Owners of Sea Island, the posh coastal resort favored by well-to-do Atlantans, largely prevailed Tuesday in their year-long battle with environmental groups to develop an ecologically sensitive slip of sand and marsh along its southern edge.
Sea Island Acquisition (SIA) will proceed with construction of a bridge and road leading to eight lots with asking prices in the millions. In exchange, the remaining 80 acres of the so-called Spit will be placed into a conservation easement, according to the deal between SIA and environmentalists.
Tuesday’s resolution, brokered by Atlanta-based GreenLaw, puts to bed one of the more vituperative preservation-vs-development spats along Georgia’s coast in recent years. Billboards, T-shirts, websites and newspaper ads denigrated, or lauded, the 7.3-acre Cloister Reserve project bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Black Banks River.
Environmentalists argue that the beach all but disappears at high tide and that development will hasten erosion. A Georgia Southern geology professor said last year that the beach alongside the planned development vanishes twice as quickly as the mean erosion rate. Former Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard, an avid birder who until recently led the Georgia Conservancy, labeled the project “the worst development proposal I’ve ever seen.”
Sea Island’s owners dismissed environmental concerns, adding that the once-bankrupt resort needs new revenue.
“The Cloister Reserve project will result in a low-impact development of eight single family homes that we are confident, based on the advice of our experts, will not adversely impact the adjacent beach, marsh and tidal waters,” Scott Steilen, president of SIA, said in a statement.
The case for conservation wasn’t helped when the Glynn County Planning Commission sided with SIA. Neither did the state’s decision last year to rescind rules requiring erosion- and pollution-control buffers for marshlands along much of the Georgia coast.
“This has been a hard-fought battle,” said Steve Caley, an attorney with GreenLaw which represented the Altamaha Riverkeeper, Center for a Sustainable Coast and other environmental groups. “As with any settlement, neither side got everything it wanted. However, on balance, we believe this is a very good settlement.”
SIA, as part of the settlement, will cover the costs to monitor the Spit’s environment for the next five years. In addition, the company will allow “limited public seasonal birding excursions on the Spit.”
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