If you're planning to stick around coastal Georgia, you'd better move over.
About half again as many people are expected to populate the coast by 2030, according to a report commissioned by the Coastal Georgia Regional Development Center.
Over the next two decades, the report predicts, Georgia's six coastal counties and the next tier of four inland counties will grow to about 844,000 people.
Georgia Tech's Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development produced the report, in which population projections outstrip those from the State of Georgia Office of Planning and Budget.
The report combined data from the 2000 U.S. Census with more recent information, including building permits and certificates of occupancy from nine of the 10 counties, said Jason Barringer, research scientist with the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development.
Don't look to local maternity wards to supply all those new people.
Instead, it's a previous baby boom that will contribute migrants from other parts of the country. Retiring baby boomers, to be exact.
"Most of the new growth will be from in-migration," Barringer said. "We're seeing a lot of retirees move in. Also both bases (King's Bay and Fort Stewart) bring in a lot of people."
Several million baby boomers will retire in the next seven to 10 years, said Vernon Martin, executive director of the Coastal Georgia RDC. Those from the Northeast see coastal Georgia's average home price of 260,000 as a bargain. Those who suffered through recent hurricane seasons in Florida see Georgia's coast, perhaps mistakenly, as protected.
"People who lived in Florida got those four or five storms. And there's overcrowding," he said. "Demographers call them half backs. They move to Florida and then move halfway back."
Population numbers are pivotal to funding formulas for federal and state monies for items such as roads and schools.
That's why the RDC funded the 50,000 study from an academic center. It expects to work with Georgia Tech to update the predictions every two years.
"We need something that's defensible about what population is now and what it's projected to be in the next 20 years," Martin said.
Population also plays into other resources controlled by the state, such as ground water, which is already a hot button issue for developers in coastal Georgia.
Higher populations will make the job of allocating water use and waste water discharge permits even more difficult, according to Nap Caldwell, senior planning and policy advisor at the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.
"It's safe to say it's a new day in how we handle wastewater in Chatham and Effingham even without growth," he said. "Place growth on top of that and you've got some challenges."
Politicians often love positive growth projections. In fact, Chatham County Commission Chairman Pete Liakakis has only one complaint about the report: It may have underestimated growth in Savannah and Chatham County.
Just look at all the new houses popping up on the county's west side, said Liakakis, who is also on the board of the Coastal Georgia RDC.
But not everyone thinks more is necessarily better.
Growth on Tybee worries council member Paul Wolff.
"It's crucial we not allow the kind of development that's been done here to continue because of its cumulative effect on water quality," he said.
A recently published study from Peter Verity of the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography showed declining water quality in the Skidaway River estuary. The data stood on its head a long held paradigm that Georgia's estuaries, with their twice-daily flushing from high tides, could never get to a low oxygen state.
Verity spoke to a Tybee neighborhood group earlier this month and fingered coastal development as a large part of the problem.
"We've had a frontier mentality and that works as long as the population density is low," Verity said. "The way daddy did it is not good anymore."
Newcomers, especially those who have seen environmental degradation in the Northeast, may want to do things differently, according to Will Berson, a policy analyst with the Georgia Conservancy, who himself hails from New Jersey.
"They've seen the first order mistakes," he said. "You may see these come-heres with some pretty definite views about what should happen in land use, planning and the environment that may surprise people."
Increase in population
| City | 2000 population | 2030 population | percent increase |
| Bryan County | |||
| Richmond Hill | 6,959 | 14,825 | 113 |
| Pembroke | 2,379 | 4,672 | 96 |
| Bulloch County | |||
| Brooklet | 1,113 | 1,632 | 47 |
| Portal | 597 | 876 | 47 |
| Register | 164 | 241 | 47 |
| Statesboro | 22,698 | 33,291 | 47 |
| Camden County | |||
| Kingsland | 10,506 | 18,996 | 81 |
| St. Marys | 13,761 | 22,589 | 64 |
| Woodbine | 1,218 | 1,980 | 62.5 |
| Chatham County | |||
| Bloomingdale | 2,665 | 3,531 | 32.5 |
| Garden City | 11,289 | 14,958 | 32.5 |
| Pooler | 6,239 | 12,902 | 107 |
| Port Wentworth | 3,276 | 4,341 | 32.5 |
| Savannah | 131,510 | 174,256 | 32.5 |
| Thunderbolt | 2,340 | 3,101 | 32.5 |
| Tybee Island | 3,392 | 4,495 | 32.5 |
| Vernonburg | 138 | 183 | 32.6 |
| Effingham County | |||
| Guyton | 917 | 2,901 | 216 |
| Springfield | 1,821 | 3,878 | 113 |
| Rincon | 4,376 | 10,319 | 136 |
| Glynn County | |||
| Brunswick | 15,600 | 23,200 | 49 |
| Liberty County | |||
| Hinesville | 30,392 | 43,984 | 45 |
| Allenhurst | 788 | 1,140 | 45 |
| Flemington | 369 | 534 | 45 |
| Midway | 1,100 | 1,592 | 45 |
| Riceboro | 736 | 1,065 | 45 |
| Walthourville | 4,030 | 5,832 | 45 |
| Long County | |||
| Ludowici | 1,440 | 3,159 | 119 |
| McIntosh County | |||
| Darien | 1,719 | 2,952 | 71.7 |
| Screven County | |||
| Hiltonia | 421 | 733 | 74 |
| Newington | 322 | 561 | 74 |
| Oliver | 253 | 441 | 74 |
| Rocky Ford | 186 | 324 | 74 |
| Sylvania | 2,675 | 4,659 | 71.7 |
Source: Coastal Georgia Regional Development Center