Price of saving road to Myrtle Beach: Flooding nearby town?
CONWAY, S.C. — Two years ago, from Hurricane Matthew and in 1999, from Hurricane Floyd, floodwaters came close to entering Joe Holmes’ house in South Carolina, but he dodged those bullets. Now, with Florence , he doesn’t feel so lucky.
He worries the Waccamaw River will make its way into his Conway home because the state wants to save the main highway into Myrtle Beach, a more densely populated city and tourist destination, from going underwater.
Officials insist they must keep the road open, or hundreds of thousands of people would be isolated. So the state is building a higher wall — in the form of a second level of concrete highway barriers on top of the sides of 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometres) of bridges and causeways, sealing them with plastic sheets weighed down with sandbags and rebar — in its last stand on U.S. Highway 501.
Skeptical Conway residents fear this will push water into their neighbourhoods, but officials say it won’t affect any areas that weren’t already doomed to flood — at least not in the models they’ve run.