Published in Post & Courier on January 25, 2024
BY STEVE GILBERT
Many thanks to The Post and Courier for its Jan. 19 coverage of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control’s refusal to amend its water withdrawal policy.
The perhaps well-intentioned push by the Farm Bureau and the S.C. Chamber of Commerce to induce large commercial farming operations to come to ou r state has resulted in a potential crisis for our rivers and streams. Impacts include loss of fisheries habitat, recreational use and aesthetic viewing, as well as aquatic ecological system decay.
Adverse effects of removing too much water from our rivers are not limited only to rivers; they will also occur in estuaries that are deprived of normal freshwater riverine flows.
These estuaries then will become more salty, thereby harming their function as a nursery for various fauna including crabs, shellfish and young-of-year juvenile fish.
The impact of draining and drying up our rivers is anathema to good management of the public’s natural resources. Besides a responsibility to bring more money into the state, our state government has legal obligations to protect its citizens’ resources under the public trust doctrine.
The doctrine’s origins date back to early Roman times, when the Roman emperor Justinian (in the early 500s A.D.) commanded his 10 wisest men to draw up a collection of laws, the Justinian Codes, which are recognized as one of the greatest Roman contributions to civilization.
Among these codes was the concept that there was public ownership of waters (rivers, sea, seashore) and unlimited public right to use these resources.
In the Middle Ages, the Justinian Codes became the basis for most modern European laws.
England expanded the scope of public rights to include navigation and fisheries, and early American courts added commerce to these rights and gave states the authority to protect public trust rights under the public trust doctrine.
Currently, fishing, boating, hunting, swimming, preserving wildlife habitat and wetlands, scientific study, open space, maintaining the aesthetic beauty and ecological integrity are all considered covered by the doctrine.
It is incumbent upon our state under the public trust doctrine to ensure that the integrity of our state’s rivers and their use and benefits to our citizenry are not affected by the lack of a reasonable water withdrawal policy.
Steve Gilbert of James Island is special project manager for the S.C. Wildlife Federation.
Banner photo by Andrea Capers.