This Thursday, September 11th, the Aiken County Board of Appeals will hold a public hearing regarding an application for an exemption, or variance, to the legal requirement that driveways be 300 feet apart on a major thoroughfare—in this case Whiskey Road.
The applicant is the Drayton-Parker Company, from Savannah, Georgia, who plans to build a Parker’s Kitchen convenience store and gas station at the junction of Chukker Creek Road and Whiskey Road. In doing so, the company is proposing to build a driveway that is only 170 feet from the existing driveway at the South on Whiskey Event and Entertainment Venue and JC’s Seafood. It also proposes a deceleration lane on Whiskey Road that will begin only 30 feet from South on Whiskey’s driveway, creating a new safety concern on an already hazardous road.
by Don Moniak September 10, 2025
Three months ago, the Drayton-Parker Company, owner of the Parker’s Kitchen convenience store and gas station chain, bought a pair of properties totaling 3.67 acres at the junction of Whiskey and Chukker Creek Roads. The company did so with the intention of building its fourth establishment in Aiken County. The plan is for an eight-pump (16 filling stations) gas station and a 5,700 square foot convenience store similar to its existing locations in northwest Aiken and North Augusta.
This is the second location on Whiskey Road sought by Parker’s. The first was at the junction of Stratford Drive and Whiskey Road. That plan did not move forward following Aiken City Council’s decision in June 2023 to let the proposal die by not voting on the matter. After that, the company moved a half a mile south to its newly planned location.
The latest rendition of a Parker’s Kitchen on Whiskey Road appears to be a done deal. The appropriate zoning, Urban Development (UD), is already in place; meaning that the planned use does not have to endure a public hearing before the Planning Commission. Aiken City Council approved sewer and water services at its September 23, 2024 meeting. (Pages 171-185) At that meeting, there was some discussion of traffic concerns and close proximity to nearby residences, but the concerns paled compared to the failed effort to build at Whiskey and Stratford.
There is one stumbling block for this Parker’s on Whiskey Road, and that is access from Whiskey Road. At issue is Section 24-2.12.9.(1) of Aiken County Code, which states:
“No more than one driveway shall be allowed for every 300 feet of street frontage on major thoroughfares.”
Parker’s plan is for a driveway on Whiskey Road that will only be 170 feet from the nearest existing driveway.
That nearest existing driveway is owned by the South on Whiskey Event and Entertainment Venue at 3197 Whiskey Road, an activity center that has operated since 1998 and includes a miniature golf course, an event center, JC’s Seafood restaurant, and The Classic Cone ice cream stand.
Parker’s Kitchen proposes a deceleration lane that begins only 30 feet south of the JC Seafood’s driveway. While the deceleration lane is planned for the right of way and does not encroach directly upon South on Whiskey’s property, the move is nonetheless an infringement upon the businesses—it greatly reduces the buffer between the roadway and the miniature golf course, and it negatively impacts the ability of customers to safely turn either way onto Whiskey Road. (see Figures 1-3)
Figure 1: “X” is approximate location of the start of the deceleration lane. South on Whiskey is outlined in red, Drayton-Parker’s property is outlined in blue.
Figure 2: Approximate location of the deceleration lane. South on Whiskey’s driveway is in the foreground. Chukker Creek intersection is in the far background.
Figure 3: Parker’s Kitchen site plan. South on Whiskey is to the north/left. The deceleration lane is in the far upper left. On the upper right is a right hand turn lane that Drayton-Parker also proposes. The right-in, right-out driveway in the upper left is 300 feet from the Chukker Creek Road intersection, and 170 feet from the South on Whiskey driveway, which is not shown in the drawing.
The deceleration lane will lead to a right turn access into Parker’s Kitchen. The reason for that proposed access point is to keep a sufficient distance (300 feet) from the intersection of Chukker Creek Road. But in the process, Parker’s proposes its driveway be only 170 feet from the South on Whiskey entrance—-nearly half the required 300 feet between driveways required by the County regulations; and thus the need for a variance from the regulation.
1. “There must be extraordinary and exceptional conditions pertaining to the particular piece of property.”
Drayton-Parker argued, in their application, only that “sub-standard spacing exists,” a known condition when it applied for utilities services and when it bought the property. The circumstances are only exceptional because Parkers anticipates traffic levels that would dwarf another use; i.e. a medical office or a Dollar Store.
2. “These conditions do not generally apply to other property in the vicinity.”
Drayton-Parker has argued that “‘There are properties to the northwest that do not meet the 300’ driveway space.”
This is true for much of Whiskey Road, but not necessarily true for businesses that were established after the 2006-2007 time frame when the Highway Corridor Overlay (HCO) Ordinance was put into effect. The establishments that had to follow the driveway rules include Dollar General, Circle K, Mi Rancho, Lowe’s Foods, Fortress Storage, and Holiday Inn Express. In fact, Parker’s was prepared to adhere to this safety rule at its failed Stratford Drive location, and has adhered to the rule at every one of its other locations in Aiken County.
The driveway rule exists because too many driveways in close proximity were a contributing cause, if not a root cause, for the unsafe and congested conditions that characterized Whiskey Road twenty years ago. The safety regulation was put into place to avoid exacerbating that aspect of the problem.
3. Because of these conditions, the application of the rule in question “would effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict the utilization of the property.”
Drayton-Parker argued that “The application of the ordinance to this property would prohibit access on S.C. Hwy 19(Whiskey Road).” This appears to be the only criteria that the application meets in a clearcut manner.
4. The authorization of a variance will not be of substantial detriment to adjacent property or to the public good, and the character of the district will not be harmed by the granting of the variance.
Drayton-Parker claimed that a Traffic Impact Analysis showed that the project will “not have a negative impact on the adjacent properties.”
John Hyder, the owner of South on Whiskey and JC’s, disagrees, and is challenging the variance. He believes the deceleration lane is both dangerously located too close to his driveway, and that the increased difficulty of right hand turns from his driveway will deter business.
As he puts it:
“I am not against growth and development. I feel the codes and regulations were put in place to guide development in a safe and consistent manner. I just want developers to follow these rules.”
It appears that Drayton-Parker Company bought its property with the knowledge that it had to obtain an exemption to a traffic safety regulation in order to have access from Whiskey Road.
There is little question that its plans will have a detrimental impact on the adjacent business, South on Whiskey’s operations; the question is whether that detriment will be “substantial” and whether Drayton-Parker is deserving of an exemption that has not been granted to other entities on the Whiskey Road Highway Overlay.
(The Board of Appeals meeting is at 6:30 p.m. in the Sandlapper Room on the first floor of the County Administration Building at 1930 University Parkway. The application for the variance can be found on pages 38 to 46 in the agenda documents. )
(An update on City Elections and the rewrite of the City of Aiken’s Zoning Ordinance; reported in Local Politics and Planning: 2025.)
by Don Moniak July 25, 2025
Aiken City Council Election Campaigns Begin
Aiken City Council will have a different look in 2026.
Municipal elections are scheduled for November 4, 2025. Four City Council seats are open this year: Districts 2, 4, 5, and 6.
Aiken2025, a newly formed, nonpartisan group whose goal is to raise awareness of the elections, promote a set of values for candidates, and create a forum for candidates, has published this map of the electoral districts.
Councilman Ed Girardeau (District 4), Councilwoman Andrea Gregory, (District 5) and Councilman Ed Woltz (District 6) all opted not to seek reelection. Councilwoman Lessie Price (District 2) will be the only incumbent on the ballot in November. Unless a strong challenger emerges via petition or write-in ballot, she will be reelected.
The Primary
Only the District 6 race will feature a primary; between Republican candidates Barbara Morgan and Clayton Clarkson.
Ms. Morgan served as the Solicitor (equivalent to a District Attorney) for the Second Circuit– Aiken, Barnwell, and Bamberg Counties– from 1990 to 2009; having been elected four times in total. Most recently she has served on the City’s Design Review Board after being appointed by Councilwoman Andrea Gregory in February 2024. For more information, visit her Facebook page and website.
Clayton Clarkson has served as Councilwoman Kay Brohl’s appointee on the City’s Planning Commission since February 2020. For more information, visit his Facebook page and profile on Aiken2025.com.
Candidates in the General Election
Five candidates will only appear on the general election ballot.
Jacob Ellis is running as the Democrat for the District 4 seat. He has been a regular participating attendee at Council meetings, and ran as a write-in candidate in 2021. For more information see his Facebook page and website.
Peter Messina is running as the Republican for the District 4 seat; He has served as Councilwoman Andrea Gregory’s appointee to the Planning Commission since February of 2021. For more information see his profile at Aiken2025.com.
Braylen Waldo is running as the Democrat for the District 5 seat. He is a newcomer to city politics. For more information see his Facebook page.
Kent Cubbage is running as the Republican for the District 5 seat. He served on the City’s Planning Commission from 2013 to 2017. For more information, see his profile at Aiken2025.com.
Lisa Smith is running for the District 6 seat as a Democrat. In 2022, she was a leader in the Do It Right Alliance movement that defeated Project Pascalis; and has continued in an activist role in city politics. She will face the winner of the August 12th primary between Clarkson and Morgan.
The remaining schedule of the elections is as follows:
July 28 to August 8: Early voting for primary August 12: District 6 Primary. August 21: Closing of entries for nomination by petition. November 4: Election Day.
Status of the Rewrite of the City of Aiken’s Zoning Ordinance
The next City Council will be responsible for helping to craft and ultimately approve a rewrite of the Zoning Ordinance, which has been retitled as the “Unified Development Ordinance” (UDO). The UDO will govern all future development for the foreseeable future; it will help determine what Aiken will look like in the coming decades.
In January 2024, the City of Aiken issued a Request for Qualifications for a consultant to facilitate a rewriting of the Zoning Ordinance. In July 2024, the Chicago-based firm of Houseal and Lavigne was chosen by a committee of four city employees–City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh, Assistant City Manager Mary Tilton, Planning Department Director Marya Moultrie, and Planner Richard Cowick. City Council had no input on the selection process; it only validated the final choice.
The latter only submitted a four-page skeletal bid and received the lowest collective grade of 311 out of 400 points. Their monetary bid was $179,000.
According to the FOIA response, White Smith Cousino worked as consultants during preparation of the City’s 2017-2027 Comprehensive Plan. The firm’s bid and their website indicates widespread experience with communities across the Southeast.
Their 38-page submittal contained a detailed schedule and breakdown of tasks for completing the job; including a commitment of 160 hours of “stakeholder and public engagement.” They also made reference to the importance of historic preservation.
Houseal and Lavigne has more limited experience in the Southeast, and had no previous experience with Aiken. Their 26-page submittal contained no details of the tasks at hand; it was predominantly a review of the firm’s background. No reference was made to historic preservation issues.
The City awarded the job to Houseal and Lavigne for $208,000. Planning Director Moultrie and Planner Cowick both gave the firm’s proposal a perfect grade of 100.
Overall, White Smith Cousino scored a collective numeric grade of 339 out of 400; whereas Houseal and Lavigne scored a 379. (see review files in FOIA response).
The monetary bid by White Smith Cousino is unknown because City officials claim it cannot be found and thus was not part of the FOIA response.
A Rocky Start
To date, Houseal and Lavigne has experienced a rocky start, largely due to the minimal amount of public involvement prior to their first presentations on initial recommendations.
The firm and the Planning Department hosted a single, two-hour long, informational public drop-in session at the City Municipal Building on a cold rainy evening this past February. It only attracted 26 people. No similar session was held on the Southside of Aiken.
A survey was also posted online. As of June 2nd, after four months, only 125 people had completed the survey.
In early May, Houseal and Lavigne and the Planning Department began to present initial recommendations through the use of powerpoint presentations; whereas the final recommendation documents remained (and continue to remain) in undisclosed drafts.
The firm’s first stop was a Design Review Board (DRB) work session on May 8th; where Board members expressed concerns over a proposal to shift more power to the Planning Department and redraw historic overlay boundaries. Another issue raised was the development of recommendations without any initial consultation with the Board. (A video of the two-hour presentation and discussion is available here.)
According to the sanitized minutes of the sometimes chaotic meeting, Board members also expressed concern about the lack of preparation time and failure to provide an entire report before the meeting. Two months later, the final recommendation report on the historic districts remains unavailable on the Planning Department’s UDO webpage.
The next stop was a June 2nd joint work session with City Council and the Planning Commission; which was attended by approximately 30 citizens. (An audio of that meeting can be found here and the meeting minutes can be found here).
City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh began the meeting by acknowledging that reception to the process had not been positive; stating that:
“We have received comments from all sectors, and they have been largely negative.”
The issue of the lack of meaningful citizen involvement was summarized by the first speaker, Aiken resident Linda Johnson:
She stated she thought the presentation had some good work and a lot of great ideas. However, she does have some issues with the process that has happened so far. The process so far did not include interviewing the Design Review Board, the Board of Zoning Appeals or other appointees to other commissions, and stakeholders. She was baffled how they could come up with all the strengths and weaknesses without having talked to those people. (From meeting minutes, pages 6-7)
Johnson also asked for a show of hands from Council and Commission members who had taken the online UDO survey. Only one of the twelve officials, Councilwoman Kay Brohl, acknowledged taking the survey.
The citizen involvement issue was reiterated by Councilwoman Lessie Price, who admonished the consultant and the Planning Department that “it is not always about asking folks to come to us, we have to go to them.”
As a result of this myriad of concerns regarding involvement of both appointed boards and commissions, Planning Department Director Marya Moultrie announced an extension of the public input period at Council’s July 14th meeting.
The survey remains on the UDO website, the drop in boards are now stationed in the Municipal Building, and there are plans to replicate or move them to the Odell Weeks Center.
The next steps for Houseal and Lavigne are to meet with “focus groups,” of which only the Planning Commission is identified by name; and to complete its recommendations, which are now a few months late.
Overall, the process is approximately six to eight months behind schedule and will not be completed in 2026; meaning that the next City Council is likely to have the final say.
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.
Figure 1. Early timeline for preparing Aiken County’s Comprehensive Plan for the next 10 years. A Freedom of Information Act request has been filed to determine who the consultant is, when that consultancy contract was procured, and what interviews, if any, have been conducted.
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.
Figure 2. Aiken County Disaster Rating Summary. From the Aiken County Emergency Operations Plan. The plan states that Aiken County Emergency Management will “prepare for all possible events, but place the greatest emphasis on the most dangerous events that are also most likely to occur.” Severe drought that can result in water shortages is one category that is overlooked. (Click to enlarge)
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.
Figure 3: Natural hazards experienced in Florence County over the past half-century. (Click to enlarge)
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.
Figure 4. Hurricane Helene storm path, 6 a.m., February 27th. According to the Aiken County Emergency Operations Plan, a hurricane is considered “possible” in Aiken County and has a disaster rating of 4–the same as an earthquake and less than a flood. Prior to Hurricane Helene, Aiken County residents were more accustomed to hosting evacuees from the Coast, not experiencing hurricane force winds first-hand.
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 useelement 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.
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.”
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.
