Editorial: An unexplained sea change on a Charleston County sand mine

Has Charleston County changed its rules for permitting sand mines without letting anyone know? That’s the most important question looming in this afternoon’s meeting of the county’s Zoning Board of Appeals, which is being asked to weigh in on the county staff’s decision to allow a mine outside McClellanville.

In fact, the same board voted in 2023 not to allow this same mining operation, largely because of health and safety risks that it would pose since the site is less than 1,000 feet from the St. James-Santee Elementary-Middle School.

The county’s flip-flop led the Friends of Coastal South Carolina and the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League to appeal the staff’s decision to the full board.

They question whether the Charleston County Zoning Department acted correctly when it classified proposed mining and excavation on about 35 acres near U.S. Highway 17 and Lofton Road as exempt from zoning regulations. That wasn’t the determination in August 2023, when the department took this request to the board for consideration of a special exception — a request the board denied. The developer appealed but ultimately opted to dismiss its court appeal in March 2025, according the S.C. Environmental Law Project, which is handling the environmental groups’ challenge.

Also factoring into the 2023 decision was a county analysis that suggested the mining site could mar land the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers the best for agricultural production. The county’s comprehensive plan notes that “Designation of farmland preservation areas recognizes the importance of preserving Charleston County’s farming resources, including individual farms and areas of productive soils, as well as a way of life valued by the community.”

The county’s zoning should protect such agricultural land from incompatible uses, at least by requiring the property owner to explain why the property’s soil should be excavated and sold off instead of retained for agricultural use. We can envision some such arguments being made successfully, but not in all cases. Especially in those cases, as with this proposed mine, where the excavation also affects a nearby school.

“Charleston County’s zoning process exists to protect sensitive areas like McClellanville from this exact type of harm,” says Torrey Sanders of the  Coastal Conservation League, and we agree. Such protection should allow public input and also provide a public accounting of how the county is balancing the rights of a rural property owner with the wider rural community around that parcel.

That clearly is not what seems to be happening here if a mining operation that a zoning board once rejected is allowed suddenly to be exempt from review and the public has no say.

Unfortunately, it’s possible we won’t get any answers.

According to the board’s agenda, the county’s interim zoning and planning director determined on Feb. 19 that the environmental groups’ previous appeal was “untimely” and therefore not proper to send to the Board of Zoning Appeals for consideration. So this effort is sort of an appeal of an appeal.

We recognize the primacy of legal process, but the county still owes the public a clear explanation of what went on in this case — specifically why a proposed mine that had needed board approval no longer needs board approval. That detail could be crucial as to whether Charleston County Council needs to tighten its zoning rules in these sorts of cases. If a proposed mining operation can be allowed without public review simply by having the developer break its proposed operation down into smaller chunks that staff can approve one at a time, that’s a gimmicky loophole council members should close at once or else just abandon the pretense of a public mining review in the first place.

South Carolina’s surge in growth has created new demand for fill dirt for both public and private projects, while growth also makes once-rural areas less so. That’s why regardless of what happens in this case, our Legislature needs to update South Carolina’s antiquated mining law so it strikes a better balance between mining and environmental interests. Our state isn’t the same rural place it was in the 1970s, but our regulatory playing field for mining operations hasn’t changed since then.