25th Anniversary
Spring 2014
Vol. 25
No. 2
Founding Principles in 1989 Hold True Today
STAFF ____________________ Director
Dana Beach
REGIONAL OFFICES _____ ________________ SOUTH COAST
Project Manager
Reed Armstrong
Where there is no vision, the people perish. – Proverbs
NORTH COAST Office Director Nancy Cave
COLUMBIA
Office Director Merrill McGregor Govt. Relations Specialist Anne Petterson Hutto Utility Regulation Specialist Kenneth Sercy
_______PROGRAMS _____________ Program Directors Hamilton Davis
Project Managers GrowFood Carolina
Michelle Sinkler Lisa Turansky Katie Zimmerman Myles Maland Natalie Olson Sara Clow Jessica Diaz Nina Foy Benton Montgomery Jake Sadler Bob Tremayne
DEVELOPMENT ____________________ Director of Development Interim Dir. of Development Foundation and Major Gifts Events Manager Membership Director
Abby Rowland Cathy Forrester Shannyn Smith Bea Girndt Danner Friedman
ADMINISTRATION ______________ ______ HR and Administration Director of Finance Data Manager Administrative Assistant Clerical Support
Tonnia Switzer-Smalls Tina Allen Nora Kravec Louann Yorke Chanta Adams
Board of Directors Roy Richards, Chair Andy Berly Richard R. Schmaltz William Cogswell Jeffrey Schutz Andrea Ziff Cooper Stan Stevens Ceara Donnelley John Thompson Berry Edwards Bill Turner Katharine Hastie David Westerlund W. Jefferson Leath Peter Wilborn Alex Marsh Stephen Zoukis James R. McNab, Jr.
Advisors and Committee Members Paul Kimball Hugh Lane Jay Mills
Newsletter Editor Virginia Beach Designer Julie Frye
P.O. Box 1765 Q Charleston, SC 29402 Phone: (843) 723-8035 Q FAX: (843) 723-8308 Email: info@scccl.org website: www.CoastalConservationLeague.org P.O. Box 1861 Q Beaufort, SC 29901 Phone: (843) 522-1800 1001 Washington Street, Suite 300 Q Columbia, SC 29201 Phone: (803) 771-7102 P.O. Box 603 Q Georgetown, SC 29442 Phone: (843) 545-0403
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hank you to our members and supporters for sustaining and inspiring us for the last quartercentury. This 25th anniversary year is a good time to reflect on our founding principles as well as on our vision for the future. It compels us to connect the work we do on a daily basis to the broader goals and aspirations we all share for the Lowcountry in the 21st century. The Coastal Conservation League was founded in 1989, two decades after the passage of groundbreaking federal environmental legislation – the Clean Water Act, the Clean When we Air Act, Superfund and the Endangered Species Act. By the opened shop late 1980s, it was clear that while these laws had countered in 1989, South many threats to the environment, they failed to address Carolina was a fundamental problem — the rapid spread of sprawling losing rural development and the associated loss of wildlife habitat, historic land to sprawl and cultural sites, and quality of life. Nowhere was this more at the rate of evident than in the South Carolina Lowcountry. 400 acres a day. As a result, the Conservation League spent the first decade Our founding and a half intensely focused on improving land use practices passion was for the benefit and health of our waterways, wildlife and to stop the people. We championed more traditional, common-sense bleeding and patterns of development—versus the default mode of sprawl protect the — in order to save land, reduce housing and infrastructure threatened costs, and increase public transit usage, bicycling and walking. farms, forests, We promoted thoughtful planning as a cure for many of swamps and our problems — almost everything but the common cold. marshes of the In recognition of the innovative quality of our land use Lowcountry. achievements, we received a foundation grant in the late 1990s to support my travel around the country to speak about the League's work and the connection between conservation and regional and neighborhood planning. For us, compact, mixed-use development in the right location at the right scale was part of a larger vision for our region — a place that could prosper without sacrificing its environment and quality of life. In the last 25 years, we have written, published and presented hundreds of slide shows, editorials, columns, brochures and maps illustrating our regional vision. When we opened shop in 1989, South Carolina was losing rural land to sprawl at the rate of 400 acres a day. Our founding passion was to stop the bleeding and protect the threatened farms, forests, swamps and marshes of the Lowcountry. The first principle we embraced was the importance of containing urban areas in a greenbelt of protected land. Today more than one million acres of land are
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Cover Photo — St. Thomas and St. Denis Church at Cainhoy, by Dana Beach
C OA S TA L C O N S E RVAT I O N L E AG U E
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