Charleston County, SC — On April 30, 2026, Administrative Law Court (ALC) Judge Ralph King Anderson III issued a final order in Bay Light, LLC v. South Carolina Department of Environmental Services and South Carolina Coastal Conservation League (CCL), ruling in favor of a developer seeking to build a private vehicular bridge to a coastal island in the ACE Basin area near Meggett, South Carolina.

The Court remanded the case back to the Department of Environmental Services (DES) to process the permit application without the heightened protective standards that apply to areas of special resource value, which include the ACE Basin Taskforce Boundary Area. Following a two-day evidentiary hearing in December 2025, Judge Anderson concluded that DES failed to produce sufficiently clear and reliable evidence to establish that the property lies within the ACE Basin Taskforce Boundary Area, asserting discrepancies between witness testimony about the boundary's limits, as well as questioning DES’ GIS data layer that confirms the location of the boundary.

“Among other errors, the ALC discounted the testimony of one of the founding members of the ACE Basin Task Force, who clearly confirmed the boundaries of the ACE Basin Task Force Boundary Area.” said SCELP Senior Attorney Leslie Lenhardt, who represented the Coastal Conservation League at the December hearing.

SCELP intends to file a motion to reconsider the ruling before the Court's deadline next Monday. If the motion is denied, SCELP and CCL will evaluate options to pursue an appeal.

The ACE Basin – named for the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto Rivers – is one of the largest intact estuarine ecosystems on the Atlantic Coast, encompassing approximately 1.6 million acres of wetlands, tidal marshes, forests and barrier islands. In September 2023, DES denied Bay Light LLC's application for a private vehicular bridge because the property fell within the ACE Basin Taskforce Boundary Area and the project failed to meet the heightened standards required. Bay Light LLC appealed that denial to the Administrative Law Court, and SCELP intervened on behalf of the CCL to defend DES's decision and the public interests at stake.

While the ruling does not invalidate the ACE Basin Taskforce Boundary Area regulation and is limited to the specific facts of this case, it creates a pathway for the developer to seek a bridge permit under the standard permitting process despite the property’s location within an area of special resource value, which could ultimately lead to the development of a previously inaccessible coastal island within or near one of the most ecologically significant landscapes on the Atlantic Coast. That is precisely the outcome these regulations were designed to prevent.

SCELP will continue to monitor all permitting activity related to this property and intends to pursue every available legal avenue to ensure the ACE Basin's extraordinary natural systems are protected.