Hair Salon inFolly Beach, SC

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCBD) – Officials say around 8:35 a.m. Wednesday morning, the oil spill was reported near the Folly Beach Pier. News 2 spoke with a beachgoer who says she, along with many others, were covered in oil.

Cat Sidwell was on her surfboard when suddenly something fell from above.

“Started to smell like oil and it was like real slick all over our skin and board and stuff,” Sidwell said. “And it kind of hit me first. I was like the closer one to the pier.”

Soon, other surfers in the area felt the oil rain from above as well.

“Everybody was kind of yelling like, ‘Oh my god, we’re all covered in oil,’” Sidwell said. “It smelled, it was super strong.”

Sidwell says they confronted the construction company on the pier about the spill, but says they were dismissive.

“We kind of yelled up to the guys that were working on the pier like, ‘Hey, you’re spilling oil,’” she said. “And they just yelled back something silly, like laughing that it was biodegradable.”

U.S. Coast Guard officials say the spill was from a faulty hydraulic hammer used on site.

“They had spilled three to four gallons of organic hydraulic oil,” U.S. Coast Guard public affairs representative Vincent Moreno said.

Charleston Waterkeeper executive director Andrew Wunderley says the fact that it’s organice is besides the point.

“Biodegradable or not,” Wunderley said, “it’s still hydraulic fluid and it has no place in the ocean. It doesn’t belong in our waterways, it doesn’t belong on the beach and it certainly doesn’t belong on people.”

Wunderley believes the company should have done more to notify beachgoers of the spill.

“We’d like to see,” he said, “in this case, the responsible party take it a lot more seriously. It sounds like from what we’ve heard that they did a good job of getting it stopped, but they needed to go the next step and warn the public and say, ‘Hey, this just happened you need to stay out of the water. You need to use caution.”

And thinks they should be held accountable.

“The enforcement agencies in this case are the U.S. Coast Guard and DHEC,” Wunderley said, “and what we are calling on them to do is to investigate, and if there is anything out of the ordinary, they need to fine at a significant level in order to prevent this from happening again.”

The U.S. Coast Guard says the spill is contained and the incident is still under investigation.

In 2018, Folly Beach along with a 26-mile stretch underwent emergency beach renourishment to restore sand lost from Hurricanes. The damage was so bad that the Army Core of Engineers paid for the entire cost of renourishment.

(TNS) - The last time a hurricane reached the Grand Strand, it obliterated North Myrtle Beach’s sand dunes and ripped the Cherry Grove Pier in half.

That was just two years ago.

Repairs after Hurricane Isaias, which was “only” a Category 1 storm, cost millions of dollars. It wasn’t a hurricane that required major evacuations, but it was a sign of how a single storm, even one that isn’t a Hugo or a Katrina, can do massive damage to one of South Carolina’s most precious resources — the beach.

Protecting beaches is a crucial task for federal, state and local officials. Without the sand that defines the Grand Strand, Charleston’s barrier islands or Hilton Head, the state could lose billions of dollars in tourism. Anyone who grew up in South Carolina during the 1970s and 1980s can share how the near-total erosion of Folly Beach devastated that town’s economy and made it a place to avoid.

“The beaches are a very, very valuable resource for the state of South Carolina, for the country, but they’re under very significant and increasing pressures,” said Paul Gayes, executive director of Coastal Carolina University’s Center for Marine & Wetland Studies. “That’s a significant management challenge, and now the question is how long can we can we manage it as we have?”

In 2018, Folly Beach along with a 26-mile stretch of the Grand Strand underwent emergency beach renourishment to restore sand lost from Hurricanes Matthew, Irma and Florence. The damage was so bad that the Army Core of Engineers paid for the entire cost of renourishment. Normally, the federal entity would pay for just 65% of renourishment in the Grand Strand and 85% in Folly Beach. The remaining cost would be passed off to state and local governments.

Sand dunes themselves are important ecological habitats for grasses and other forms of coastal wildlife, but humans have a more selfish reason for maintaining them.

Dunes protect the buildings and infrastructure that sit behind them, particularly by breaking up storm surges, Army Core of Engineers project manager Wes Wilson said.

As storms come in, they bring in particularly strong waves that sometimes have enough force to topple building, wash away cars and toss boats from marinas onto highways.

Sand dunes, for their part, take the first brunt of that force, Gayes said. The strength of the impact of the storm surge depends largely on how fast the waves are moving. If a dune can slow down a powerful wave by even a couple seconds, that can exponentially decrease the water’s force when it makes impact on whatever lies beyond.

“It takes a long time for a dune to recover,” he said. “It may take weeks and months, even years to build a strong, healthy dune system, but a storm can come in and remove that dune in six hours.”

The dunes are strong, but brittle. They sometimes can’t survive more than one major hit.

“If another storm comes in before it’s recovered, it’s not there to do the protective services that was there before,” Gayes said.

Protecting sand dunes and the beaches in front of them is a circular endeavor. Tropical weather and general erosion over time wash away the sand, and governments have to spend millions of dollars to put the sand back, repeatedly. The task sounds futile, but Wilson says it’s worth it.

“After a hurricane has hit, the beaches that have been renourished and have sufficient protection measures such as dunes in place, fare far better than those that have not,” Wilson said.

The process to actually put sand back can be an irritating one for homeowners and visitors unlucky enough to be at the beach when renourishment is happening.

“We always say it’s a short-term inconvenience for a long-term benefit,” Wilson said. “As the contractor’s working in front of your house for a day or two, they can be kind of loud and kind of noisy. But as soon as they move on, within a day or two, you’ve got a brand new beach in front of your home and reduce the risk of damages not only your home, but the structures behind your home.”

There are a lot of reasons beaches erode. The most constant one is a sort of “river of sand” that is perpetually moving from north to south along the East Coast.

This movement causes some beaches to erode and others to grow, though as the sea level rises, the sand frequently disappears into the depths of the ocean, rather than flowing south to, say, Pawleys Island, Hilton Head or Florida.

“Over the long term, we are always losing sediment,” Gayes said. “That’s why we do renourishment, which is putting sand ‘back in the budget’ by artificial means.”

The more noticeable reason for beach erosion tends to be storms, experts say.

Isaias, for example, was particularly notable because of the damage its storm surges did to the low-lying sand dunes of North Myrtle Beach.

The storm surge’s strength came from both the power of the Category 1 hurricane itself but also the fact that it made landfall during the so-called “King Tides.” These appear several times a year and are known as the highest tides seen in the Grand Strand. When the King Tides reach North Myrtle Beach, particularly the Cherry Grove neighborhood, many roads flood, even without any rainfall or tropical weather.

The wind and storm surges that come with tropical storms and hurricanes break up the sand on the beaches and drag it back into the ocean, Gayes said.

Frequently, the sand will return on its own, but hurricanes can interrupt that process.

“It can move off shore enough that it won’t come back,” Gayes said.

This happened notably from 2016 to 2018, when a series of hurricanes — Matthew, Irma and Florence — tore up South Carolina’s beaches.

Their devastation was amplified by the fact that the hurricanes, particularly Matthew and Florence, were preceded by other tropical weather in the weeks leading up to them. That one-two punch left the beaches with no time to recover between storms.

“It’s not always a given storm that comes in that is the particular problem. It’s what’s happened a week or two weeks or 10 days before some of the big flooding events,” Gayes said. “If you’ve had a storm come in and kind of made the beach go away by moving material out of the upper beach and then the next storm comes in — it’s disproportionately more impactful.”

As a result, the Army Core of Engineers spent $60 million on an emergency beach renourishment spanning 26 miles of the Grand Strand and all of Folly Beach . Other parts of the state also had to do emergency renourishments, but the funding came from other sources, such as local accommodations taxes.

That renourishment required 3 million cubic yards of sand — the equivalent of 300,000 dump trucks — to be pumped from deep in the ocean onto the Grand Strand’s beaches alone.

Even a few years later, without any major storms, there is already some visible sand loss, Gayes noted. Garden City in particular, being on the edge of the renourishment project, has several blocks with at-risk structures as the ocean creeps in.

Not all storms do as much damage as Isaias, Florence, Irma and Matthew. A host of factors, from the speed at which a storm makes landfall, whether it’s a direct hit, the strength of the storm and even the direction it makes contact can all influence how badly the beaches are affected, said Victoria Oliva, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Wilmington office.

“The storm surge is tied to the strength of the storm. The stronger the storm, the stronger the winds and the greater the surge,” Oliva said. “The greatest threat as far as surf goes is the stronger storms that are coming head on and pretty much coming head on for quite a while.”

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The last time a hurricane reached the Grand Strand, it obliterated North Myrtle Beach’s sand dunes and ripped the Cherry Grove Pier in half.

That was just two years ago.

Repairs after Hurricane Isaias, which was “only” a Category 1 storm, cost millions of dollars. It wasn’t a hurricane that required major evacuations, but it was a sign of how a single storm, even one that isn’t a Hugo or a Katrina, can do massive damage to one of South Carolina’s most precious resources — the beach.

Protecting beaches is a crucial task for federal, state and local officials. Without the sand that defines the Grand Strand, Charleston’s barrier islands or Hilton Head, the state could lose billions of dollars in tourism. Anyone who grew up in South Carolina during the 1970s and 1980s can share how the near-total erosion of Folly Beach devastated that town’s economy and made it a place to avoid.

“The beaches are a very, very valuable resource for the state of South Carolina, for the country, but they’re under very significant and increasing pressures,” said Paul Gayes, executive director of Coastal Carolina University’s Center for Marine & Wetland Studies. “That’s a significant management challenge, and now the question is how long can we can we manage it as we have?”

In 2018, Folly Beach along with a 26-mile stretch of the Grand Strand underwent emergency beach renourishment to restore sand lost from Hurricanes Matthew, Irma and Florence. The damage was so bad that the Army Core of Engineers paid for the entire cost of renourishment. Normally, the federal entity would pay for just 65% of renourishment in the Grand Strand and 85% in Folly Beach. The remaining cost would be passed off to state and local governments.

Sand dunes themselves are important ecological habitats for grasses and other forms of coastal wildlife, but humans have a more selfish reason for maintaining them.

Dunes protect the buildings and infrastructure that sit behind them, particularly by breaking up storm surges, Army Core of Engineers project manager Wes Wilson said.

As storms come in, they bring in particularly strong waves that sometimes have enough force to topple building, wash away cars and toss boats from marinas onto highways.

Sand dunes, for their part, take the first brunt of that force, Gayes said. The strength of the impact of the storm surge depends largely on how fast the waves are moving. If a dune can slow down a powerful wave by even a couple seconds, that can exponentially decrease the water’s force when it makes impact on whatever lies beyond.

“It takes a long time for a dune to recover,” he said. “It may take weeks and months, even years to build a strong, healthy dune system, but a storm can come in and remove that dune in six hours.”

The dunes are strong, but brittle. They sometimes can’t survive more than one major hit.

“If another storm comes in before it’s recovered, it’s not there to do the protective services that was there before,” Gayes said.

Protecting sand dunes and the beaches in front of them is a circular endeavor. Tropical weather and general erosion over time wash away the sand, and governments have to spend millions of dollars to put the sand back, repeatedly. The task sounds futile, but Wilson says it’s worth it.

“After a hurricane has hit, the beaches that have been renourished and have sufficient protection measures such as dunes in place, fare far better than those that have not,” Wilson said.

The process to actually put sand back can be an irritating one for homeowners and visitors unlucky enough to be at the beach when renourishment is happening.

“We always say it’s a short-term inconvenience for a long-term benefit,” Wilson said. “As the contractor’s working in front of your house for a day or two, they can be kind of loud and kind of noisy. But as soon as they move on, within a day or two, you’ve got a brand new beach in front of your home and reduce the risk of damages not only your home, but the structures behind your home.”

There are a lot of reasons beaches erode. The most constant one is a sort of “river of sand” that is perpetually moving from north to south along the East Coast.

This movement causes some beaches to erode and others to grow, though as the sea level rises, the sand frequently disappears into the depths of the ocean, rather than flowing south to, say, Pawleys Island, Hilton Head or Florida.

“Over the long term, we are always losing sediment,” Gayes said. “That’s why we do renourishment, which is putting sand ‘back in the budget’ by artificial means.”

The more noticeable reason for beach erosion tends to be storms, experts say.

Isaias, for example, was particularly notable because of the damage its storm surges did to the low-lying sand dunes of North Myrtle Beach.

The storm surge’s strength came from both the power of the Category 1 hurricane itself but also the fact that it made landfall during the so-called “King Tides.” These appear several times a year and are known as the highest tides seen in the Grand Strand. When the King Tides reach North Myrtle Beach, particularly the Cherry Grove neighborhood, many roads flood, even without any rainfall or tropical weather.

The wind and storm surges that come with tropical storms and hurricanes break up the sand on the beaches and drag it back into the ocean, Gayes said.

Frequently, the sand will return on its own, but hurricanes can interrupt that process.

“It can move off shore enough that it won’t come back,” Gayes said.

This happened notably from 2016 to 2018, when a series of hurricanes — Matthew, Irma and Florence — tore up South Carolina’s beaches.

Their devastation was amplified by the fact that the hurricanes, particularly Matthew and Florence, were preceded by other tropical weather in the weeks leading up to them. That one-two punch left the beaches with no time to recover between storms.

“It’s not always a given storm that comes in that is the particular problem. It’s what’s happened a week or two weeks or 10 days before some of the big flooding events,” Gayes said. “If you’ve had a storm come in and kind of made the beach go away by moving material out of the upper beach and then the next storm comes in — it’s disproportionately more impactful.”

As a result, the Army Core of Engineers spent $60 million on an emergency beach renourishment spanning 26 miles of the Grand Strand and all of Folly Beach. Other parts of the state also had to do emergency renourishments, but the funding came from other sources, such as local accommodations taxes.

That renourishment required 3 million cubic yards of sand — the equivalent of 300,000 dump trucks — to be pumped from deep in the ocean onto the Grand Strand’s beaches alone.

Even a few years later, without any major storms, there is already some visible sand loss, Gayes noted. Garden City in particular, being on the edge of the renourishment project, has several blocks with at-risk structures as the ocean creeps in.

Not all storms do as much damage as Isaias, Florence, Irma and Matthew. A host of factors, from the speed at which a storm makes landfall, whether it’s a direct hit, the strength of the storm and even the direction it makes contact can all influence how badly the beaches are affected, said Victoria Oliva, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Wilmington office.

“The storm surge is tied to the strength of the storm. The stronger the storm, the stronger the winds and the greater the surge,” Oliva said. “The greatest threat as far as surf goes is the stronger storms that are coming head on and pretty much coming head on for quite a while.”

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCIV) — The Army Corps of Engineers is working to replenish Folly Beach by using what is called a "nearshore placement" project.

"You would literally walk off the steps and the water would be underneath the steps. There's no beach at high tide at all, like down by the washout," says Folly Beach visitor Amy Heaton.

Beach replenishment projects are crucial in protecting beaches and buildings on Folly.

"This will help protect the infrastructure of the homes, the businesses behind the beach, as a protective structural measure," says Wes Wilson, project manager with the Army Corps of Engineers in Charleston.

One of the ways to replenish beaches is through a project that has worked before.

"The nearshore placement project is a really innovative approach that the Army Corps is taking to utilize sediment that is being dredged for navigation purposes and to keep the boating channels clear, and then take that sand and help to feed the beaches in a different way than traditional beach nourishment," says Nicole Elko, president of Elko Coastal Consulting.

The last nearshore placement project took place in 2021. The Army Corps of Engineers and City of Folly Beach dredged up 50,000 cubic yards of sand from the Folly River, took it to the northeast end of the beach and dumped it about 200 to 300 yards offshore.

It proved to be successful thanks to the tracer monitoring contract and some colorful markers.

"The contractor used orange and pink dye in some of their sand loads and disposed of it. They sampled it and determined where on the beach those particular deposits landed," says Wilson.

These placement projects come with a lot of benefits.

"It is known to be a lot more environmentally friendly, too. That's one of the things we look for. The three "E's" is engineering, economics and environmental. The economics- that's cheaper; environmentally more friendly; and the engineering is constructible," says Wilson.

Another project is already being designed due to the success of the first. It is projected to wrap up by late spring of 2023.

These projects are federally funded.

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCIV) — The crashing waves off Folly's coastline is the perfect place to make that perfect connection.

"This is awesome man. Surfers Healing Folly Beach." The volunteers were definitely excited.

So, you can imagine how the families of Autistic children and the pros on the surfboards feel.

"They're healing me," says a surfer who goes by the name Sushi. Probably a good mix for the turf and surf environment.

The expression of joy on the faces of the kids who surfed with Sushi, and his own face after each ride, are tough to describe but amazing to see.

"Just being able to experience something that you think your kid on the spectrum will never experience."

That's Jessica Miler. She's a mom of two autistic kids taking part in the annual program. It's the family's third year.

Surfers Healing's Folly Beach event has been going on for more than a decade.

It gives children struggling with social abilities a chance to surf in a family-like atmosphere.

250 participants plus around another 250 volunteers, staff, family members and surfers from around the country- making it happen.

One of the organizers, Nancy Morris, tells us during her years working the event, "I've seen parents who've never seen their kids swim or do anything -- they don't have to be able to swim -- but never seen their kids come to the beach, because it's too hard to bring them. Get to experience a beach day for the first time."

It's emotional moments that the event brings out.

Morris says, "Like standing with parents and really having them, never gotten to see, I've had people just be like 'I didn't know he could do this.' And just tears streaming down their faces."

Morris hears the children's loved ones and strangers cheering them on.

Jessica Miler keeps discovering more moments that'll last for years as her kids, Brody and Izzy, are steadied on a surfboard while feeling the waves crash around them.

"To see my kid out there. It's just a locked memory."

Each of the kids not only got pictures taken and big hugs after surveying the surf- they also got special medals.