Residents urge alternative route for Bono Beach emergency access, cite flooding and safety concerns

Residents from Bono Beach and nearby neighborhoods urged Berkeley County officials to reconsider a proposed emergency access route and related paving plans, arguing that the county’s planned alignment would use low-lying roads that flood and that an alternative along an existing Santee Cooper power-line corridor would be more reliable.

Tom Dennis told council he owns property that could be affected by a road proposal and said he was not contacted about what he had been told was a preapproved paving project. He asked the council to examine an alternate alignment that would follow a Santee Cooper transmission corridor and connect to Mandela Road, which he said would avoid routing traffic through Pusheen Plantation and Lightning Road.

Rick Dennis said Lightning Road and other low-lying connectors flooded during a prior storm event—he said his area was inaccessible for three days during a historic flood—and he argued the proposed roadway alignment would not function as an emergency egress when water levels are high. He said an alignment near the power line would be less likely to go underwater.

Council members acknowledged the comments and said they would take residents’ concerns under advisement. No committee motion or vote on a paving plan was recorded during the public-comment period; Tom Dennis said he had been told by a law office that a segment from Highway 35 (Mandela Road) to Lightning Road had been preapproved for paving, a claim recorded as his statement in the transcript but not corroborated by documentary evidence at the meeting.

Next steps: Residents were told council would consider the input, and a staff- or committee-level review of proposed paving alignments would be the appropriate venue for detailed engineering and permitting determinations.