Posted on September 11, 2023
After years of delays, the only saltwater access point in Berkeley County will be more accessible for the community to enjoy.
When low tide comes to the Bushy Park Landing in Goose Creek, boats are often stuck out in the water as more sand and mud have collected on the shoreline over the years.
“This will go from being an unsafe boat landing at times, and not an ideal place to use, to something that we think the public’s really going to enjoy,” Berkeley County Supervisor, Johnny Cribb, says. “If you drive by here as often as I do, it’s not uncommon to see a boat stranded out there on the pluff mud on a 90-degree or 100-degree day; you got one or two folks coming back in and they’re stuck.”
But now with the help of the dredging project, crews will dredge down eight feet and 200 feet across to make the landing safer and deeper.
The project is set to begin in November and will take 28 days to complete the entire dredging process to remove 150,000 cubic yards of different sediments in the area.
“I’ve been fishing out here my whole life, and it’s taken a long time for it to get like it’s gotten, but we’ve put a plan in place for the future that never existed,” Cribb says.
Funding for the project was first approved through the 2014 penny sales tax referendum, but it took years and many delays to find the proper site to dump the dredged sand and mud from the bottom of the inlet.
“This project has been contemplated for a long time,” Cribb adds. “It became a big public safety and public recreation issue for a lot of folks that have used it for decades.”
Some fishermen in the area, Dung Toran and Thomas Clubb, have been using the landing for decades, and have experienced problems during low tide.
“My boat goes easy [in the water], but sometimes it gets stuck in the middle,” Toran says. “Sometimes I hit the muck and my motor doesn’t work anymore.”
Clubb says he is glad the project is happening after years of asking local government to do something about the landing.
“Our crabbers come out here, that’s their livelihood crabbing out here. In low tide, they can’t get under to get to their draft plots; they have to do that by a certain time of day to get their crops to the market. I’m sure they’re happy this is going to happen,” he says. “I’m ecstatic to see it happen; it’s a long time coming.”
After years of delays, the only saltwater access point in Berkeley County will be more accessible for the community to enjoy.
The sediments will be transported to the Clouter Creek South Cell disposal site in North Charleston pending approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“I’ll be long gone as a supervisor before it needs to happen; but the biggest gift that will leave future administrations is with all the uncertainty of finding a small site,” he adds. “We realized we need to have our own site; we need to control our own destiny in the future.”
The total cost of the project is $5,036,000. Funding stems from the 2014 and 2022 Berkeley County One Cent Sales Tax referendums.
To keep the landing from getting to the same sediment buildup as it is now, Cribb says Berkeley County will access the area every few years to see how much silt has been pushed up.
“I wish the public knew how hard we’ve how hard we’ve worked on this; it’s never gone on the back burner, and we have pursued every potential possibility out there,” he says. “We’ve gone down every rabbit hole. So, I know that the public is really anticipating this and they’re really going to appreciate it.”
