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MEGGETT, S.C. (WCSC) — A request to build a vehicular bridge near Meggett is currently being reviewed in court.

A developer has been trying to build a private vehicular bridge to provide access to a coastal island for a development within the ACE Basin, and environmental groups have been pushing against it since it was first introduced in 2021. The bridge is known as the Bay Light Bridge and would connect to 9.7 acres of highland and 75 acres of marsh at the junction of Landing Creek and the west side of Toogoodoo Creek.

“If you ignore the regulations and allow this bridge to go forward, that is a terrible precedent to set,” South Carolina Environmental Law Project senior attorney Leslie Lenhardt, who represented the Coastal Conservation League, said.

The South Carolina Department of Environmental Services initially denied the applicant’s permit in 2023 to construct the bridge, stating the property fell within the and it failed to meet the heightened standards required.

The ACE Basin Task Force Boundary Area covers a massive 1.7-million-acre watershed across five South Carolina counties, defined by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources as a priority conservation zone.

“DES and the state has recognized for decades that marsh islands, in particular, are very vulnerable and special, and they have a lot of ecological significance,” Lenhardt said. “And so, the regulations have been very specific about when and where you can build such bridges to access them, and those regulations have been in place for 30-some-odd years.”

Court documents show the applicant initially believed the property fell outside of the boundaries of the taskforce boundary area and therefore moved forward with purchasing the island with the intent to improve, entitle and resell the land for profit.

“It’s important to realize this bridge is located five miles within the boundary,” Lenhardt said. “This is not a question of the bridge being on the border, and it’s a close call. It’s very clearly well within the boundary area, but what Judge Anderson did at the hearing was he really shifted the burden of who needed to prove that the bridge was located in the boundary area and to also prove the sort of actual on-the-ground boundaries.”

Following the denied permit, the applicant appealed that decision to the South Carolina Administrative Law Court just two weeks later, and it eventually went through earlier this year after a full hearing.

The South Carolina Administrative Law Court issued a final order to process the permit application without the heightened standards applicable to areas of special resource value. The court concluded that DES failed to produce clear enough evidence to establish where the task force boundary area actually begins and ends.

The bridge application is in the process of being officially considered for a permit, but the SCELP and Coastal Conservation League have stepped in.

SCELP says while the ruling does not invalidate the ACE Basin Taskforce Boundary Area regulation and is limited to the specific facts of this case, it creates a pathway for the developer to seek a bridge permit under the standard permitting process despite the property’s location within an area of special resource value.

“The perfect outcome that we would have after an appeal would be that the Court of Appeals reverses the ALC’s decision and that they recognize that the agency has sufficient evidence to delineate the ACE Basin Task Force boundary area, and that there really is no question about the location of this bridge within that boundary area, and to really reinforce the regulations and allow the agency to enforce those regulations themselves,” Lenhardt said.

A stay was requested, and without it, DES must continue processing the application that could eventually allow a private vehicular bridge to be built near Meggett.

Torrey Sanders is the conservation program manager at the Coastal Conservation League, and said the ACE Basin must be protected for a multitude of reasons.

“When we start having people try to push open that door of development in this really sensitive ecosystem, it’s a threat to the entire functionality of it,” she said.

Conservationists warn that letting concrete creep five miles inside the protected boundary threatens vital wetlands, ruins water quality and leaves the surrounding area vulnerable to flooding.

“If the Ace Basin didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a place for migratory birds to stop and rest and all of these things that are necessary for the functioning of these habitat and wildlife realities,” Sanders said. ”Without the boundary and without these kind of protections, it would get developed just like every other state on the East Coast. It would be another Virginia Beach. It would be another Jersey, it would be any number of these sort of hyper-developed beachfront areas.”

She said she’s also worried about the precedent it would set for other projects alike.

“When you zoom out, and it’s like, okay, this bridge was allowed, so what’s next,” Sanders said. “Development, more cars, traffic in that area, these, this is- the Ace Basin is absolutely not the right place for something like this, and so when, you know, if you have one, then who knows what can happen next.”