The Aiken County Comprehensive Plan, disasters, and near-disasters.

by Don Moniak
October 18, 2024

This year, Aiken County is required by law to develop a Comprehensive Plan that serves as a guiding document for development and redevelopment.

Such plans are mandated by Section 6-29-510 of the South Carolina Local Government Comprehensive Planning Enabling Act of 1994, which states that local Planning Commissions are “to maintain the process that will result in the systematic preparation and continual re-evaluation and updating of those elements considered critical, necessary, and desirable to guide the development and redevelopment of its area of jurisdiction.”

Prior to 2020, plans had to be written to address, at a minimum, nine key variables, aka “elements.” (1) Those were, and remain, population, economic development, natural and cultural resources, community facilities, housing, land use, transportation, and priority investments.

In 2020, the tenth element of resiliency was added, which in this case is perhaps best defined by FEMA as “the ability to prepare for threats and hazards, adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover rapidly from adverse conditions and disruptions;” an understated way of describing both widespread and localized disasters and near-disasters.

This definition is perhaps the most pertinent because, under state law, the resiliency element requires that planners consider the impacts of natural phenomena that can create “natural hazards.” Specifically, the law states, in part, that:

“A resiliency element considers the impacts of flooding, high water, and natural hazards on individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, economic development, public infrastructure and facilities, and public health, safety and welfare. This element includes an inventory of existing resiliency conditions, promotes resilient planning, design and development, and is coordinated with adjacent and relevant jurisdictions and agencies..”

The Aiken County Plan and Resiliency

The operative word for comprehensive plans is “guide.” The plans are not legally binding, but intended to provide guidance for future decision-making, i.e., the approval or disapproval of a developer’s plans.

Once a draft plan is completed, public hearings must be held prior to the plan’s approval by County Council. According to the 2014-2024 Aiken County Comprehensive Plan, the Aiken County Planning Commission (ACPC) held a public hearing on December 18, 2014, and that was followed by a 12-month public comment period and public input sessions.

The County’s process for its 2025-2035 plan is moving at a similar pace, with a schedule for completion and approval in mid to late 2025.

According to the minutes from the ACPC’s May 2024 public meeting, the status of the plan was discussed during the “New Business” portion of the agenda (2). Four months later, the early timeframe (Figure 1) presented at the May meeting evening had still not been realized—the ACPC had yet to hold a public meeting to discuss the issue.

As the process moves along, the opportunity to delve into the issue of resiliency planning and response to natural and man-made disasters has been presented at a time when the lessons learned from emergency preparations for, and post-disaster response to Hurricane Helene will be fresh in the minds of Aiken County residents. The next year is an opportune time to discuss the issues posed by natural and man-made hazards—which currently are only addressed in the County’s thorough, though obscure, Emergency Operations Plan.

The Resiliency Element

Aiken County is susceptible to numerous natural hazards, including tornadoes, tropical storms/hurricanes, ice storms, major rainfall events that can trigger flooding and dam failures, severe drought, and wildfires—all hazards that can be chronically exacerbated by human development. The County is also vulnerable to man-made disasters such as a radiological dispersal accident at the Savannah River Site or its neighbor, the Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant

In the past ten years, the County has experienced two major, widespread weather events—-the Ice Storm of 2014 and 2024’s Hurricane Helene. Both incidents resulted in catastrophic damage to the electrical grid, with critical facilities and more than a hundred thousand residents losing electrical power. The amount of debris generated by the storms overwhelmed local and state-wide capabilities.

These consequences led to the federal designation of a regional disaster area that included Aiken County; thus enabling the County to receive FEMA funds to alleviate the cost of its responses, most notably debris removal. However, FEMA does not come to the rescue for lesser, more localized events whose severity levels do not reach the threshold beyond which the County and State of South Carolina can adequately respond; and even FEMA funding requires some accompanying cost sharing that provides a financial incentive to mitigate disaster response needs.

The County can also experience man-made hazards that can result in disasters and near-disasters. Most notable is the Graniteville train wreck of 2005 that produced a plume of chlorine gas; which triggered an evacuation of more than 5,000 people, killed nine, and caused long-term health impacts for hundreds of residents. This accident is still a top-of-the-mind event, as the Aiken County Emergency Management Plan identifies a railroad accident as “likely” to be “catastrophic;” and thus it is assigned the highest disaster rating of 9 in the disaster rating summary (Figure 2).

While these events may remain prominent because of their scale and breadth of the events, other disastrous and disrupting events have occurred. These include the 2009 tornado that tore across 35 miles of terrain from Columbia County to New Ellenton, tornadoes in the Windsor and Monetta areas in 2022, record-breaking rainfall and associated dam failures in Eastern Aiken County—and across the state—during the 2015 Hurricane Joaquin-related, thousand-year rainfall event referred to as the “fire hose” phenomenon, and the Gateway Fire in May 2019 that caused a complete shutdown of Interstate 20 and the evacuation of dozens of residents.

Comprehensive Planning in Other Jurisdictions

In 2022, the North Augusta City Council approved its 2021-2031 Comprehensive Plan, but failed to include the resiliency element—even though much of the City’s growth has occurred in the Savannah River flood plain, and tornadoes and other extreme weather, most recently Hurricane Helene, have struck the town.

In 2023, the City of Aiken did make an effort to address the newly identified resiliency element in its amended, five-year update to its Comprehensive Plan. In the final document, city planners devoted two pages (217-218) to resiliency. The chapter began by stating that little guidance is currently available from the State of South Carolina to address these issues.

Compare these first two local efforts to Lexington County’s 2022-2032 Comprehensive Plan. In it, twelve pages of detailed information were devoted to the resiliency element chapter (3), and thirteen concrete measures to be taken were later identified in the implementation chapter.

While the emphasis was on mitigating flood risks and responding to flood events that have plagued, and continue to threaten, the County, the plan also identified ice storms, hurricanes, and man-made hazards such as the risk of a radiation dispersal accident at nearby Summer Nuclear Power Plant—although no mitigating measures were identified yet for the latter.

The Lexington County plan also includes a much fuller identification of the various agencies and jurisdictions, and identifies the means to achieve greater resiliency, such as treating “ lowlands as natural assets,” and “preserving natural areas.”

Florence County, which is also comparable in size to Aiken County, also addressed resiliency in its plan. The County provided a detailed snapshot of the extreme natural events experienced in the past 50-60 years—a table (Figure 3) that provides an insight into the breadth and frequency of natural hazards.

Aiken County has the opportunity to delve into the resiliency element in a similarly broad and deep manner as other counties, and in a way that could greatly heighten citizen awareness of how risks can be mitigated and how responses can be better streamlined. The planning process will likely follow an internal review of how the County’s Emergency Management response corresponded to its operations plan during the recent Hurricane Helene (Figure 4) disaster, and the ongoing response to that event—including such prominent issues such as information availability and dissemination, the provision of emergency shelters, and the timeliness of debris removal from our roadsides.

Footnotes

(1) The law states the following:

“A local comprehensive plan must include, but not be limited to, the following planning elements:

A population element “which considers historic trends and projections, household numbers and sizes, educational levels, and income characteristics.”

An economic development element “which considers labor force and labor force characteristics, employment by place of work and residence, and analysis of the economic base.”

A natural resources element “which considers coastal resources, slope characteristics, prime agricultural and forest land, plant and animal habitats, parks and recreation areas, scenic views and sites, wetlands, and soil types. Where a separate board exists pursuant to this chapter, this element is the responsibility of the existing board.”

A cultural resources element “which considers historic buildings and structures, commercial districts, residential districts, unique, natural, or scenic resources, archaeological, and other cultural resources. Where a separate board exists pursuant to this chapter, this element is the responsibility of the existing board.”

A community facilities element “which considers water supply, treatment, and distribution; sewage system and wastewater treatment; solid waste collection and disposal, fire protection, emergency medical services, and general government facilities; education facilities; and libraries and other cultural facilities.”

A housing element “which considers location, types, age, and condition of housing, owner and renter occupancy, and affordability of housing. This element includes an analysis to ascertain nonessential housing regulatory requirements, as defined in this chapter, that add to the cost of developing affordable housing but are not necessary to protect the public health, safety, or welfare and an analysis of market-based incentives that may be made available to encourage the development of affordable housing, which incentives may include density bonuses, design flexibility, and streamlined permitting processes. The planning commission must solicit input for this analysis from homebuilders, developers, contractors, and housing finance experts when developing this element.”

A land use element which “considers existing and future land use by categories, including residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, forestry, mining, public and quasi-public, recreation, parks, open space, and vacant or undeveloped.”

A transportation element that “considers transportation facilities, including major road improvements, new road construction, transit projects, pedestrian and bicycle projects, and other elements of a transportation network. This element must be developed in coordination with the land use element, to ensure transportation efficiency for existing and planned development.”

A priority investment element that “analyzes the likely federal, state, and local funds available for public infrastructure and facilities during the next ten years, and recommends the projects for expenditure of those funds during the next ten years for needed public infrastructure and facilities such as water, sewer, roads, and schools.”

The resiliency element that “considers the impacts of flooding, high water, and natural hazards on individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, economic development, public infrastructure and facilities, and public health, safety and welfare. This element includes an inventory of existing resiliency conditions, promotes resilient planning, design and development, and is coordinated with adjacent and relevant jurisdictions and agencies. “

(2) The May 21, 2024 agenda did not identify the Comprehensive Plan as being a New Business agenda item. There was no public notice that the plan was even to be discussed. This was arguably a violation, at least in the spirit if not the letter, of the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. SC FOIA mandates that agendas be published within 24 hours of a meeting and that any changes in the agenda be made at the beginning of the meeting and documented. The plan was not on the agenda, it was added to the agenda with no notice and no Motion to do so.

(3). Lexington County also added a public safety element and an implementation plan, and divided natural and cultural resources into separate chapters to create a thirteen-chapter plan—three more issue categories than required by the law.

Additional Resources

GovPilot.com: How Local Governments Build Resilient Communities.

The Beaufort County Comprehensive Plan considers “resiliency in the face of a changing coastline,” one of the only plans that even alludes to the impacts of climate change, which drove the inclusion of the “resiliency element” into comprehensive planning—without mentioning the term “climate change.”

The FEMA National Resilience Guideline.

Feature Photo: A unique specimen of Longleaf Pine. The ~75-year-old tree appears to have been damaged in the ice storm that occurred in March, 2004. After the top was broken, it developed multiple tops but no cohesive structure. The tree was resilient to a harsh event, but still did not fully recover.

As a species, Longleaf Pine is generally much more resilient than the more prevalent Loblolly Pine; being better adapted to higher fire intensity, hail, high winds, and other phenomena.

The photo was chosen because the issue of forest cover and species composition in forestlands and urban forests could be at the forefront of near-term discussions relating to resiliency; which is an issue to also be addressed in future stories.

The Aiken Chronicles welcomes all letters and columns devoted to the Aiken County Comprehensive Plan and any other issues of concern.