Differential equity in access to public and private coastal infrastructure in the Southeastern United States

Despite the ubiquity of coastal infrastructure, it is unclear what factors drive its placement, particularly for water access infrastructure (WAI) that facilitates entry to coastal ecosystems such as docks, piers, and boat landings. The placement of WAI has both ecological and social dimensions, and certain segments of coastal populations may have differential access to water. In this study, we employed an environmental justice framework to assess how public and private WAI in South Carolina, USA is distributed with respect to race and income. Using publicly available data from state agencies and the US Census Bureau, we mapped the distribution of these structures across the 301 km of the South Carolina coast. Using spatially explicit analyses with high resolution, we found that census block groups with lower income contain more public WAI, but racial composition has no effect. On the other hand, private docks showed the opposite trends, as the abundance of docks is significantly, posit...