Georgetown County council met Tuesday and voted to look at options to provide transportation services for Sandy Island’s 18 families.
The island’s lack of public transportation was renewed after a boating accident on Feb. 18 killed three Sandy Island residents, only yards from the island.
There is no road onto the island and the families who live there use boats to navigate a 300 yard canal to reach the island.
Council members decided Tuesday to look into three different recommendations presented to council by county administrator, Sel Hemingway.
The first option Hemingway presented to council was to use a school boat that provides students transportation from the island to the Sandy Island boat landing to catch the school bus.
The county will have to work out details with the state education department, costs, liability concerns, and a schedule before putting the 25 passenger boat to use as a means of transportation to the island, according to Hemingway.
A second option would be a vehicle ferry where residents would have their vehicles loaded onto the ferry at the existing boat landing and dropped off at a ferry landing on Sandy Island.
The county would bear the brunt of the cost to build loading and unloading docks at the landing and at the island, cost of the vessel, and look at the requirements as to who could and could not use the service, Hemingway told council Tuesday.
In a letter read to council by Rev. George Weathers, many residents asked council to look at the vehicle ferry as an option.
A third option Hemingway presented to council members was a “people ferry,” that the island could use.
Council members would have to look at United State’s Coast Guard requirements for licensing a captain, cost of the ferry vessel, and the funding source, which if public would allow anyone to use the service, according to Hemingway.
Georgetown County’s seven council members voted unanimously to form an ad hoc committee to study the options which would seek input from island residents, a cost-benefit study, sources of funding, and to determine an operation schedule for any possible ferry system that would serve the island’s needs.
Council members did not say when the results of the study would be finalized or when the study would begin.
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