The Murrells Inlet Dredging Money Keeps Coming. The Holdup Is Where the Mud Goes.

Where do you put more than 750,000 cubic yards of material dredged from the creeks of a salt marsh? Georgetown County has been working on that question since it began planning to dredge the Murrells Inlet creeks in 2019. Seven years later it is still the question that decides when your boat can count on clearing the creek at low tide.

On September 1, 2026, the state's supplemental appropriations bill was signed with a $2,000,000 line for "Georgetown County - Murrells Inlet Dredging." Three days later, WMBF reported that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources were still running surveys and no start date had been set. The project keeps getting funded. No permit decision has been reported, and the permit comes down to where the dredged material ends up.

Two Dredges Share One Name

Part of the confusion around the inlet is that "the dredging" means two different projects.

• The federal channel. The Corps maintains this. Congress authorized it in 1971, and it was built between 1977 and 1981 with entrance, inner, auxiliary and turning-basin sections. Its most recent maintenance dredging wrapped up in 2024, and the sand was pumped onto the beach. The Corps has historically put that sand on Garden City Beach and at Huntington Beach State Park.
• The creeks. This is Georgetown County's project, and it's the one still waiting. It covers more than 16 miles of natural and man-made channels and creeks, with the goal of better low-tide boat access. That area includes the mouth of Oaks Creek behind the entrance jetties.

Because the federal channel was dredged in 2024, the entrance has had work done recently. The creeks behind it, where most residents' docks and launches are, have not.

The Money Kept Arriving

The funding history shows a project that kept drawing support while the permit stayed open.

Don't add these rows together. The reports overlap, and none of them lays out a full running total. The cost figures also disagree, ranging from $30 million to $39 million depending on the year and the article. None of them is a 2026 estimate. What the table does show is that state and county support for the project has held steady across three budget cycles and a referendum. That support was already in place in February 2026, when Georgetown County officials described the permit as still unresolved, and the September appropriation added to it.

Why the Mud Is the Whole Question

The county applied to the Corps for its permit in 2023. The plan was to pump the dredged material to a nearshore disposal site off Huntington Beach State Park. When the permit comment period opened in November 2023, the Coastal Observer reported that this would be South Carolina's first authorized nearshore placement of dredge spoil.

That is where the hold-up is. Since the application was filed, the Corps has asked for more information about the disposal site. In April 2024, the Coastal Observer reported that those requests covered the dredged material itself and its effects on the site. The county's application says the site would be designed so silt and clay don't wash up on nearby beaches.

The reason the county won't just choose another site goes back to an earlier dredging job. In 2016, silt from a county-funded project was pumped into geotextile tubes, left to dry and then trucked away. According to the Coastal Observer, that method is too expensive for a project of this size. Rep. Lee Hewitt has warned that costs could climb sharply if offshore disposal isn't approved. So the disposal site is what makes the budget work.

"The permit should have been issued a year ago."

Georgetown County Council Chair Clint Elliott said that in February 2026. He said the Georgetown and Horry county councils were drafting a letter to Sen. Lindsay Graham and Sen. Tim Scott to "move the needle on the federal side." Hewitt said he had been in contact with Graham's office and with U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, and that people in Murrells Inlet are "almost getting angry" about the delay.

The Disposal Site Also Explains Why the Permit Won't Change

If the issue is where the material goes, one obvious idea is to put it on the beach instead. Some people involved have pushed for that. A beach committee formed as part of the county's beachfront management plan update would like sand from the creek project to go on the beach too. Schiff Johnston, who represents Garden City on that committee, pointed out that only a little over a mile of Garden City in Georgetown County falls within the federal renourishment project now underway, leaving close to two miles out.

Elliott's answer was direct. "Pumping sand to the beach would be great," he said. "We've been fighting for this permit for so long we don't want to monkey with this permit." After this many years of back-and-forth over one disposal plan, changing the plan could start the clock over.

The marsh is part of why the review takes time. The 2023 application identified impacts to 1.5 acres of marsh and 0.16 acres of oyster beds, with restoration or mitigation proposed elsewhere in the inlet. During the comment period, an environmental-law advocate argued that dredging should stay at least 10 feet away from marsh and oyster beds so they don't collapse into the channels. The advocate also objected to dredging dead-end channels that had never been dredged before. Hewitt has argued the other side, that dredging could improve water exchange and water quality in the inlet.

Elliott has raised a separate issue at the entrance. The north jetty has a low weir in the middle and a deposition basin behind it that is meant to catch sand drifting along the beach. "Those weirs are too low," he said, and he wants the Corps to come back and assess them. This is about why sand keeps moving into the inlet, and it is a different question from the creek permit.

What Boaters Are Working With Now

Spencer Arnette, a supervisor at Freedom Boat Club, told WMBF this fall that spots that weren't shallow before now are. Boaters have more oyster beds and other obstacles to steer around, and the buoys "seem like they're having to change … quite often" to keep people on the right path in and out. He described the project as a safety issue. He also said a deeper inlet could help bring in transient boats coming off the ocean.

Hewitt grew up on the inlet and called it "my sandbox." He estimates the work will take about three years once it begins. That means construction alone runs three years from whenever it starts. Until then, it makes sense to watch for buoy changes and to plan trips around the tide charts. A project that once planned for work as early as fall and winter 2025 was still at the survey stage as of WMBF's September 4, 2026 report.

Fall on the Water Goes On

The creeks still have a calendar, and two dates come up soon. Murrells Inlet 2020 lists its 22nd Annual Oyster Roast for Saturday, November 7, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Wicked Tuna, 4123 US-17 Business, with live music, food and local craft vendors. Before that, Halloween on the MarshWalk runs October 31 from 5 to 10 p.m. Children's costume judging is at 6 p.m. near Drunken Jack's, and adult judging starts at 7 p.m.

There's also news a few doors down. The Boathouse, a music venue on the waterway, plans to open a second location next year at 4139 Highway 17 Business. Inlet Shipwreck operated there until it closed in September, and the building has also been home to Sloppy Jose's and Neptune's, the Sun News reported. For more on how the MarshWalk side of town is changing, see our recent look at what's shifting a half mile inland. Our Murrells Inlet neighborhood guide covers the rest of the area.

If low-tide access matters for the home you own now or the one you're thinking about, Jan and Dan at Coastal Beach Homes can help you compare which creeks, docks and launches fit the way you use the water. Start Your Coastal Home Search with a team that keeps up with the inlet as closely as you do.