By Bill Davis, senior editor | It is late spring in South Carolina when misty showers give way to unrelenting humidity, and the saber-rattling over the state’s Pollution Control Act returns to the Statehouse for the fourth year in a row.

This week, the state Chamber of Commerce put out an “action alert” to members of the business community to fight back the one-sided “flood” of letters that legislators were receiving from “extreme” environmental groups regarding a bill they are supporting.

The bill, S. 229, would protect utilities and other potential polluters from “frivolous” lawsuits filed by individuals, according to the Chamber and the state Manufacturers Alliance. Additionally, they claimed in a joint opinion piece this week that not approving the bill would jeopardize jobs across South Carolina.

Environmentalists have countered, saying that pro-business lobbyists are burning a straw man and trying to reduce citizens’ rights to protect their communities.

Four years ago, GOP Gov. Nikki Haley signed into law a legislative “fix” for the Act, which most agree reduced a citizen’s ability to hold suspected polluters accountable. The current bill would further insulate businesses, requiring individuals to go through the state Department of Health and Environmental Control instead of the courts for grievances and stop suspected pollution.

DHEC spokesman Robert Yanity said his agency typically takes no position in the fight over regulations, and focuses instead on what “legislators and policy makers have tasked and obligated us to regulate.”

House committee argued about bill

Heated debate broke out this week during a House Judiciary Committee meeting over the proposed bill with state Rep. Stephen Goldfinch (R-Murrells Inlet) casting utilities as the guardians of the environment and environmentalists as moneygrubbers.

Goldfinch argued in a Wednesday interview that environmentalists were using their opposition to the bill as a smokescreen for their real motive: to keep coal ash burned by utilities stored in retention ponds so that when it leaches arsenic into the groundwater, the utilities will face larger fines from federal laws, like the U.S. Clean Water Act.

Goldfinch said the proposed bill would lead the way for the state to create a more robust policy for permitting coal-ash removal, transport and storage, and would save the state from a series of potential problems in the future,

Utilities, like Santee Cooper, have been pumping coal ash from retention ponds and storing them in proprietary facilities and landfills, as well as recycling it into concrete for years, according to Santee Cooper spokesman Mollie Gore. She added that her company was doing so in accordance with state law and requirements regulated by DHEC.

Meanwhile, some counties, like Pickens, have won recent battles to keep out-of-state coal ash from being deposited in their landfills. And Santee Cooper, like other utilities across the state, has decommissioned coal-burning plants in recent years, which according to Gore, reduced its coal-produced electricity by more than one-third over the past 10 years.

Environmentalists say bill robs individuals of rights

Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney Frank Holleman of Greenville can’t figure out whether he disagrees more with the Chamber’s position or that of the Alliance.

Holleman, a former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education, takes issue with the idea that “conservatives” put more faith in a bureaucracy, DHEC, than in an individual in protecting the environment. He added that environmental cleanups have actually created jobs over the past four years, as utilities have hired crews to help mend troubled disposal spots.

He said that Santee Cooper has set a “national standard” for utilities finding ways to legitimately recycle coal ash. [More: Opinion piece by Holleman]

Perhaps Holleman’s biggest gripe is with the use of the word “frivolous,” as it relates to lawsuits. Nothing could be less frivolous and more important, in his eyes, than a citizen protecting his or her environment and community. And, he said, there hasn’t been a “flood” of lawsuits in the past four years.

Dana Beach, head of one of the state’s leading environmental groups, the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, said he found it odd that so much energy is being expended on protecting businesses from “hypothetical” lawsuits at the expense of an individual’s rights.

Meanwhile, Goldfinch said that despite the interest ginned up by the topic, S. 229 will likely not get acted upon this session, as time is running and out and legislators are focused on the budget, roads and ethics bills. He said the bill likely will be revisited for a fifth year in 2017.

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