Mega-landfill defeated
By Clayton Stairs
cstairs@gtowntimes.com
There will not be a mega-landfill in Nesmith, just six miles west of Georgetown County.
In a recent meeting, Williamsburg County leaders voted unanimously to pay $750,000 to dissolve a contract with a landfill design firm, Material Recovery and Reclamation (MRR) Willliamsburg, LLC, which would have created a 30-year partnership between the county and MRR.
"It is good news that County Council and elected officials heard their constituents," said Nancy Cave, the director for the local chapter of the Coastal Conservation League, which opposed the landfill.
"However, the reality is that Williamsburg County still needs to find a solution to its trash problem."
The reason county leaders began negotiations with MRR in the first place was the need to meet a state requirement to have a lined landfill.
Their present landfill in Salters is an outdated one, which must be closed within the next year.
Large landfills, which take garbage from other areas for profit, are a growing trend throughout the country, and there are several other counties in the state that have been targeted, including Marlboro and Lee counties.
The state legislature is now considering a bill that would stop mega-landfills from being built for a certain period of time and require meetings for officials on the topic.
Citizen outcry over the last year and involvement of state elected officials may have made the difference for Nesmith.
S.C. Sen. Yancy McGill (D-Kingstree) and S.C. Rep. Carl Anderson (D-Georgetown) were present during later meetings.
With a capacity of more than two million tons of garbage, the landfill planned for Nesmith would have been the largest in the state, attracting waste from other counties and states.
Opponents of the landfill expressed their fears and concerns often and loudly.
They said that it would cause health problems in the area, drive property values down, and cause South Carolina to be the dumping ground for the nation.
Tommy Stuckey, chair of Williamsburg County's Coalition of Concerned Citizens, said he is very pleased that plans for a mega-dump were averted, but they must work quickly to solve their original problem.
"Hopefully, we will be able to dispose of our waste by hauling it to an existing landfill," Stuckey said.
He commended all of the people who came together time after time to help defeat plans for a mega-landfill.
"I just want to thank everybody that worked so hard to fight this thing, and hopefully we can do more in the future," Stuckey said. "No one person accomplished this. It was a unified front of caring citizens."