Posted on May 11, 2026
Dennis Allen toured the 16 miles of creeks and channels in Murrells Inlet that are proposed for a dredging project. It reminded him of the time in the 1990s when he was director of the Baruch Marine Lab and there was a plan to dredge three miles of canals at DeBordieu to improve access to North Inlet.
Conservation groups appealed the state permit for that project and won. The project was scaled back.
“Extensive dredging would unquestionably have serious adverse environmental impacts. That is not to say, however, that a permit allowing any dredging activity in the DeBordieu canals should be denied,” Administrative Law Judge Stephen P. Bates said in his ruling.
Allen told a group of about 50 residents at the annual Murrells Inlet Community Creek Talk last week that the science hasn’t changed over nearly 30 years.
Georgetown County applied in 2023 for federal and state permits to remove 750,000 cubic yards of sand and silt from the Murrells Inlet waterways. It wants to dump the dredge spoils in the ocean off Huntington Beach State Park. The Army Corps of Engineers requested additional studies on the sediment, its toxicity and where it might move from the proposed disposal site.
Chip Smith, who started the Creek Talk as a companion to the annual Spring Tide cleanup of the inlet, became concerned this winter when officials said they wanted to enlist the help of the state’s senators to press the Corps to issue the permit. He toured the proposed dredge sites with Allen. He also talked with the project manager for GEL, the county’s engineering firm, who told him that the permits won’t be issued if the work can’t be done safely.
“There are a lot of ways to look at this,” Smith said, and he wants to make sure the health of the estuary is a priority.
The Murrells Inlet project is about 10 times the size of the dredging proposed for DeBordieu, which called for removing 78,500 cubic yards of silt.
“There are not really any regulatory limits or guidance,” Allen said. “It’s a delicate balance between the depth and the angle of the slope.”
Dredging too deep and too steep risks creating areas of stagnant water and increasing sediment, conditions that the dredging is supposed to mitigate.
Saltwater estuaries “are among the most productive ecosystems on Earth,” Allen said. The most productive area within them is the intertidal zone where dredging is proposed. He noted the quality of that habitat will determine the success of the flounder stocking program the state began in Murrells Inlet this winter.
Dredging might create more open water for fishing, Allen said, but it will provide less area for juvenile fish to mature.
“I’d be hard pressed to identify any benefits,” he said.
Asked how long it would take for the marsh to recover after dredging, Allen said it would reestablish itself the way it does after a storm, but wouldn’t be as productive.
“It will be a different kind of estuary,” he said.
Allen also has concerns about the offshore disposal site, which he said would have a volume equal to a 23-story building on a 2-acre lot. It could impact the ecology of the region. “There has to be a better way to deal with this material,” he said.
The best outcome would be to reduce the scale of the dredging and reduce the actual work from three years to one, giving the marsh more opportunity to recover, Allen said.
“First and foremost, a reduction in the scope,” he said.
