S.C. Code Ann. § 49-1-20

Any person who shall be found guilty of cutting any trees or tree tops, brush or logs, or throwing any refuse material whatever into any navigable river or harbor or who shall float logs singly or in rafts in any manner whatsoever without being properly or plainly lighted at night and attended by day with a sufficient number of men to prevent such rafts and logs from negligently damaging property along the river banks, from catching on snags, sinking and forming obstructions or in any manner whatsoever interfering with the navigation of or obstructing such rivers or harbors shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and punished by fine not exceeding two hundred and fifty dollars or by imprisonment not exceeding two years. All such trees, logs, rafts, floating booms or pens of timber dangerous to navigation in any such river may be captured, secured, properly rafted to market and sold, one half of the net proceeds over the expense of capturing and marketing to be paid to the county treasurer of the county in which such timber may be captured and the other half to the person capturing it. But this section shall not apply to logs or timber accidentally drifting loose from a raft or from any stationary boom where timber is kept for proper use or for proper rafting or to any logs floated off from the owner by a sudden freshet before he shall have had an opportunity to raft them. Editor's Note 2010 Act No. 247, SECTION 4.B, provides: "Chapter 1, Title 49 of the 1976 Code is not affected by and supersedes Chapter 4, Title 49 of the 1976 Code, as amended by SECTION 1 of this act."