Five years after launching an innovative plan to limit the environmental effect of commercial development, Mount Pleasant is expanding to techniques that homeowners can follow to be energy-efficient and nature-friendly.
The town is in the early stages of a voluntary residential environmental program that was discussed at a recent meeting at the Mount Pleasant Green Space, Environment, Ecology and Natural Resources (GREEN) Commission.
Mount Pleasant Town Council created the GREEN Commission in March 2023 to give its advice on conservation, natural resources, flood resilience and green space programs.
Mount Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie, in an email to the Charleston City Paper, said town leaders “have a duty to protect the sensitive ecosystems that exist in and around our town. We are proud of this new program and its continued success in enhancing environmental elements within residential properties and commercial projects.
“It’s one of our initiatives that … will continue to set the standards for more resilient and environmentally friendly land development practices,” the mayor said. “This is only the start.”
GREEN Commission chairman David Quick said the environmental plans for business and homeowners are “an acknowledgement that we can do better in repairing suburbia.
“We are not going to change Mount Pleasant’s landscape overnight,” he said. It has taken 30 years to turn Mount Pleasant into a community of freshly cut lawns that have damaged the ecology.
“One of the major challenges to this will be homeowner associations,” predicted Quick, who was recently appointed chairman of the nine-member advisory group. “They control the individual subdivisions, and they tend to gravitate toward the super-manicured homogeneous neighborhoods.”
Kevin Mitchell, deputy director of the town’s engineering and environmental division, said the plan is aimed at helping residents use water more efficiently to reduce the demand on the water supply. If homeowners can follow the plan “without [it] costing them money, that will improve and enhance the environment,” he said.
Mount Pleasant has nearly 27,000 single-family homes and a population of about 100,000 residents. “If we were to make a small percentage of an impact to that number it would be a very big result for the environment,” Mitchell said.
Quick said the staff that manages the plan “has done a really good job” of talking about pervious surfaces that allow water to pass through to the soil and native plants that attract native pollinators and wildlife.
A plan with incentives, rain gardens
Mitchell said he and his staff are seeking the commission’s advice on how to write the residential program and what incentives can entice homeowners to follow it.
Incentives could include special promotional items such as rain barrels, free trees and plants and the benefit from becoming environmentally smarter to live more efficiently and cheaper, he said.
How to encourage people to follow the plan, he said, “is the question of how big of an incentive we are going to put in front of them.”
At the GREEN Commission’s April 16 meeting at town hall, “we’ll discuss the strategy and format of the program,” he said. Community meetings will follow to receive residents’ comments, he added.
Mitchell describes the plan for homeowners and commercial developers as a low-impact strategy that mimics nature to control the flow of water.
Unlike Charleston’s large infrastructure water-control projects that include a wall around the rim of the city’s peninsula, Mount Pleasant’s plans for businesses and homeowners are site-specific.
For example, Mount Pleasant’s plans for residential and commercial sites include rain gardens to capture rainwater.
Until recently, Charleston touted a mini-grant program to encourage homeowners to install rain gardens on their property. Residents could receive $200 to buy plants that filter and absorb water to keep it out of the storm drain system.
The Charleston rain garden program, however, was recently cut because it lacked oversight, the city’s communications director Deja Knight McMillan told the City Paper. “Essentially what we were doing was … giving [a homeowner] $200 and there was no follow-up,” she said.
“The plan was very well-intentioned,” she added. “We don’t want to discourage people from planting rain gardens. However, as a steward of taxpayers’ money, we have to be very conscious of how we are doing these grant programs.”
Charleston will re-evaluate how to use the money for the rain garden program for another program that benefits the public, McKnight said.
A plan for land developers
In 2019, Mount Pleasant unveiled environmental guidelines for commercial land developers, but the pandemic stalled it. A year ago, it was revived to conserve water, diversify the ecology, promote energy efficiency while creating a more livable community.
So far, 20 businesses have signed up for the program that awards points for the number of nature-saving steps a developer uses in a building plan. Michell said the modest start will hopefully grow to 100 business in five years.
In exchange, the town gets more environmentally friendly commercial sites, and a builder can use earned points to receive more liberal building rules, Mitchell explained.
Mitchell said developers also can earn points for installing charging stations for electric vehicles.
About half of the commercial projects are under construction, he said. They include banks, offices and renovation projects of existing companies and the town’s new baseball field at Thomas C. Cario Middle School.
The environmental plan for commercial land developers does not include the builders of single-family homes, Mitchell said. “We are not forecasting a higher pace of growth of subdivisions,” he said. “What we are creating we will hopefully be able to manage with existing staff.”
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