North Myrtle Beach Times Serving our Community and the Grand Strand for over 50 years
By Ruben Lowman
The battle to save Horry County’s rivers and adjacent infrastructure from catastrophic, chronic flooding events has received some good news this month.
Major General Jason E. Kelly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Deputy Commanding General for Civil and Emergency Operations, bypassed the standard Pentagon briefing rooms to conduct an emergency, boots-on-the-ground site inspection of the Socastee River and the broader Waccamaw River basin to examine the causes of effects of a chronic flooding issue throughout all of Horry County.
Escorted by Lt. Col. Todd Mainwaring, Commander of the USACE Charleston District, and Horry County Council Chairman Johnny Gardner, the high-level military delegation convened in Conway last week to finalize the terminal phase of the Waccamaw River Flood Risk Management Study, a massive $3.9 million cost-shared engineering venture aimed at permanently restructuring how water moves through the Grand Strand’s choked floodplains.
The primary driver behind the federal-local intervention is a structural reality – decades of poorly managed coastal infrastructure development have created artificial bottlenecks that actively damage the Waccamaw River system’s natural hydraulic flow.
To reverse this manufactured crisis, the joint study has zeroed in on the Waccamaw and it’s surrounding communities as the ultimate high-risk impact zones.
According to project delivery metrics released by the USACE, the engineered solutions will focus strictly on maximizing hydraulic conveyance.
By artificially widening and modifying the floodplain’s bottlenecks, engineers intend to allow rising floodwaters to pass through the basin efficiently, thereby suppressing upstream crest levels, protecting critical municipal supply chains and keeping local emergency evacuation routes open during major hurricanes.
The administrative clock is also ticking loudly for local officials, as the $3.9 million feasibility study is legally mandated to culminate in a definitive “Chief’s Report” this summer. This upcoming document represents the vital gatekeeper to federal funds, without its formal filing Congress cannot grant the statutory authorization or appropriate the massive capital required to move the project forward.
Under the current federal timeline, if Congress greenlights the recommendations and releases the funds, the Waccamaw infrastructure overhaul will enter an intensive formal design phase as early as 2028.
However, actual heavy equipment construction isn’t projected to break ground until a lengthy window between 2030 and 2034, leaving local residents vulnerable to several more seasons of unpredictable coastal weather.
The federal government’s focus on Horry County’s water management isn’t confined to inland rivers and flooding either, as the USACE simultaneously coordinates a multi-front assault on coastal erosion.
Just miles away from the Waccamaw basin, heavy machinery is currently operating just south of Apache Pier for the $6.6 million Arcadian Shores Beach Renourishment Project.
Funded via a $5 million municipal injection from the city of Myrtle Beach, with the remainder earmarked for advanced engineering and wayfinding, contracted crews are aggressively pumping sand to stabilize the shoreline between the Bear Branch and Singleton Swash zones of Grande Dunes.
Horry County officials, who put the Arcadian project to bid in July 2025 and awarded it in October, confirmed that as soon as the Arcadian Shores footprint is secured, the contractors will immediately pivot back south to execute the USACE’s core federal renourishment directives in Garden City and Surfside Beach before the summer concludes.
