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Several times a year, state authorities enter the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve in Conway and start fires.
Portions of International Drive, a mostly four-lane divided highway that connects Carolina Bays Parkway in Myrtle Beach with S.C. 90, are shuttered. Plumes of smoke waft over the area.
But everything is under control. Known as prescribed burns, those fires aim to maintain the reserve’s varied ecosystem and prevent out-of-control wildfires.
Still, smoke from the burns, which can last for days, is uncomfortable for some nearby residents and visitors.
Soon, if Conway Medical Center and Horry County Council’s local hospital formula has their way, a medical center will be built across the street from the reservation to serve the citizens of a rapidly developing area. Burns has environmentalists and a provincial council member concerned about its effects on patients, staff and the environment.
“Do we want a hospital? Surely we want it. But this is not the position to say it,” Councilmember Mike Masciarelli said in August. “This is a crisis waiting to happen. “
The hospital-owned assets are less than a half-mile from Ocean Bay High School, Ocean Bay Elementary School and county-owned athletic fields. The assets are located almost directly across the street from a new veterinary hospital under construction. The proposed hospital has a pipeline of assets with a portion of the residential development, The Farm at Carolina Forest, developed in the mid-1990s and comprising approximately 1,000 housing units.
But supporters of the hospital and a medical researcher at Harvard University say the smoke will threaten medical staff, patients and visitors to the hospital.
“The air intakes will utilize the latest filter technologies developed and proven in California to minimize wildfire smoke infiltration,” a hospital spokesperson said in a 2020 statement. Plus, the hospital will be “located far from the burn area, further minimizing smoke infiltration.”
Why, then, have plans for building the hospital been held in limbo for the past three years? In part, it’s because of an unrelenting dispute between environmental concerns and public health needs.
Environmentalists and the state Department of Natural Resources have pointed to several negative environmental issues for the hospital’s location, while Horry County officials and the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control say the facility would meet developing public health needs. And in the middle is Conway Medical. Centro, which is reluctant to deviate from its stalled plan.
No one questions the fact that as Horry County’s population continues to grow, a hospital is needed to meet the county’s physical care needs. That’s the gist of Conway Medical Center’s argument for the facility’s location across from the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve.
CMC saw “significant need for (hospital) beds in our community,” Brian Argo, the center’s chief executive officer and president, said during an April community meeting. So CMC purchased the 353-acre tract for $5.5 million in 2021.
By 2040, the population of Conway East, a county census department, is expected to reach 185,000, according to a county document. This is an increase of almost 92% from the other 96,520 people who lived in the region in 2020.
In March 2021, DHEC identified that a 50-bed hospital was needed for the region, granting state approval to CMC’s plan. The hospital’s 50 beds would be relocated from MCC’s main 210-bed facility in Conway, where they are underutilized.
Earlier this year, the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control granted approval for 3 more hospitals in Horry County: McLeod Health’s Carolina Forest Hospital, Tidelands Health’s Carolina Bays Hospital in Socastee, an extension of Grand Strand Health’s South Strand Medical Center, and a new tower. The 48-bed McLeod Hospital is less than a mile from the planned amenities at Conway Medical Center.
In addition to the new CMC facility to be built near International Drive in Carolina Forest, the projects are expected to create approximately two hundred new hospital beds in Horry County.
But one of the main hurdles to the CMC’s allocation of the 50-bed hospital is an environmental argument opposed to the hospital’s proposed location. The Coastal Conservation League and the state Department of Natural Resources say building the hospital along International Drive would protect nature. The hospital would be considered a smoke-sensitive area, a designation that would prevent burn officials from sending smoke in that direction.
According to experts, an address to send smoke would disturb the distinctive ecosystem of the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Reserve. For this reason, the closer the site of the hospital fire is, the fewer plants can be burned. This can lead to an increased threat of wildfires.
Prescribed chimney control and a medical facility are compatible, state Department of Natural Resources Director Robert Boyles said in letters to the Horry County Planning and Zoning Department and the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Each year, the DNR and the State Forestry Commission burn at least 1,500 acres within the 10,000-acre preserve. Masciarelli, the county councilman who opposes the hospital project, said that in some years state agencies carried out as many as three burns.
Other locations are available to build the hospital, “but there is only one Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve,” Boyles wrote.
In addition to addressing public health and environmental considerations, MCC officials have attempted to alleviate citizens’ concerns about increased noise and traffic. Hospital officials say that if the medical center is built, a residential complex of more than 3,000 units could modernize it. , which would generate more traffic and noise that citizens fear so much.
Between June and December, more than 23,000 people signed a petition addressed to the medical center’s president and CEO, urging the MCC to locate the hospital’s location. In contrast, more than one hundred MCC medical professionals supported the need for the $160 million project. , according to documents filed with DHEC.
During the more than three years of debate, CMC has taken action. Recently, its spokesperson said that due to the lack of new data about the projected hospital, the center did not comment on the project.
The ecosystem of the Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve is governed by woody, waxy plants and Carolina bays that herald habitat for everything from Venus flytraps to black forest bears.
But if plants are maintained by prescribed burns or if those burns are restricted, it becomes “incredibly dense,” amplifying the threat of wildfires, said James Luken, a retired biology professor at Coastal Carolina University.
On April 22, 2009, a wildfire described by the South Carolina Forestry Commission as the state’s most devastating and costly — known as the Highway 31 fire — started near the preserve. It tore through Lewis Ocean Bay, more heavily affecting areas that had not recently gone under prescribed burns.
The preserve’s vegetation was fuel for the fire that ended up jumping over S.C. 22. It burned through 19,130 acres, with forested wetlands damage estimated costs around $17 million. The wildfire destroyed 76 homes and caused total damages of about $25 million.
If the hospital had been set up at the time, it would have been affected by smoke, the Coastal Conservation League said. At the very least, the league expected him to be evacuated due to the hospital’s proximity to the fire.
Environmentalists say it makes no sense to build a hospital to meet the public’s health needs and locate it next to an area that needs prescribed burning.
In South Carolina, smoke control rules state that prescribed burners cannot send smoke into smoke-sensitive spaces within 1,000 feet of the intended burning location. Trapper Fowler, north shore assignment manager for the Coastal Conservation League, said The spaces have hospitals and schools. The league is a nonprofit organization that works to improve South Carolina’s herbal resources.
Despite fire officials’ efforts to send smoke in the direction of the hospital, the wind can’t be controlled, so it’s possible the smoke is still blowing toward the hospital, said Fowler, who is a qualified prescribed fire manager.
When prescribed burns are held at the preserve, gates close off access to International Drive because the smoke can hurt drivers’ visibility. Under current plans, the hospital would sit behind those gates, meaning access to medical care could be hindered during burns. Prescribed burns can smolder for a while, said Fowler, adding that in 2021 International Drive was shuttered for four days.
While smoke is a health hazard for everyone, breathing it in is especially bad for the elderly, children, pregnant women, and others with lung or central diseases. Plumes of smoke can lead to strokes, asthma and heart attacks, according to American Lung. Association.
CMC spokeswoman Allyson Floyd said the facility will receive a specialized HVAC formula to prevent smoke from a prescribed burn.
These types of specialized HVAC systems are a moderate solution for keeping indoor air quality in a prescribed state of burn, said Mary Johnson, a senior scientist for environmental fitness studies at Harvard University.
For starters, newer hospitals are tighter on the inside, Johnson said. Because of that and strict regulations, a hospital would be an “efficient” organization to work in a housing community, which is difficult to regulate, he added.
But the South Carolina Forestry Commission and the Coastal Conservation League are convinced that a specialized formula is enough to protect against the effects of smoke.
The specialized formula that would be installed inside the hospital “only takes into account the air inside the facility, not the surrounding area,” where other people entering the hospital may be affected by wildfire smoke, Darryl Jones, the commission’s forest protection lead. he wrote in a statement. April email.
Johnson said he’s not aware of any studies looking at the effects of very short-term smoke exposure, such as walking from a car to a door.
According to National Institutes of Health research, a small number of studies have been conducted of short-term smoke exposure, which is defined as exposure for up to a month. The studies showed short-term exposures were associated with increased risk of hospital admissions for neurological disorders and poorer performance on cognitive tests. However, impacts of smoke exposure lasting less than a day have not been studied adequately, according to Johnson.
Faced with the progression and risk of prescribed burning, the state’s DNR proposed to acquire CMC’s International Drive assets to retain them.
“We hope that you will consider this request to allow the first right of refusal should CMC decide to abandon the current site,” wrote Lorianne Riggin, DNR’s director of environmental programs, in a May 2022 email to Argo and Bret Barr, CMC’s then-CEO and president. Barr transitioned to a role on CMC’s Board of Trustees in December 2022.
Barr replied that the center’s plan had changed. Currently, the land is valued at approximately $7 million and remains zoned for residential use.
In September, Horry County Councilman Dennis DiSabato, whose district includes the proposed hospital’s site, said regardless of DNR’s offer, he doesn’t think the state agency has the ability to pay fair market value. And there’s nothing that would require the hospital to sell it for less than that, he added.
But Masciarelli, the county council member who opposes the proposed hospital site, said in August that whether the DNR could simply gain the land was not the council’s concern.
As a local real estate agent, he described the assets as “problematic” and “overrun with mosquitoes. “He said the construction near the reserve is like a facility near the site of a nuclear reactor. There’s an explanation for why “no one touched the site with a 10-foot pole” as there was an immediate progression around it, Masciarelli said.
“You’re buying next to a preserve where they will potentially burn once, two, three times a year. It gets so bad and smoke-ridden,” Masciarelli said. “I just don’t know a builder that would invest millions of dollars with that kind of risk.”
He does not believe that a hospital or a residential complex can be built on this land.
DiSabato, who supports CMC’s plan for the future densely populated housing structure, said a hospital would generate less traffic and noise than a residential network and satisfy desires for physical care in the developing county.
“The hospital will have no more effect on prescribed burning than 3,232 multi-family dwellings would have,” the MCC’s Argo said at a network assembly in April. “So, for us, we see this as an advantage for the network and a bigger alternative. “
Plans for CMC’s new hospital called for it to be completed by October 2023, but two months past the deadline, nothing has yet been replaced. The delay was due to a separate factor involving other county-owned assets adjacent to the hospital site.
The county plans to use this site as a component of its $600 million RIDE 3 road structure program. The county says RIDE 3 will destroy wetlands, meaning county officials will have to protect wetlands elsewhere as a component of credits for a mitigation bank. wetlands on the 3,700 acres it owns next to the hospital site for the mitigation bank.
But this plan will have to be approved by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.
As of Dec. 21, the proposed mitigation bank is “still under review” and “there is no specific timeline for a decision,” said Glenn Jeffries, communications lead for the Corps’ Charleston District.
The delay refers to prescribed burns on those 3,700 acres. If the Army Corps of Engineers determines that the hospital structure will decrease the number of prescribed burns on that land, the amount of wetlands that can be set aside for the mitigation bank would likely be reduced. This can also be just Ride 3.
The county council has held off giving final approval to a rezoning change for the hospital until it gets a decision from the Army Corps.
“Like Lewis Ocean Bay, it will also require common prescribed burns to release wetland credits, which serve to repair habitat and decrease the threat of wildfires,” Darienne Jordan of the Coastal Conservation League wrote on the organization’s website non profit. will result in a loss of potential mitigation credits, delays and higher prices for highway improvements. ”
To get all the credits for wetlands, more than 2,000 acres of the domain would require prescribed burns in the first five years, Fowler of the Coastal Conservation League said. According to the Army Corps of Engineers, the land will have to be burned over and over again. every few years in perpetuity. Currently, the land is not subject to prescribed burning.
State DNR officials said the company would “resume talks” about accepting long-term control duties if the hospital moved elsewhere. With a landscape already developing, with subdivisions on three sides, a hospital would make prescribed burning tricky because it would restrict the places where officials who burn can simply send smoke. Riggin called it an “unknown challenge” in a letter to RIDE 3 program director Jason Thompson.
Coastal Conservation League staff concluded that they would charge at least $400,000 to rent a contracted burner every two years in perpetuity.
In an April 2021 email, Riggin said DNR would not be involved in any prescribed burns on the mitigation bank property if the hospital is built. But in a May 2023 email, Riggin told Thompson that DNR would “definitely reconsider” long-term stewardship of the mitigation bank if housing units were built instead of the hospital.
“There are considerations about liability related to other people facing medical emergencies and trying to get to the hospital because the doors are locked,” Riggin wrote. “In a residential development, we give advance notice, through our own extension service, when “the burning season is approaching and when the prescribed burns are scheduled. “
The other option is to retain the proposed hospital, preventing it from developing, which would “remove any additional burden related to the development of plans and the execution of prescribed fire control for the county and the SCDNR,” Riggin said.
Some members of the Horry County Council have expressed fear that if the mitigation bank’s plan is approved, the county will get the credits it needs.
“Will our assets minimize the amount of credit we receive?County Administrator Steve Gosnell wrote in an August 2021 email to Thompson.
Thompson responded that, assuming CMC builds its facility, it would restrict the number of potential burn days, which could be limited to the number of acres burned and mitigation credits earned.
While the council’s final reading timeline for approval of the rezoning of the 353-acre assets is in limbo, DiSabato said that while he can’t be sure of the other council members’ vote, it’s typical for them to stick to the district’s representative leader.
In this case, it is DiSabato. Et MCC’s facilities.
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