Planners recommend rezoning nearly 480 acres to conservation for wetland mitigation bank

The Effingham County Planning Board on Aug. 12 recommended rezoning roughly 480.31 acres on Sisters Ferry Road from AR‑1 to Conservation Preservation (CP) to enable a wetland mitigation site and place the land under a conservation easement. Miss Chelsea, planning staff, said the applicant intends to designate approximately 8.48 acres as a potential home site while the remainder would be protected under the CP zoning. Staff recommended as a condition that Development Services review and sign the plat and that the plat be recorded so the zoning can take effect. Forbes Buck, speaking as agent for Abigail's Ferry LLC, said the owner will convert an existing planted pine plantation back to its natural bottomland hardwood state and place a conservation easement on the property in perpetuity. “We are taking the site as it is. It's a planted pine plantation. We'll be removing the trees. We've already started removing the pine trees. We'll grade it down back to its natural habitat, which was a bottomland hardwoods forest. So we'll remove the pine beds, plant hardwood trees, and and it'll be just a natural habitat,” Buck said. Buck said the project would function as a private mitigation bank to sell wetland mitigation credits to developers needing compensatory mitigation elsewhere. Staff and the agent told the board the mitigation design will include buffers and is intended to retain water on site; the agent said there will be no detention or retention ponds and that some roads/ditches will be removed to restore natural flow. No members of the public spoke in opposition; a resident asked whether the 8.48‑acre home site location is mapped and staff/agent said the home site is shown on the applicant’s plan along the southern frontage near Sisters Ferry Road. The board voted to recommend approval and asked that the applicant be present for the Board of Commissioners public hearing on Sept. 2, 2025.