A brand new invoice launched within the state Senate may serve to guard the nascent oyster cage farming trade in South Carolina by prohibiting producers from harvesting bivalves for a number of months of the yr.

However earlier than the invoice even had a subcommittee listening to, a nasty scuffle over the laws spilled over to a South Carolina boating Fb group. State Senator Sandy Senn stated the “capitalists” needed to make the most of the state’s waterways with their farms, and the oyster farmers stated Senn was misinformed and had a private agenda towards them.

That is simply the newest battle between farmers elevating oysters in floating cages and a few neighbors and boaters who object to the sight and navigation across the operations. Earlier farms trying to acquire permits have encountered intense opposition.

Senn, a Republican from Charleston, backed a measure in 2017 to open the harvest throughout the summer time months for the sterile triploid oysters that producers use. However now, she says the trade has grown too quick and collides too regularly with boaters who use the state’s many miles of coastal streams and rivers for leisure functions.

“We did not anticipate what was going to occur with the trade sooner or later,” Senn stated.

She stated her naked bone invoice, which in the meanwhile solely offers with the harvest season, will seemingly be modified to require extra notification of upcoming farms for folks residing round them.

She additionally raised the potential for outright banning farms in coastal counties with excessive boaters.

Producers, for his or her half, say they’re present process a licensing course of that has been occurring for years now and requires approvals from SC’s Ministry of Pure Assets, Ministry of Well being and Management. setting and the Military Corps of Engineers.

Trey McMillan, who runs the Lowcountry Oyster Co. within the ACE Basin, stated there are numerous different industrial ventures that additionally use the state’s public waters, reminiscent of tour boats that go to Fort Sumter, fishing charters and shrimp boats.

“It is a roundabout strategy,” he stated of Senn’s efforts to cease the summer time harvest, which might kill farmers’ gross sales for 5 months of the yr. “It is soiled, it is sneaky and it is very misleading, which she does.”

Oyster farms use floating cages connected to the underside of a river or stream, and producers recurrently take out shellfish as they develop to spin them in drums that form and grade them. These additional bivalves additionally assist filter the water column as wild oyster beds decline statewide.

There are at present eight farms alongside the state’s navigable waters, stated the 2 state businesses reviewing permits, and an operation is searching for approval for a web site in a tributary of the North Edisto River. MNR stated the precise location amounted to a commerce secret and couldn’t be disclosed, whereas DHEC revealed it was in Privateer Creek, within the swamps behind Seabrook Island.

Operations are alleged to steer clear of official delivery channels and can’t occupy greater than one-third of the width of the waterway.

A number of of those farms had been in operation earlier than the summer time harvest ban was lifted 4 years in the past. Julie Davis of Ladys Island Oyster, one of many early farms, stated it was tough then to delay harvesting market-ready crops throughout the hotter months.

Davis, additionally president of the SC Shellfish Growers Affiliation, stated she hasn’t had an issue coexisting with boaters.

“What I’ve seen from the boating group, they don’t seem to be against us,” Davis stated.

A number of oyster farmers have met with Senn previously, she and the producers stated, to resolve their points. However the senator wrote in a letter to the DNR in early March that she needed to “decelerate these companies” till state legislation was modified. Senn was significantly upset by the latest approval of a brand new farm in Inexperienced Creek, off the Stono River.

Senn lives on the Stono and ships regularly within the space.

“We do not simply get on the Intracoastal, we like to get on our boats and go down one among these coves. It is a part of the enjoyable and it is a part of the sweetness, ”she says.

Senn and his colleague within the Senate, Chip Campson, of R-Isle of Palms, had beforehand requested two state businesses to maintain them up to date on oyster farm developments. Campsen didn’t return a number of telephone messages asking for remark.

It’s not identified to what extent the farms characterize a hazard to navigation. Senn stated he heard of at the very least one man who hit a cage he had not seen within the water, deactivating his boat.

David Lucas, a DNR spokesperson, stated company officers couldn’t recall an incident the place a ship collided with a floating oyster cage. The company doesn’t examine small incidents with minor injury, and never all collisions are reported to MNR.

Contact Chloe Johnson at 843-735-9985. Observe her on Twitter @_ChloeAJ.