By JOEY HOLLEMAN
( See the two-part series on the Edisto featured at the State Newspaper website -- http://www.thestate.com/local/story/583487.html )
The Edisto River is the only major river that’s all South Carolina’s, starting in the sandhills and ending at the sand dunes.
That means the state gets all the benefits of its black-water beauty, and we can’t blame others if the river is ruined by pollution or misuse.
“It’s ours to screw up,” said Norm Brunswig, manager of Beidler Forest near St. George. “We can either keep it, enhance it and embrace it, or we can not do those things and watch it slip away.”
Lack of industrial and residential development in rural inland areas and concerted conservation efforts near the coast have limited the human damage to the longest undammed black-water river in the country. But growth is coming, especially in Orangeburg and northern Dorchester counties.
River advocates pledge to fight anything that might harm it. They use the swooping curves, Spanish moss-draped oaks and turtle-covered logs to recruit new river lovers with each guided canoe excursion.
“I thought it was a beautiful trip,” said Mount Pleasant resident Bret Perryman after experiencing the Edisto for the first time during the annual Riverfest this summer. “On a summer weekend, you’d think a river like that would be packed with people. Where else would you rather be?”
Scientists who study the river say it remains in good shape, though the water isn’t as pristine as it used to be. Sometimes it’s as if someone put too much sugar in the tea and it won’t dissolve. Except, it’s not sugar, it’s sand.
Nearly one-fourth of the 80 sites on the river monitored by S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control in 2004 failed to fully support aquatic life (often because of turbid water) and recreational use (often because of high fecal coliform levels). High mercury levels in fish in the Edisto have led to warnings not to make them a frequent part of your diet.
Industrial operations on the Edisto are limited. The major pollution culprits are sand mining and clear-cut logging, which lead to more runoff of animal waste, fertilizer and silt into the river during storms.
“The river is more turbid than it used to be,” said Bill Marshall, River Conservation Program manager with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and a member of the Friends of the Edisto. “It used to be clear, black-water stream, and now it’s more murky in some areas. It’s just not the same river we knew 20 years ago.”
The sand bars have been growing for two decades, making more of the river impassable in a motorized boat during dry periods, said Hubert McCrannie, owner of Blackwater Bait & Tackle at Jellico’s Landing in Colleton County.
“It’s been double bad this year,“ said McCrannie, who rents tubes and canoes for floats down the picturesque bends where the river forms the boundary between Colleton and Dorchester counties. “It was down below a foot most of the summer.” Yet even if the Edisto isn’t all it used to be, Brunswig, Marshall and McCrannie agree with river novice Perryman that it remains a beautiful place to spend a day.
Geography helped protect the Edisto. The flat topography along the North and South Forks creates swampy flood plains, discouraging development near the main river channels as the forks meander through Aiken, Barnwell, Bamberg, Lexington and Orangeburg counties. (The “undammed” claim refers only to the main channel. Many tributaries are dammed to create farm ponds, especially in Aiken and Lexington counties.)
When the forks come together near Branchville, the river widens and takes a less twisty course through timber farms that a century or two ago were rice or cotton plantations. The owners of large tracts along the river had the agricultural good sense not to build much on the river and to leave a vegetative buffer.
Then, as the land-preserving ACE Basin initiative took off in the past 20 years, more and more of those landowners put conservation easements on their property, ensuring the land would stay undeveloped. Nearly 182,000 acres in the basins of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers — known as ACE — has been protected, including most of the riverfront land for the final 50 miles from U.S. 17-A to the ocean.
With only one mid-sized city — Orangeburg — on its banks, the Edisto has been spared the worst of industrial and residential development. Even Orangeburg’s recent industrial growth is mostly away from the river toward I-95 and I-26, meaning it draws its water from Lake Marion.
While municipal water systems in Aiken, Batesburg-Leesville, Orangeburg and Charleston and two SCE&G coal-fired power plants can pull 153 million gallons of water from the Edisto each day, water quantity is less a concern than water quality.
River advocates have pushed each county to use zoning and vegetative buffers to reduce pollution, but progress has been slow. Charleston County enacted special river zoning restrictions, “but by and large the rest of the counties have not come to grips with the responsibility they have to protect the river,” Brunswig said. “ Bamberg wants to do its thing. Orangeburg wants to do its thing. Colleton wants to do its thing, and they don’t want anyone else to tell them what to do.”
Brunswig praised Orangeburg County officials for enacting zoning regulations that will limit river development, but he wanted stricter rules that would have banned new hard surfaces — roads, driveways, roofs — within 600 feet of the river.
Orangeburg County appreciates the river and wants to protect it, said county administrator Bill Clark. “It adds to the scenic beauty of the community,” Clark said. “It has recreational value for kayakers, canoers and fishermen. And from a more practical standpoint, it’s an important source of water for the greater Orangeburg area.
“We don’t want development where it shouldn’t be. That’s why we adopted a countywide zoning ordinance.” At least local officials are paying attention now. A couple of generations ago, people got away with things that would be astonishing today. In at least two spots — one near Branchville and another near Canadys — land owners dug or dynamited new channels to ensure water flowed near their property rather than meandered away on a natural bend.
Drought conditions nine of the past 10 years have taken some of the life out of the Edisto, literally. The flood-plain-based system needs periodic flooding to pump nutrients from surrounding land into the water, said Chris Thomason, a fisheries biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.
Fishermen who used to come home with a full stringer of redbreasts now say it’s hardly worth braving the mosquitoes while sitting on the bank. “There ain’t no fish in the river now,” said Burley Huffman, 82, of Springfield. “They say the big catfish come up here and eat all the other fish.” The flathead catfish, a non-native species stocked into the Santee Cooper lakes in the 1960s, found its way into many other Lowcountry waterways. They started showing up in the Edisto in the 1990s. “We’d find one here and one there,” Thomason said. “Several years later, they exploded. Now they’re not going anywhere. They’re here to stay.” And they do eat redbreast. But when the river has a healthy flow, there’s plenty of room and nutrients for both redbreast and flatheads, Thomason said. During the rainy summer of 2003, fishing for both species was excellent. “The populations are just suppressed during the drought,” Thomason said. “They’ll rebound.”
Two decades ago, only a few local outdoors buffs and Scout troops paddled canoes on the Edisto. The river was a place to fish from the banks or, when the water was high, from john boats. But then a group of river lovers came up with the idea of Riverfest, a weekend festival filled with guided canoe and kayak trips on the river. It introduced a new user group to the river and along the way, transformed the recreation mindset in the Edisto region. “If you ride around, you notice more kayaks and canoes on the tops of cars or in the backs of trucks than you did in the past,” said Charlie Sweat, the mayor of Walterboro and one of the guiding forces behind Friends of the Edisto.
Now, from Easter through Thanksgiving, people camp at night in the two inland state parks on the river’s main stem — Colleton and Givhans Ferry — and paddle 5- or 10-mile sections during the day. “There’s enough of a current that you don’t have to paddle hard, but not so much current you have to worry about making the next turn,” said Mickey Marshall, manager of Carolina Heritage Outfitters at Canadys. “You don’t have to worry about rocks. When the water is low in the summer, you can see the bottom the whole way. It makes for a relaxing time.”
The tight turns and downfallen trees blocking the flow on the North and South Forks make them more challenging for paddlers. After venturing out on the South Fork a few times, Steve Morrone decided to start guiding trips so more people could experience its beauty. “What makes it special is the remoteness,” said Morrone, owner of Edisto Out Post outfitters in Springfield. “It is still wild. You feel like you’re on an expedition in your back yard.”
Springfield Mayor Marilyn McCormick has visited the South Fork since she was a child, boating and fishing in its cool shade. “It’s peace. It’s solace. It’s just a getaway,” McCormick said. “Sometimes when I don’t get to church on Sundays, I get out there and feel like it’s God’s church. The worst part about it is when you’ve got to come home.”
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one hour after sunset. Hunting will occur on the property and regulations will be clearly defined on the DNR's Web site. A driving tour showcases many of the WMA's unique features, including several archaeological structures of historical significance. The Sea Cloud landing on Ocella Creek offers a launch-site for car-top boats, such as canoes and kayaks. In the Jason's Lake complex, adult-youth catch and release fishing is allowed on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and youth must be accompanied by no more than two adults age 18 or older, who are also eligible to fish. Shore-based fishing, shrimping and crabbing are allowed along the front beach area of the WMA. Access to the beach is limited to pedestrian travelers and bicyclists only, and pets are prohibited. Botany Bay Plantation WMA does not have public facilities, restrooms or trash receptacles. Visitors are required to sign in and out at the kiosk located at the main entrance off of the highway so that DNR managers can effectively monitor public use. Regulations specific to activities on Botany Bay Plantation WMA are posted at this kiosk. 
