They are hazardous to boaters’ safety and the environment. Additionally, they are unsightly.

“We have a real problem with abandoned vessels all over the state,” said state Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston. “It’s not just along the coast like a lot of people think. There is a lot of that happening in the Upstate and the Midlands as well.”

Campsen, who chairs the House Fish, Game and Forestry Committee, is sponsoring the Waterways Protection Act, which would provide a funding source to address this statewide issue. This would involve a $3 fee, called a waterways protection fee, that would be included in boaters’ annual registration.

Without this funding, abandoned vessels cannot be addressed in a timely manner. There is a nonprofit called Wounded Nature that essentially has a waitlist on removing abandoned vessels. The organization is 14 years old and has removed 158 abandoned boats in the state, according to member Rudy Socha, but most of those removals have taken place along the coast.

“But the problem is expanding inland,” Socha said.

A lot of times when boats are abandoned, he said, the owners of the boat are not trackable, sometimes because they have died and sometimes because they never registered the boat and left it to sink.

“Around 80% of abandoned boats are sailboats because they're not easy to trailer,” Socha said, noting that not all trailers fit all sailboats. “It's expensive to get rid of the boat.”

The nonprofit Socha is a part of exists in advocacy for the environment because abandoned vessels are a huge source of water pollution.

“A 30-foot sailboat contains about 9,000 pounds of fiberglass, lead, fuel and other debris,” he said.

And deserted boats are a hazard at night, Campsen noted. They’re not lit, so they could be sitting in a waterway and cause a crash. Some vessels are much harder to remove than others. Sometimes all it takes is a tugboat, while other times, the boats get beached and must be taken apart to remove. Either way, it's an expensive process Campsen wants to address through the Waterways Protection Act.

This bill, according to the South Carolina Legislature website, has passed the Senate and was sitting in committee in the House, as of early June. In the meantime, South Carolinians wanting to help address the abandoned boat issue to help the environment and increase boater safety can visit woundednature.org and donate or learn how to volunteer.