Project Would Restore Wetlands Function

A “pilot” program designed to begin cleanup of South Carolina’s impaired Okatie River could start this summer, said Beaufort County Stormwater Manager Dan Ahern in a Savannahnow.com article.

A century-old railroad bed and primitive drainage ditch have diverted rain runoff from the wetlands, where it would be naturally, indirectly filtered before entering the Okatie, directly into the headwaters, Ahern told the county Stormwater Management Utility Board.

“A fairly unique retrofit” has been proposed by the Ward Edwards engineering firm, which was hired by the county to survey storm water flow in the river’s sensitive headwaters, Ahern said earlier this month.

The Ward engineers thought of backing storm water up into the wetlands, according to Ahern. Currently, the wetlands have been ‘channelized,’ and storm water flows straight into the Okatie headwaters.

It’s a large wetland, according to county Public Works Director Eddie Bellamy, but instead of holding storm water as it should, the water runs straight into the headwaters.

The aim of the project is to enhance natural wetland function. Some of the plans include removing an old boiler and putting in a small flow-control structure to back up storm water into the wetland—as it likely used to do—while allowing flow into the river, said Ahern.

“If that boiler collapses, it could cause some additional problems, so it’s better to do it sooner rather than later,” Ahern told Savannahnow.com.

According to Bellamy, the old boiler is essentially a large, cast-iron tube that somebody took the ends off of and used as a culvert to support a temporary railroad line that moved timber out of the wetlands.

By removing the culvert and building a “weir,” or small dam, “that wetland could hold up to 2 inches of rain at the same level of runoff as before development,” Bellamy told Savannahnow.com.

You can read the original Savannahnow.com article here.

Source: Savannahnow.com