For DHEC, business comes first

COLUMBIA — The agency responsible for keeping watch over South Carolina's environment and health has fallen short of performing its duties, according to a newspaper investigation.

In a story published Sunday, The State newspaper of Columbia reported that the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control often sides with companies it regulates during disputes with residents.

The report also said the agency often shares crucial information slowly or not at all and sometimes fails to alert the public to dangers.

"DHEC doesn't need to promote business — we have other state agencies that do that," said Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland, who said he was shocked to learn that DHEC failed to protect a Richland County community from a private utility's leadlaced drinking water for 20 years. "DHEC was just as culpable as that utility."

The report focuses on the agency's top management, whose major policy decisions have been challenged repeatedly in recent years by lawmakers, judges, environmentalists, doctors and residents.

DHEC Commissioner Earl Hunter said the agency does its best to protect South Carolina's people and land.

"I'm thoroughly convinced our staff is committed to try to do the best they possibly can," Hunter said. "Sometimes there are limitations ... to what we can do; sometimes the laws or regulations restrict us.

In the meantime, the number of mistakes and frustrated residents is mounting. In 1985, DHEC found dangerous amounts of lead in the drinking water of Richland County's Franklin Park neighborhood.

But it didn't get the lead removed until 2005, as The State newspaper was going to press reporting that residents had lead in their blood.

In another instance, not until earlier this year did DHEC post signs at rivers to warn residents of the dangers of eating mercury-laced fish at hundreds of fishing spots across the state.

DHEC knew the health threat had been expanding since the early 1990s and put notices out to the media, but signs, placed where they can be seen by river users, went up only after The Post and Courier reported on mercury found in residents' blood.

Hunter insists health and environmental protection are the agency's top goals, but one of its own lawyers argued against that during a hearing regarding a Dillon County hog farm.

"Protection of the environment cannot come at the expense of agricultural business," DHEC lawyer Stephen Hightower said. He was arguing against neighbors who were challenging DHEC's approval of the farm.

Hightower told Judge Paige Gossett that business profits should be given high consideration in environmental cases. DHEC has a duty to "protect a valuable industry that the Legislature has determined is important."

Hightower lost the argument.

In August, Gossett ruled DHEC wrongly granted a permit to the 3,500-hog farm and its 32 tons of daily swine waste.

Columbia environmental lawyer Bob Guild, the lawyer who won the case, wasn't surprised DHEC argued business interests should trump a clean environment.

"That's been their behavior," said Guild, who has won environmental cases against DHEC for more than a decade. "It's disturbing that our state environmental agency trims its sails in favor of polluters."