger of flooding."
One of the conservation groups' biggest concerns is that the federal government decided against publishing an Environmental Impact Statement for Point Hope. To warrant an EIS, a project has to have significant impact on the "human environment." Point Hope's impact was not deemed significant enough.
"By choosing not to have an EIS, you have less public engagement with communities that are going to be impacted," DeScherer said. "Public hearings, a more robust alternatives analysis, and more community input we believe are more likely to lead to better outcomes."
In his order, Gergel noted that, while the federal government might have skipped an Environmental Impact Statement, it did issue a 221-page environmental assessment, 30,000-page administrative record and several other administrative reviews.
The Cainhoy Peninsula has some of the highest ground in the city. Much of Point Hope's development is along the high spine of Clements Ferry Road, but nearly half of the project is located in the FEMA 100-year floodplain, areas which have a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year. (Or, put another way, a roughly 26 percent chance of flooding over the life of a 30-year mortgage.)
"Looking into the future in Charleston, we have this existential problem already on our hands — confronting climate change — and it seems like the smartest thing to do is not to make that problem even worse by putting even more development into our low lying areas," DeScherer said.
The Water Plan
In August, Charleston released its years-in-the-making Water Plan, which aims to guide the city through the next several decades of rising seas. The city also is rewriting its zoning code. It's the first comprehensive update of that master plan in roughly half a century. Both of those documents share a similar guiding principle: pulling new and existing developments away from the city's low-lying peripheries.
On Cainhoy, authors of the Water Plan say development "should occur with respect for sensitive natural context, including forests and wetlands, and should not become future buyouts."
"This has to do with not only the way we build, but also where," Andy Sternad said in August at a City Council workshop on the plan. "This is really about building for future conditions and anticipating the future." Sternad, an architect with Waggoner & Ball, was one of the authors of the Water Plan.
Charleston previously has partnered with FEMA to buy out often-flooded properties, most notably in the Shadowmoss neighborhood of West Ashley, where 32 homes were bought, demolished and turned into a floodplain and public green space in 2019. City leaders see the buyout program as an essential, if last-resort, tool for Charleston's managed retreat from rising seas. But the program has been criticized for essentially underwriting risky development with taxpayer dollars.
DeScherer pointed out that the city is weighing a new sea wall (alternately called a "raised edge" or "perimeter protection" by city leaders) to protect parts of downtown. Cost estimates for the project have varied, with recent predictions placing the final bill at more than $1 billion. The city would cover about 35 percent of the cost, with the remainder coming from the Army Corps — one of the federal agencies that permitted Point Hope.
"This is a similar piece of property," DeScherer said. "On the one hand, the city recognizes the threat of flooding and climate change, and is poised to make a massive investment to protect downtown — or to try to protect downtown. But at the same time, we are poised to put new homes in the floodplain on another peninsula in another part of town. Are we going to put a billion-dollar wall around (Cainhoy)?"
Chris DeScherer, South Carolina office director with Southern Environmental Law Center, visits the site of the future Point Hope development on the Cainhoy Peninsula, Sept. 24, 2024, in Charleston.
The good with the bad
Gates Roll idled down his boat engine and maneuvered quietly through the tide-swollen creeks around Cainhoy. The fall butterfly migration was just getting started, and bright-yellow cloudless sulphurs and deep-orange monarchs fluttered by. Shorebirds lounged in the bright September sun, as Spartina grass swayed in a gentle breeze.
Roll owns and operates Tall Tide Fishing Adventures, and has developed a mental map of this area that reflects his many years on the water. As he deftly navigated the creek, Roll recalled a conversation he had with a fisherman who sold him his first charter boat, and who had lived in the Cainhoy area opposite Daniel Island for decades.
"He was guiding out here, spending time outside, taking people on the water before anybody, really. I would always ask him, 'It must be really hard to live in the Charleston of today,'" Roll recalled. "And he said, 'You know what man, it is. But it's also so much better in so many ways.'"
Gates Roll with Tall Tide Fishing Adventures and Rachel Chu, communications manager with Southern Environmental Law Center, tour Hopewell Creek near the future Point Hope development on the Cainhoy peninsula, Sept. 24, 2024, in Charleston.
"He's like, 'The Cooper was a dump. The industrial aspect? It was just terrible,' " Roll continued. " 'Now I can go see an incredible concert and eat at a five-star restaurant, and I can also go fishing. You've got the best of that urban scene and then there's this nature, and then there's the overlap.'"
"You take the good with the bad," Roll summarized.
The hammering of construction, of civilization, still hasn't touched this part of Cainhoy. The only indicators of human presence were a steel tower stretching above the treeline and a single fisherman who puttered past Roll in a metal boat. He shouted across the water that he's been fishing in these parts for almost 50 years, and very rarely sees other people.
