Our story as of January 2021

January 1, 2021, started out with lots of floodwater in Island Green. It started raining on Christmas Eve. Just one hour of rain filled the overflow ditch behind Blue Tree Court. All the stormwater drains have water flowing from the Eastside of Island Green to the Westside, into The Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge. In the video below you can see the water flowing right to left.

At the end of this overflow ditch at the far left is the refuge.

The next rainstorm hit us on New Year's Eve and made the water very high behind Blue Tree Court. Again, you can see the water flowing from right to left. All of this water goes into the refuge.

On January 8, 2021, crews started clear-cutting a large area in Island Green. Birds and squirrels scattered, residents were outraged and many cried at the destruction directly behind their homes.

Real fear came over the community, wondering what was going to happen with all these trees gone. With no trees, it meant nothing to soak up all the rain we had been having lately and all the sounds of nature had disappeared. It really was a horrible sight. One thing we knew we had to fight harder and more quickly, we didn't know what was coming next.

What came next happened sooner than we expected it to. They cut down the beautiful flowering Bradford Pear trees at the entrance of our community. The character of the quaint peaceful sanctuary was gone. We know these trees are invasive, but they were only growing at our entrance. The calm was over, in comes the devastation.

Then the crews came back to clear-cut another area in Island Green. This one is much larger than the last, and this area upset the community of Island Green and the neighboring community of the Myrtle Beach Golf & Yacht Club. Crews were coming into residents' backyards and sideyards cutting down trees that shouldn't have been cut. The Myrtle Beach Golf & Yacht Club are afraid their homes will flood too with all the trees gone and new homes being built in their backyards.

We continued to document rain, flooding, and more areas where you can see Peach Creek. Peach Creek was very important to look at as it starts at the Waccamaw River, through the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge, and completely through Island Green. It was noticed by a resident looking on Google Earth. From the way it flowed it didn't look like it was man-made in any form. We needed to have a Hydrologist look into this. On January 10, while documenting Peach Creek a resident came across a bird that we weren't quite sure what it was, and at the time, we had no idea this bird would be so important to Island Green.