Wetland loss costs Myrtle Beach area millions in flood claims, new study finds

Nicole Blevins, The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, S.C.)Sun News

Terri Straka lived on Cottonwood Drive in the Rosewood neighborhood of Socastee during the 1,000-year flood in 2015, when water spilled from the Intracoastal Waterway up to her yard four rows of homes inland.

About a year later, her family awoke to knee-high flood water in their home from Hurricane Matthew. They flooded again during Hurricane Florence in 2018 after refinancing the home and pouring into repairs. With each flooding event, the extent of the water reached further from the banks of the waterway.

“It’s extremely traumatic,” Straka said. “It was a disaster zone, and it was something that you just wouldn’t, you couldn’t imagine happening there.”

The cost of damage to her home from Florence nearly doubled from Matthew, but she had flood insurance during Florence. The National Flood Insurance Policy paid close to $90,000 after she filed a claim. She later advocated for a government buyout opportunity from repetitive flooding in an area she said never should have been developed. Fifty-eight homes have since been bought out, demolished and returned to green space, South Carolina Office of Resilience spokesperson Kevin O’Dell said by email.

Straka’s insurance claim is just a fraction of a nearly 40-year trend of more significant flood damage and higher flood insurance claims from riverine flooding across the country.

Riverine flooding has cost an estimated $15.7 million in paid flood insurance claims along the Socastee Swamp-Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway subwatershed between 1985 and 2023. The same area has lost over 3,400 acres of wetlands in the same time frame.

A new study, “The economic value of wetlands in reducing riverine flood losses in the USA,” published June 1 in Nature Water, an online earth sciences journal, found a correlation between a loss of wetland land cover and higher flood insurance claim payouts from riverine flooding from the NFIP. In South Carolina, the highest losses were found in Charleston and near Myrtle Beach. The largest losses in the country are concentrated in the Houston metropolitan area, southeastern Louisiana and coastal Florida, the study says.

The study focused on a thin range of data, looking only at NFIP claims for residential structures from riverine flooding between 1985 and 2023, and co-author Adam Gold noted the results are likely a large underestimate of the total economic value of wetlands in flood protection. The study did not include flooding from coastal storm surge, private or uninsured losses or losses to government or commercial property.

The study was inspired by the 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision that rolled back federal protections from the Clean Water Act for non-jurisdictional wetlands, or wetlands that are not connected to navigable waters of the United States, leaving a majority of wetlands vulnerable.

Gold, Environmental Defense Fund senior manager of climate resilient coasts and watersheds science, said the goal is to provide evidence of the economic value of wetlands to inform policy reform for local, state and federal governments with the importance of preserving wetland function.

The study found that wetland loss across the United States has increased residential flood insurance claim payments nationwide by an estimated $10.1 billion since 1985. What’s the importance of preserving wetlands?

Wetlands not only provide essential habitats for diverse species and improve water quality by filtering contaminates, they act as natural storage tanks during rainfall.

An acre of wetland can hold approximately 1 million gallons of water and slowly release it to minimize the impacts of flooding. When wetlands are lost upstream, downstream communities see the greatest effects.

The study found that flood insurance claim payment amounts for individual residential properties increased by an average 0.01% to 0.03% per hectare (2.47 acres) of upstream wetland loss. Over time, that amount adds up quickly, authors of the study said. How are local governments working to reduce wetland loss?

Development is one of the leading causes of wetland loss across South Carolina, especially as the fastest growing state in the country. Local municipalities have begun updating development requirements to help preserve their natural function and reduce flooding impacts.

Directly influenced by the Sackett decision, the Town of Bluffton implemented the state’s first local wetland protection ordinance in 2025 to make up for the federal gaps. The Town adopted a mandatory 25-foot buffer as a starting point and upgraded to a 50-foot buffer requirement and protection of all wetlands, The Sun News previously reported.

“The intent was always to adopt it and then take a look at it and see how we could improve it,” Town of Bluffton Watershed Resilience Manager Beth Lewis previously said.

Horry County Council proposed a 15-foot wetland buffer ordinance earlier this year to strengthen development requirements, and it was adopted in a 10-1 vote during Tuesday’s county council meeting.

Neighboring Georgetown County still needs a final vote to implement its proposed wetlands protection ordinance, which would require a 35-foot wetland buffer and a 15-foot setback minimum, providing a total 50 feet between wetlands and development projects.