Ash landfill causes concern

WATEREE — Heath Hill farms cotton, corn and other vegetables on several thousand acres next to SCE&G's Wateree plant. He has thinning gray hair, a round, Carroll O'Conner-esque face, and he knows every ditch and culvert for miles around.

"I've lived here all my life, and I don't want to see the community destroyed," he said one bright afternoon while driving toward the new South Carolina Electric & Gas ash landfill, now under construction. "There's low-income people all around here, and they can't afford to fight, or don't know what to do," he said.

Hill isn't a shy man, and he's not afraid to take on one of South Carolina's largest companies. He has filed three legal actions and spent $50,000 out of his pocket to fight SCE&G's new ash landfill.

Hill says the new ash landfill will ruin the area's drinking water and lower property values. He said the company's environmental record at the plant is spotty. Ash in ponds next to the plant have contaminated groundwater next to the river with arsenic many times the federal drinking water limit.

Hill isn't the only one concerned about the landfill and SCE&G's ash operations. The power plant is just a few miles upstream from the Congaree National Park.

"When you have an ash pond that's right on the Wateree River, whose berms are barely above the historic flood stage, and that leaks arsenic into the groundwater, I'd say that's a threat to the park," said John Grego, a statistics professor at the University of South Carolina and president of Friends of the Congaree.

For years, SCE&G dumped ash from its plant in two ponds next to the Wateree River.

The ponds are enclosed by berms made of dense soil. On the edge of these berms, the utility drilled wells to monitor whether contamination from the landfill was getting into groundwater and possibly the Wateree River.

Over time, several wells, including some just steps away from the river, consistently yielded water samples with high levels of arsenic, including one well with arsenic 200 to 400 times the federal limit.

Jean-Claude Younan, SCE&G's environmental chief, says soils between the wells and the river trap some of the arsenic. And if any arsenic makes its way into the water, the river itself takes care of the problem.

"As soon as it (the arsenic) hits the river, it's completely diluted and gone, and has no effect on the environment," he said.

Now, the utility is building a large new landfill to replace the ponds. At the same time, the utility is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to install new air scrubbers. The scrubbers will remove mercury and other toxic chemicals before they leave the plant's stacks, but these poisons could end up in the plant's ash. Residents worry this ash will contaminate their drinking water.

"What difference does it make if you take it out of the air and put it in the ground and water?" said Robb Brown, one of Hill's attorneys.

"I'd like it to just disappear," said Carolyn Williams-Sumter, who lives three hundred yards from the new landfill.

So would Hill.

One afternoon, he watched earth-moving machines digging in the new landfill, an area that likely once housed slave homes, a recent report found. Hill's property is all around the plant, and he remembered a time SCE&G asked him if his property was for sale.

"I said, no, it's not for sale. It's for my children."