JANUARY 11 - 17, 2018
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COVERING BEAUFORT COUNTY
Snowmageddon '18
Whitehall is coming back to the table By Sally Mahan
cocet after a tooth is pulled or a broken bone is set. Standard stuff, right? But patients react differently to pain and to pain medications, and sometimes most of these pills end up in family medicine cabinets where they can then be abused by children, children’s friends, spouses, cleaning ladies or anyone else who might happen to open the family medicine chest. Opioid addiction, especially when its origins are with prescription medications, knows no racial, social or economic bounds. Often it is in the family medicine cabinet, health professionals say, that the road to addiction begins — sometimes with as little as a week’s supply of a narcotic. The end of the road can come quickly, especially for those who, once addicted, find a way to gain access to Fentanyl, a strong narcotic that is often used in a 72-hour patch for hospice patients, but which can by addicts be extracted from the patch and injected via a hy-
After months of citizen activism, plans for a huge new development in Northern Beaufort County were ditched after a 6-0 “no” vote by the Metropolitan Planning Commission on Nov. 13. Now, the developers are going to come back to the commission on Monday, Feb. 19, with a revised plan that a local activist organization calls “vastly improved.” The revised proposal is expected to be filed with the city of Beaufort’s Planning Department around Thursday, Feb. 1. The 19-acre parcel, called Whitehall, is at the foot of the Richard V. Woods Memorial Bridge on Lady’s Island and has been a source of contention as locals have expressed concerns about traffic, trees, the environment and the development in general. MidCity Real Estate Partners of Atlanta owns the property but has been working with Sam Levin of Beaufort and other partners as the Whitehall Development Group. The Whitehall plan that was voted down would have been a mix of commercial/retail space along the Sea Island Parkway, with apartments and an independent living facility in the interior of the property. Five stand-alone commercial buildings ranging in size from approximately 2,000 square feet to 6,000 square feet, and seven residential apartment towers – each four stories high – were planned. A smaller structure would have served as a space for offices, pool support and resident storage for bicycles, etc. Another structure in the original plan was a 100-unit independent living facility built as part of the property but managed by an outside firm. Chuck Newton of the Sea Island Coalition, which has been actively involved in the Whitehall process, said, “We did see a revised conceptual plan for Whitehall a couple of weeks ago. … We would characterize it as ‘vastly improved.’
See OPIOID, page A6
See WHITEHALL, page A6
Left: Freezing rain turned to snow on Jan. 3. Above: An unidentified couple take a brisk walk across the Richard V. Woods Bridge during snow storm. Photos by Bob Sofaly.
I
t shut down just about everything in town. From bridges to roads to schools to most businesses, the snow storm that started on Jan. 3 left Northern Beaufort County out in the cold. And its continuting effects were felt far and wide. The temperatures were so low at night that everything that melted during the day turned around and froze over when temperatures dropped, making the roads particularly dangerous. Hundreds of people were left without power, and according to varous law enforcement, there were hundreds of accidents. However, temperatures are back to normal and normalcy has returned. For more photos, see page A6.
County 2017 opioid deaths up sharply from 2016 By Bill Rauch
The opioid epidemic has come to Beaufort County. While the 2017 final numbers are still preliminary, the Beaufort County Coroner’s Office says there were 22 opioid-related deaths in the county last year, nearly three times the eight homicides the Coroner’s Office has recorded preliminarily for 2017. This is the first time Beaufort County opioid-related deaths have exceeded Beaufort County homicides. What’s worse is that the number of opioid-related deaths here nearly tripled last year from the eight that were recorded in 2016. Moreover, the sheriff ’s office says that since the sheriff ordered his deputies to be trained in the use of Narcan, the department is known to have saved three lives last year by administering the drug on site. It is unknown how many more lives were saved from opioid overdoses at the emergency rooms in the county. Medical professionals say that number is increasing dramatically as well.
FIRST AND LAST
Previous to 2016 there were so few deaths attributable to opioid abuse that neither the Beaufort County Coroner’s Office nor the South Carolina Department of Environmental Control (DHEC) tracked Bill Rauch them as a group. Why is this epidemic suddenly upon us, and what can be done to prevent these tragedies? Let’s start with the source of the drugs. While doctors derive no financial benefit from prescribing narcotics (opioids), healthcare professionals say it is not uncommon for their own convenience and for the convenience of their patients for doctors to offer patients facing short-term pain medium-term pain relief medications. Often — but not always — in Beaufort County these medium-term pain prescriptions are written in emergency rooms or in the offices of oral and orthopedic surgeons. An example would be a 30-day supply of Per-
Meet the last baby of 2017 and the first baby of 2018 born at Beaufort Memorial Hospital. PAGE A4
ICON PASSES AWAY Nathan Harris, a dapper man who made a big difference in Beaufort, has died at age 87. PAGE B1
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