Hogg Hummock, Gopher Tortoises, and Tybee Water

– June 19, 2024 –

Good morning! Today we’re taking a look at Sapelo’s Hogg Hummock, where residents are again challenging the rezoning that threatens to gentrify their ancestral home. Then we turn to the Hyundai site in Bryan County, where more than 100 gopher tortoises were evicted from their burrows before construction began. Finally, we have a report about how Tybee Island plans to deal with the water shortage it’s facing. Questions, tips or concerns? Send me a note at mary.landers@thecurrentga.org

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Sapelo zoning revisited

After a false start that was dismissed on a procedural issue, Gullah Geechee residents of Sapelo Island are headed back to court to fight the rezoning of the residential area of the island, known as Hogg Hummock. Nine residents filed their complaint in McIntosh County Superior Court late last month, as The Current’s Mary Landers reports.

Representing the residents are the Southern Poverty Law Center and Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore. The former, a nonprofit legal advocacy group, faced its own turmoil earlier this month. It laid off about a quarter of its workforce, some 60 people, according to its union, which alleges it did so despite having $1B in reserves. “The SPLC said it is consolidating certain programs and activities, and eliminating others which resulted in staff reductions,” the Associated Press reports here.

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100 tortoises relocated

More than 100 gopher tortoises were removed from burrows at Bryan County Hyundai site ahead of construction, John Deem of the Savannah Morning News reports. The animals were relocated to Fort Stewart, where there are acres of the long leaf pine habitat they prefer. The gopher tortoise is Georgia’s state reptile and is a listed as a threatened species by the state.

In its 2022 environmental assessment, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided few details about the tortoise removal, saying only “all gopher tortoises were removed in 2021 and in coordination with the USFWS and Georgia (Wildlife Resources Division).” Earlier this month the Ogeechee Riverkeeper filed a letter of intent to sue the Corps over its handling of the permitting of the Hyundai Megasite, focusing not on wildlife but on water supply issues. Read The Current’s report on that effort here.

Learning about so many tortoises being removed at once got us thinking, “what do you call a group of turtles?” It turns out that like crows (a murder) and owls (a parliament), turtles do have a special collective noun to describe a bunch of them together. Give up? It’s creep, as in, “Wildlife officials transported a creep of gopher tortoises from the Hyundai Megasite to Fort Stewart.”

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Tybee water woes

Tybee Island has limited options for drinking water. Its three wells are permitted to withdraw an average of less than 1 million gallons a day from the Floridan aquifer, a limit the beach resort of 3,100 residents has little choice but to exceed when the population swells with summer visitors. Georgia prohibits new withdrawals from this already stressed groundwater source in Chatham County, a so-called “red zone.” Tybee tried to solve this problem by looking deeper, to the Cretaceous aquifer. But that effort ended with a collapsed well mid-drilling, in 2016.

Now Tybee is again seeking to increase its water supply. The city is looking both underground and to its neighbor, Savannah, as Eric Curl of Savannah Agenda reports here.

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Also noted

• Last week Coast Watch brought you news of an amendment from U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter (R-St. Simons) that would have postponed the expansion of vessel speed regulations meant to protect endangered right whales. That amendment failed. But the next day, Carter proposed a bill to postpone the expansion of those rules even further, until 2030. In the interim, a proposed grant program would fund alternative attempts to reduce ship strikes, such as the use of detection technology. Read the bill here. The House Natural Resources Wildlife Subcommittee has scheduled a hearing on the bill June 27.
• Georgia’s top environmental regulator, Jeff Cown, accompanied Gov. Brian Kemp on his recent trip to Korea. It was an educational trip for the director of the Environmental Protection Division, said Marie Gordon, Georgia Department of Economic Development spokesperson. “This mission includes an educational track focused on the hydrogen ecosystem and emerging technologies in green logistics,” she wrote in an email to The Current. “As Georgia develops policies around the future of logistics, our government partners will be better educated by learning from real life applications they will experience firsthand in Korea.”
• Environmental, labor and health groups are urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide disaster relief funding for extreme heat, as The New York Times reports.

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