The year-long countdown of the best two dozen public courses I have played in America continues towards a stunning climax in December. Now three quarters of the way through the year, I am closing in on the top spot! For more information on the countdown and criteria, see my first January post.

Number six on my list of favorite U.S. public courses is the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina. This is one of those rare instances where there are three different but all compelling reasons why this course is awesome. First, the entire Kiawah resort is great, from the lodging to food to golf to service, and this is the crown jewel. It’s just a fun place to be, and a great part of the country. Secondly, it is physically beautiful: I always describe it as straight out of Jurassic Park. The course is carved out of this dense, primordial oceanfront swamp, with virtually no development in sight, and beautiful boardwalks everywhere. It is so pristine and untouched that you half expect dinosaurs to step out of the trees. It is better than ever now that Pete Dye returned and rebuilt eighteen the way he originally envisioned it (at the time the resort did not own the necessary coastline).

But what really sets it apart is the playability. That’s right, playability: Despite its fearsome reputation, a course the pros were so intimidated by that several refused to come back after a Ryder Cup so tough it was deemed “The War by the Shore,” the Ocean Course actually works well for all abilities. You do have to check your ego at the door and play the realistic tees, with only scratch players – who happen to also be long hitters – tackling the tips, and only single digits on the blues. Everyone else should be more forward. Of course the pros played most of the holes from special tees well behind the tips. But the course is a masterwork of design, with the carries and angle getting geometrically more difficult as you move back. Play the whites, enjoy; play the blues and throw your clubs in the ocean. It’s that kind of tract. But there are few PGA Tour venues (and now a Major venue with the long deserved PGA Championship coming) that you can enjoy at all, so by all means, enjoy!

Here’s a recap of the rankings so far:

No. 7: Shadow Creek

No. 8: Kauai Lagoons, Miele Course

No. 9: Lake Las Vegas, Reflection Bay

No. 10: Spyglass Hill

No. 11: Troon North Monument

No. 12: Red Sky Ranch

No. 13: Kapalua Plantation Course

No. 14: Primm Valley Lakes Course

No. 15: Classic at Madden’s

No. 16: Tobacco Road

No. 17: Pinehurst #2

No. 18: Challenge at Manele Bay

No. 19: Sunriver

No. 20: The Boulders South

No. 21: Doral’s Blue Monster

No. 22: The Dunes

No. 23: Blackwolf Run

No. 24: Harbour Town Golf Links

Kiawah Island Golf Resort has been named one of the world’s most environmentally sensitive golf resorts by Golf Inc. magazine in its September 2008 issue, winning its inaugural “Green Award.” This comes only a few short months after Golf Magazine named Kiawah Island Golf Resort one of the top “green” golf resorts in the U.S. in its April 2008 issue.

According to Roger Warren, President of Kiawah Island Golf Resort, this recognition is the result of years of hard work and the vision of those who developed Kiawah Island’s original land plan. “When Kiawah Island was first developed in 1976, a conscious effort was made to embrace the natural Lowcountry environment of this beautiful barrier island,” said Warren. “The original land plan was designed to blend into the setting rather than to dominate it. This close tie to nature has made Kiawah Island and its golf courses stand out in the realm of world-class resorts.”

According to Golf Inc. magazine, “Kiawah Island’s recognition by the judges amounts to a lifetime achievement award. Since the resort was developed in the mid-1970s, environmental preservation and nature conservancy have been key elements in the property’s operations and appeal. From prohibiting building forward of the secondary line of dunes to banning street lights on the island, which might lure loggerhead sea turtles away from the beach area, every effort has been made to protect and preserve the island’s native vegetation, wildlife and ecosystem.”

To enhance that tie to nature, each course at the resort has undertaken an extensive environmental program and each has achieved designation as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary by the Audubon International organization. Additionally, The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island Golf Resort has also achieved Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status.

In addition to Kiawah Island Golf Resort, Golf Inc. magazine awarded its “Green Award” to Makena Golf Courses in Makena, Hawaii, and Fairmont Southampton Golf Course in Bermuda in the golf club category. Two additional winners were selected in other categories. They included Troon Golf, top finisher among operators and associations and W.R. Love Golf Course Architecture, who won in the product-service provider category.

The awards competition sponsored by Golf Inc. is aimed at recognizing golf courses and companies that have adopted programs and practices designed to promote environmental sustainability and responsible environmental stewardship.

To view the Golf Inc. article, go to http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cypress/golfinc0908/index.php?startid=26.

Last April, GOLF Magazine named Kiawah Island Golf Resort as one of their ten “Green Golf” award winners, praising the resort for “its seamless blending into the Lowcountry environment.” According to GOLF Magazine’s Senior Editor, Joe Passov, “These days it’s hip to be ‘green,’ but for years many top golf resorts have been leaders in environmental stewardship. In our first ever ‘Green Golf’ awards, we applaud these ten properties that have placed a serious emphasis on resource conservation and protection.”

Located along 10 miles of pristine beach just south of Charleston, SC, Kiawah Island Golf Resort is rated as one the country’s top golf resorts by Golf Magazine and Travel + Leisure Golf. It includes The Sanctuary – a AAA Five Diamond and Mobil Five Star-rated, 255-room hotel and spa – and 600 private villas and luxury homes. The resort has five championship golf courses, including The Ocean Course – host of the 1991 Ryder Cup, the 2007 Senior PGA and 2012 PGA championships. The resort also ranks as the number two tennis resort in the U.S. by Tennis Magazine, has nine restaurants, and features a renowned recreation and nature program. For more information, visit www.kiawahresort.com or call 800-654-2924.

Visit www.kiawahmoments.com to experience special Kiawah Island moments through guest stories, pictures and video.

Contact: Michael Vegis
Public Relations Director
Phone (843) 768-2749
E-mail: mike_vegis@kiawahresort.com

Charleston’s Fourth Annual Garden Festival Focuses on Preserving the Natural World Through Responsible Gardening
Attendees of the Fourth Annual Charleston Garden Festival are invited to visit Charleston’s beach resorts for discounts and benefits on vacation rentals while attending the event.

Charleston, SC (PRWEB) September 6, 2008 — The Fourth Annual Charleston Garden Festival will take place October 17-20 at Middleton Place, a National Historic Landmark encompassing America’s oldest landscaped gardens. This year’s theme will be “Metamorphosis” – celebrating the preservation of the natural world through the lifecycle of change. Attendees can expect gardening demonstrations and lectures, panel discussions, horticultural tours, live jazz, food, family activities and a children’s “fantasy” area. Guests are encouraged to picnic all day on the Greensward. Log on to charlestongardenfestival.org for ticket information.

MiddletonPlace in Charleston, SC Site of the Charleston Garden Festival
Following the success of last year’s environmentally-conscious event, festival organizers will continue with a Green theme this year. Participating food vendors are members of Slow Food USA (devoted to preserving traditional foodways and educating about food as a center of community), Lowcountry Local First and the Certified South Carolina Fresh program. Organic beer and wine will be sold and landscapers’ garden exhibits will focus on green gardening aesthetics that minimize impact on the environment. The Festival Market will feature more than 40 local and national businesses with eco-friendly, fair trade and sustainable products on hand.

Homes on Kiawah Island, Seabrook Island, and Isle of Palms 

Information From: http://www.prweb.com/releases/resortquest-charleston/garden-festival/prweb1287764.htm

Kiawah controversy: Marketing tool or subsidy?
Bill in Congress would allow reduced insurance rates on new beachfront homes

By Tony Bartelme (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Sandwiched between the resort islands of Kiawah and Seabrook, a teardrop-shaped spit of sand and marsh marks the entrance to Capt. Sam’s Inlet.

Over the eons, wind, tides and storms have shaped the spit at the southwestern end of Kiawah Island near the county’s Beachwalker Park. Island developers want to build 50 homes and a half-mile concrete revetment to prevent the Kiawah River from turning the spit into an island.

Alan Hawes The Post and Courier

 It’s one of the area’s most spectacular undeveloped beaches, and because it’s next to the county’s Beachwalker Park, it’s the only beach you can drive to without passing through Kiawah’s guard gates. It’s also the subject of a high-stakes debate over whether the federal government should subsidize people for living in places where water and land sometimes trade places.

Right now, the land by Capt. Sam’s Inlet is in a special zone where the federal government is prohibited from spending money on roads, beach renourishment and government-backed flood insurance. Because of this designation, future homeowners must buy flood insurance through a private company, and such policies can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year.

At the request of the land’s owners, Kiawah Development Partners, U.S. Rep. Henry Brown recently introduced a bill that would remove the area from this protected zone.

The bill notes that developers could build hundreds of homes there, but plan to do many fewer and thus would increase the land’s “ecological health and habitat value.”

Conservation groups are crying foul, calling Brown’s bill an insurance perk for wealthy homeowners at the expense of taxpayers and wildlife.

“Why should we pay for someone else’s risky development?” said Nancy Vinson, a project manager with the Coastal Conservation League. “They’re just doing this so they can sell the land more easily and make more money.”

Shifting sands

South Carolina’s poet laureate, Marjory Wentworth, calls barrier islands “restless ribbons of sand.” Geologically speaking, they are in constant motion, pushed and pulled by tides, winds and storms. Inlets are particularly vulnerable to erosion, and can change shape in a single storm.

Barrier islands also are often exceptionally beautiful places where people want to visit and live, and during the 1970s and ’80s Congress grew concerned that government spending on roads and federal flood insurance had encouraged too many to live in these vulnerable areas, and that taxpayers would have to pick up the tab for hurricane damage and beach renourishment projects.

So in 1982 Congress created the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System to discourage development in particularly fragile coastal areas.

Land inside this system, about 3 million acres from Maine to Texas, is ineligible for federal money or subsidies, though privately owned tracts, such as the land by Capt. Sam’s Inlet on Kiawah, still may be developed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes the program as a “unique free-market approach” to conservation that so far has saved taxpayers more than $1.3 billion.

Between 1988 and 1999, South Carolina law was much tougher than the federal laws, preventing any development on Capt. Sam’s Inlet, which is formed by the Kiawah River as it flows into the ocean.

That changed in 1999 when the state moved the area’s setback, an invisible line in the sand that says where development can and can’t go. The change made it possible for the land’s owner, Kiawah Development Partners, to build.

But the land was still in the federal Coastal Barrier Resources System, a significant drawback from a marketing and development standpoint.

Inside the zone, an owner of a beach home with $900,000 in coverage and a $50,000 deductible would have to shell out about $40,000 a year, said Allison Dean Love, executive director of the South Carolina Insurance News Service.

Outside the zone, an owner who qualifies for federally subsidized flood insurance might pay $1,600 a year, or 25 times less. (The average flood policy in Charleston County is $578 a year, she said.)

“It’s about equality,” said Leonard L. Long Jr., executive vice president of Kiawah Development Partners.

Future homeowners on Capt. Sam’s Inlet should qualify for federal flood insurance just like other homeowners on Kiawah. He added that Kiawah Development Partners plans to build fewer than 50 homes on 20 acres of the 120-acre spit. The rest of the land will be protected by an easement given to the Kiawah Nature Conservancy.

“While some might prefer to have this land remain undeveloped, that’s not an option,” Long said. “These lands will be developed, albeit in a careful way that is emblematic of Kiawah.”

Pros and cons

On June 26, Brown introduced a bill that would remove about 84 acres from the Coastal Barrier Resources System, mostly along Capt. Sam’s Inlet. The bill would add 25 acres of high ground farther inland, including a spot where the Kiawah Island Parkway cuts through, and 153 acres of marsh.

The bill said the developers could build as many as 504 dwelling units on the spit by Capt. Sam’s Inlet, but “have indicated a willingness on a voluntary basis to reduce substantially these entitlements and, as a result, reduce allowable density.”

This development approach will “increase the ecological health and habitat value” of the inlet area, Brown’s bill said. Brown’s district office referred questions to the Town of Kiawah, which issued a press statement saying it supports Brown’s bill.

Conservationists question the bill’s logic.

“I think people will be alarmed by this,” said Vinson of the Coastal Conservation League. “It’s an important area that should be left as is.”

Vinson said she also was concerned about Kiawah’s plans to build a 2,783-foot concrete revetment on the Kiawah River side of the spit to control erosion. Kiawah recently submitted permit applications to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

“Looking at an aerial photo, it looks like it’s designed to prevent the spit from being cut off from the next storm,” she said. “You talk about fairness? What’s unfair is that (future) homeowners will eventually see this area erode, and then they’ll start crying for sandbags and sea walls, just like on the Isle of Palms.”

Long gets agitated when he hears comments that his company’s development plans will harm the area’s ecology.

He said the Town of Kiawah and Kiawah Development Partners have a long history of promoting conservation and preserving endangered wildlife, and that the county park’s 50,000 visitors have more of an impact than 50 likely part-time homeowners.

Long said the revetment on the Kiawah River is needed because the river is eating into the island’s banks. The structure would slope into the river and be made from concrete donuts with holes that allow plant growth and create a more natural look.

“We’re going way beyond the pale to be extra sensitive,” he said, adding that Vinson’s “flamethrower statements are so unfortunate.”

Unusual modification

Orrin Pilkey, a geologist and emeritus professor at Duke University, has studied the South Carolina coast for years, and he described plans to build on Capt. Sam’s Inlet as “a crazy proposal.”

Pilkey said the inlet is constantly in flux. “In this moment in time, with our understanding of the coming sea-level rise, anything that takes away the dynamics of our islands and increases beachfront development is madness.”

It’s relatively rare for Congress to modify the Coastal Barrier Resources System.

During the past 26 years Congress made minor changes to three areas in South Carolina, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service records show.

One was near a government property in Myrtle Beach that removed three buildings from the zone, another clarified a mapping issue and a third modified the boundary near Huntington Beach, removing several structures on a property’s edge.

Pilkey said he would be shocked if Congress agreed to make such a dramatic change to the Coastal Barrier Resources System on Kiawah, given that attempts elsewhere went nowhere. “They’ve tried to do that in North Topsail Beach (near Wilmington, N.C.), which is crowded with buildings, but they’ve failed.”

Reach Tony Bartelme at 937-5554 or tbartelme@postandcourier.com.
 
Article From: http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/aug/13/marketing_tool_or_subsidy50616/

Enroll in the CodeRED Emergency Notification System

The six-month Atlantic hurricane season begins June 1. The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season will be near average in the number of storms, but there is a higher risk of a destructive storm hitting the U.S. East Coast. The forecast expects a total of 12 named storms in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season.

History teaches that a lack of hurricane awareness and preparation are common threads among all major hurricane disasters. By knowing your vulnerability and what actions you should take, you can reduce the effects of a hurricane disaster.

Hurricane hazards come in many forms: storm surge, high winds, tornadoes, and flooding. This means it is important for your family to have a plan that includes all of these hazards.

To enroll in the Town’s emergency notification system, please follow the procedures below. With this system, residents, non-resident owners and commercial entities can be notified if they have registered their telephone or cell phone numbers into the CodeRed system.

You can register your telephone number in two ways:

You do it

NOTE: Use your Kiawah address in the address field.

Town does it

If you choose for the Town to add your information, make sure you provide your full name, Kiawah Island property address and phone number(s) in body of the email.

Town of Kiawah, South Carolina

(from www.kiawahisland.org)