Chimney Sweep Near Me Isle of Palms, SC

SULLIVAN’S ISLAND — King tides and a rainy nor’easter just delivered a one-two punch to beaches along South Carolina’s coast.

Folly Beach, Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island all saw some of their sand sucked out into the stormy sea this past weekend. As sea levels in the region rise, erosion events like this one could become more common and severe.

An escarpment over 6 feet tall at Sullivan’s Island’s Thomson Park highlighted the most extreme erosion the island suffered from the 8-foot king tides and the weekend nor’easter.

The beach at the southern end of Sullivan’s Island, where the maritime forest has cropped up on accreted sand, remained wide and flat after the rains. A handful of beach walkers trekked up and down the shore, still wet from the weekend deluge. Aside from some water that had pooled at the town’s public access paths, it was business as usual on that part of the island.

Heading north, toward Breach Inlet, is where evidence of the king tides and heavy rains became apparent. The gradual slope that normally connects the dunes to the dry sandy beach sharply dropped off; the high tides created a substantial shelf, about 6 feet tall.

This section of the beach is where around 20,000 dump-trucks-worth of freshly dredged sand were placed, courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The supplemental sand was a beneficial use project. Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island both benefitted from the dredge spoil.

The town spent $646,000 last year moving a portion of that sand higher onto the beach and build up the dunes at Breach Inlet and behind Marshall Boulevard.

After the king tides and the rainy weekend, about half of that sand is gone, Sullivan’s Island Administrator Joe Henderson said.

“The dunes served their purpose,” he said.

The Isle of Palms didn’t fare as well.

Both the southern end of the island, near Breach Inlet, and the northern tip that encompasses the Wild Dunes neighborhoods and resort, were inundated by the high tides. The Ocean Club Villas, currently surrounded by scaffolding and blue netting, were hit hard by the king tides — waves reached the condominium’s foundation.

Some of the homes on the island, still recovering from damage caused by Hurricane Erin, had piles of tan sandbags stacked behind them. City leaders spent $550,000 in August to deploy hundreds of these bags to Breach Inlet, and portions of Wild Dunes, including the Ocean Club Villas and homes on Beachwood East, a highly-eroded section of the island.

A handful of Ocean Boulevard properties were guarded by the sandbags, piled several feet high to block the waves from the property. Still, a tall shelf of sand dune could be seen behind the row of houses, along with exposed roots from the grass planted to stabilize the dunes.

Folly Beach in a warming world

Across South Carolina, island communities spend millions of dollars each year to renourish their beaches. Folly Beach last October wrapped up a $22 million renourishment project, Hilton Head Island is mid-way through a massive $47.5 million renourishment and Isle of Palms in May finished moving 120,000 cubic yards of sand to protect Wild Dunes Resort as part of a $750,000 project to harvest sand from a developing shoal.

The state Department of Environmental Services estimates that South Carolina’s coastal communities spent more than $400 million in federal, state and local funds on beach renourishment from 1979 to 2023. But as the climate changes and tides rise, beach towns likely will have to pay heftier sums to keep their shores sandy and the multi-million-dollar oceanfront homes protected.

So why keep paying for sand if it’s just going to wash away?

“ Because the public infrastructure and homes are not getting washed away,” said Nicole Elko, the president of the Folly Beach-based Elko Coastal Consulting. Elko works with Folly and other coastal communities on sand renourishment and erosion issues.

South Carolina’s sea islands naturally erode and accrete mass. Sand is generally carried southward from one island to the next, and additional sediment is built up from river mouths. Folly Beach is the exception to that rule.

Folly has to undergo regular renourishment that is (typically, but not always) paid for by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps built jetties just outside Charleston Harbor in the 19th century that disrupt the flow of sand to the island.

“Before this renourishment program began in the ’80s and ’90s, Folly didn't just lose houses, they lost entire roads,” Elko said. “ Our memories are short, but our policies are good, and we do this for a very important reason: to protect this treasure that we all love and enjoy — the beach. And in turn, the beach protects us.”

The last renourishment project on Folly Beach concluded in October 2024 to the tune of $22 million — all of which was covered by the Army Corps. While work is ongoing to determine how much sand was lost, Elko said this past weekend marked the largest erosion event since that project wrapped.

Even if the sand inevitably gets pulled away, the accounting still works out. One 2021 report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that every dollar spent on renourishment resulted in $1,200 in economic development generated by beach tourists, and $130 for federal, state and local tax coffers.

ISLE OF PALMS — City crews are cleaning up specks of tiny, pea-sized objects that washed up on the beach on Sept. 24.

The foam balls spanned for several blocks of the beach. Most were gone by the next day, but the city’s public works staff were dispatched to inventory and remove the remaining debris, according to Isle of Palms City Administrator Douglas Kerr.

“We're trying to get a handle on how much of it's out there now and how to best clean it up,” Kerr said.

Among the handful of beachgoers soaking up the lingering bits of summer sun, a closer look revealed white specks dotting the wrack line, or the area where driftwood and seaweed are pushed out and left behind by the receding tide.

On the afternoon of Sept. 24, the foam balls lined the beach from 25th Avenue to 42nd Avenue, held in place by the wrack and a sandy shelf. Clusters were caught in between the reeds.

The objects weighed nearly nothing, easily flying out from between one’s fingers with the sea breeze, nearly impossible to track down again.

Susan Hill Smith, leader of the Isle of Palms Clean Up Crew, hunched over the sand and meticulously pulled the round objects from the sand. She’s organized and participated in dozens of volunteer beach sweeps each summer on the island.

Plastic foam is a common object left behind on the beach, she said. The volunteer crews see it in the form of coolers, to-go boxes, cups and discarded boogie boards.

Tiny foam bits are also used as filler in beanbag chairs.

The material can be particularly troublesome because it breaks off into smaller pieces that work their way into the environment.

“While each piece is small, this type of foam litter is insidious and incredibly hard to contain and truly clean up. To see it for tens of blocks along the shoreline is incredibly discouraging,” Smith said. “The wind and water are quickly picking them up and dispersing them, so we might not notice them in a few days, but what doesn't get cleaned up will be part of our coastal ecosystems forever now.”

There's no place in the marine environment for the plastic foam, Andrew Wunderley of Charleston Waterkeeper said.

“It absorbs other contaminants and becomes more and more toxic over time. It’s mistaken for food by wildlife, it can be particularly problematic that way,” Wunderley said.

Smith alerted the city to the debris after speaking with other neighbors who had reported seeing litter near the site of the Ocean Club Villas, where a multimillion dollar renovation is taking place.

There, more foam and pieces of insulation can be seen in the sand, dunes and grass near the construction site.

Kerr, the city administrator, said he’d received complaints about trash near the Ocean Club work two months prior.

The condos are currently surrounded by scaffolding while crews work to replace windows and doors. The building is wrapped in a blue mesh netting, meant to keep debris from flying away from the building and into the surrounding beach.

Bob MacLeod, president of the Ocean Club’s board of directors, is helping oversee the project.

MacLeod said the round pieces of plastic foam found along the beach on Sept. 24 were not from the Ocean Club renovations. He noted, however, that some of the blue netting broke loose after Hurricane Erin, and ended up buried further down the beach.

MacLeod said the contractors have recently installed a finer mesh net around the building, as well as a chute to collect scrap material. He said he walks the site several times a week, and crews are supposed to conduct a daily trash sweep.

"There's really no saying where it came from…I know we had some stuff, and I'm not disputing that,'“ MacLeod said. “We’re taking steps to address it.”

To my friends and neighbors,

Isle of Palms has been my home for more than four decades. I first arrived in October 1981 for an internship at the Charleston Naval Shipyard. I split my time between the island and school in Tennessee until 1986, but the pull of this community never let me go. By 1988, I was back here full time, and in 1990 I bought the house on Cameron Boulevard where my wife, Denise, and I still live today.

What drew me here then is what keeps me here now: Isle of Palms’ small-town feel, its spirit of community and the fact that it’s a truly special place to raise a family. I’ve seen this island through good times and challenges—like standing shoulder to shoulder with neighbors during the recovery from Hurricane Hugo—and I remain committed to keeping that sense of resilience and togetherness alive.

Professionally, I’ve spent my career solving problems, evaluating solutions and leading technical teams. After earning my degree in electrical engineering from Tennessee Tech, I worked as an electronics engineer at the Naval Shipyard, later transferring to the Space and Naval Warfare Center Atlantic. I eventually retired in 2019 as lead systems engineer for the Data Science and Analytics Department at the Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic. I bring that same data-driven, solutions-focused mindset to public service.

Over the years, I’ve served on the Isle of Palms Planning Commission (2009-14 and again since 2021) and on the Board of Trustees at First United Methodist Church. Denise, who grew up on Sullivan’s Island and taught for Charleston County Schools, and I raised our daughter Emma here. She went from Sullivan’s Island Elementary to Clemson, where she also became an engineer. Like so many families, we’ve built our lives here around the values that make Isle of Palms unique.

That’s why I’m running for City Council. While I’ve valued my time on the Planning Commission, I believe I can make an even greater impact as part of the council. My priorities are clear: protect the quality of life for residents while recognizing that tourism—done responsibly—is an important part of what sustains our community and amenities. I don’t want Isle of Palms to become just another suburb of Charleston. I want it to remain the close-knit, welcoming island that drew me here in 1981.

I look forward to listening to you, working alongside you, and earning your trust and support. Together, we can make sure Isle of Palms remains a place we are proud to call home.

I would be honored to receive your support on Nov. 4.

Your neighbor,

David Cohen

ISLE OF PALMS – Large swells caused by Hurricane Erin and water levels a foot higher than predicted revealed “hotspots” for erosion on the island last weekend, coastal engineers said Aug. 26.

As preparations begin for a large-scale beach renourishment project, Isle of Palms leaders approved temporary fixes to damaged stretches of the north and south ends of the beach. City Council allocated $550,000 for sandbags at highly eroded areas of the beach that were damaged further by Hurricane Erin.

“Overall, we're looking at the seven miles of beach that have held up pretty well, but our hot spots where we have our erosion issues, they got hit pretty hard,” said Steven Traynum, executive director of Coastal Science Engineering.

Near Seascape and Ocean Club in the Wild Dunes resort, where there is ongoing construction to repair the exterior of the condos, water reaches the scaffolding surrounding the ocean-facing building. At Beachwood East, also on the north end of the island, stilts supporting some of the multimillion-dollar homes are exposed.

On the south side of the beach, near Breach Inlet, concrete pool foundations are left open to the elements. Staircases that once led straight onto a dry, sandy beach now drop off suddenly.

The dunes have mostly vanished from the three sites, prompting the city to deploy up to 1,000 sandbags along the inlet and on the north side of the island, per a recommendation from the city’s contracted coastal engineering firm.

Larger-scale efforts to repair the damaged shores are in the works. The city will be ready to submit permits for a renourishment project within a week, Traynum said. Construction could begin as early as fall 2026 or early 2027.

Traynum estimated that the north and south ends of the beach lose about 205,000 cubic yards of sand each year, or the equivalent of 20,500 dump trucks.

"We use this volume to calculate how much sand you need to add to your beach just to get it to a minimally healthy condition,” Traynum said.

The city hopes to place around 1.6 million cubic yards of sand, or roughly 160,000 dump-trucks-worth of material on the shore—enough to keep up with the volume that is swept away each year from the Isle of Palms.

The Isle of Palms’ shores have not seen a beach restoration since 2018, when 1.4 million cubic yards of sand were added to the beach. The process of renourishment involves placing fresh sand on the beach, typically dredged from offshore or trucked in from elsewhere.

And luckily, there’s more than enough sand right off the shore to accommodate the upcoming project, said coastal scientist Patrick Barrieneau.

Barrineau, who also works as a project manager for Coastal Science and Engineering, said the firm conducted an offshore inventory study of the ocean floor to determine how much beach-quality sand is available for future renourishment projects.

The study revealed there’s over 15 million cubic yards of sand within five miles of the shore—enough to replenish the beach for decades to come.

“I know that some people talk about how communities are going to run out of sand for nourishment. Not here,” Barrineau said.