Everything runs downstream. What we do on the land impacts the health of our waters. Most of South Carolina’s rivers and coastal waters are in good shape now, but with our increasing coastal development, it takes more and more work to keep them that way.

South Carolina ranks fourth nationally in the acreage of salt marsh it has. And, thousands of miles of creeks and rivers drain its coastal plain. These rivers and marshes provide critical nursery habitat and breeding grounds for most of the commercially important fish and shellfish we enjoy in restaurants and that support a strong coastal fishing economy.

The Coastal Conservation League helps protect coastal waters and fisheries from a wide variety of threats. Developers want to bridge public marshlands to get to small coastal islands to develop them. Industries and sewer authories discharge hundreds of millions of gallons of pollutants into Lowcountry waterways. Rains wash pollutants off hard surfaces like roofs, roads, and parking lots.

Today, one third of South Carolina’s shellfish beds are closed to harvesting. Despite these and other threats, we’ve had great victories in protecting these incomparable resources which remain some of the cleanest and most productive on the East coast.