Pest Control on Sullivan's Island, SC

The island’s geography makes the problem worse than most coastal towns. Tidal marsh along the back of the island keeps moisture constant against property lines, and there is nowhere on 2.5 square miles that sits far from it. Then there is the ground that did not used to be here at all: the island accretes at roughly seventeen feet a year, enough that the National Register nomination describes houses which once fronted the beach now standing behind an additional street and three rows of homes. What the courts called sea oats and wildflowers no taller than three feet in 1991 is thickly wooded today. That band of young maritime forest is a harborage pressed against the back of the lots, and it is the single biggest difference between a Sullivan’s Island property and an inland one. Add the pre-war cottages of Moultrieville and Atlanticville — 27.3% of the island predates 1940 — on pier-and-beam foundations with direct soil contact, and the two halves of the job are set.

Standing water here is also a question of who is responsible for it, and the answer is unusually split. Under a 2007 agreement the Town does not run its own stormwater utility at all: Charleston County’s Stormwater Management Division maintains the inlets, conduits, manholes, channels, ditches, waterways and infiltration facilities, while the conveyance and drainage systems themselves are owned by SCDOT. After the 2015 Hurricane Joaquin flooding the Town added the piece that lands on you — Section 21-17 of the Zoning Ordinance now requires an onsite stormwater management system for any residential or nonresidential development, with the plan drawn by a professional engineer or landscape architect. Three different bodies, and the one holding water on your lot is you. A pest plan that has not been told where that system sits will walk past it.