Kershaw County, SC Environmental Rules: Flood Elevation Requirements (2026)

Section 16-65(1) sets the county's core freeboard standard: new construction or substantial improvement of a residential structure, including manufactured homes, must have its lowest floor elevated no lower than one foot above the base flood elevation (BFE), and basements are prohibited outright. If solid foundation perimeter walls are used to raise the structure, the walls need openings sized to let floodwaters pass through automatically, under the elevated-buildings design criteria in § 16-65(4): a minimum of two openings on different walls totaling at least one square inch of net open area per square foot of enclosed area, with the opening bottoms no higher than one foot above grade.

Section 16-65(2) applies the same one-foot freeboard to commercial, industrial and nonresidential structures, but lets a structure in an A zone be floodproofed instead of elevated if a registered professional engineer or architect certifies that the space below the required elevation is watertight and can resist hydrostatic and hydrodynamic loads; floodproofed structures need an approved maintenance plan with an annual exercise. Manufactured homes placed in a park or subdivision must be elevated the same one foot above BFE and anchored to resist flotation, collapse and lateral movement under § 16-65(3).

The planning and zoning director, as local administrator, collects the as-built lowest-floor elevation certification after the lowest floor is finished and before any further vertical construction, per § 16-43(b)(2), and can issue a stop-work order for failure to submit it.