Dale Morris, the intellectual force behind the city of Charleston’s effort to deal with future floodwaters, died Monday following a Sunday bicycle accident that sent him to the hospital.
“He ran into the back of a parked vehicle in the way,” said Charleston County Coroner Bobbi Jo O’Neal today, adding that her office was trying to figure out what happened. “We don’t have all of the answers yet.”
Morris, reportedly a veteran cyclist, had the accident shortly before noon Sunday on Emmet Road in his Johns Island neighborhood. He was taken by emergency officials to MUSC, where he died Monday.
Morris, 64, was renowned for his knowledge about water. He became Charleston’s chief resiliency officer in 2021 after a distinguished career that included six years as director for strategic partnerships at the Water Institute of the Gulf in Louisiana, preceded by 24 years of service as senior economist at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington, D.C.
But in June 2024, he left his job of coordinating Charleston’s efforts to mitigate the effects of rising tides and climate change after a major administrative reorganization by freshman Mayor William Cogswell.
On Tuesday, former Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg, who leaned heavily on Morris’s expertise, was audibly shaken by the sudden death.
“He was so alive, so vibrant, so energetic, so healthy,” Tecklenburg said in a telephone interview, calling him a connector of global experts.
“He brought with him connections to the best minds in the world when it comes to water management and resilience at a time when Charleston needed that direction,” the former mayor said. “I was just thrilled when he came to work with us full-time.
“All Charlestonians benefited from his experience and expertise, but also from his integrity and his amazing sense of care and concern for this community that he adopted.”
Tecklenburg added that while many may remember the expertise and knowledge Morris brought to interactions from the Dutch Dialogues to crafting a city water plan, they also should remember how he was a fantastic person.
“He was remarkable, a caring, a loving father,” Tecklenburg said. “He never met a stranger. He was able to connect people together even under complex challenges. He just had this human ability to reach out and bring people together. He was just a remarkable person.”
Sounding the alarm
Before he joined the city, Morris was key in its Dutch Dialogues that sought to learn from the world’s other Lowcountry, the Netherlands, about living with rising and ebbing water.
As outlined in senior editor Herb Frazier’s award-winning 2024 “Going Dutch” report on Charleston’s approach to flood control, Dutch consultants encouraged local planners in 2017 to think differently about storm surges, rainfall and daily tides. They suggested looking for solutions within the context of the Lowcountry’s landscape and integrating flood risk mitigation within the city’s planning, Morris said at the time.
“The Dutch don’t have smarter engineers,” he said. “The Dutch think more creatively about integrated benefits.” The city went on to hire Morris, a Pittsburgh native, to turn plans into action.
In November 2023, Morris told the City Paper that people often don’t think about the crippling consequences of water in a low area like Charleston.
“People think storm surge isn’t a problem in Charleston,” he said. “It is, in fact, the highest risk we face.”
He said people needed to start talking about the issues of heat, water and the Lowcountry’s changing weather. He pointed to flooding of city streets during Tropical Storm Idalia, which hit Charleston during a king tide.
“That type of disruption happens four or five times a year — it used to happen once every five years,” he said, adding that by 2050 it could happen 16 to 25 times a year if nothing changes.
Funeral details are not yet available.
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