14 | GREENVILLE JOURNAL | 2.15.2019 GREENVILLEJOURNAL.COM
COAL IMPACTS ON SOUTHERNSIDE n story by CINDY LANDRUM & ANDREW MOORE | photos by WILL CROOKS
R E V. STACE Y MI L LS
MARY D U C K E T T
C O R D ELL LO M A X
MICHA EL CORL E Y
pastor of Mountain View Baptist Church, which is located near the coal tar site
Southernside resident and president of Southernside Neighborhoods in Action
a Greenville resident who grew up near the manufactured gas plant site
an environmental lawyer, pushing for more aggressive cleanup of the Bramlette site
Cordell Lomax knew his way around the bottoms behind what is now Legacy Charter Elementary School and just how far he could go before he encountered coal tar that came from the manufactured gas plant at East Bramlette Road and West Washington Street. “That was my playground,” said Lomax, now 79. But sometimes as he ran and played, he ventured too far — the proof, a black goo that wouldn’t come off his shoes or clothes, and earned him a whoopin’ when he got back home. The manufactured gas plant transformed coal into gas for heating and lighting Greenville’s homes and businesses. This process produced coal tar, a thick black liquid that contains hundreds of chemical compounds, including carcinogens such as benzene. The gas plant closed in 1952 and was mostly demolished six years later, but during its 35 years of operation, it released coal tar-containing wastewater into a network of drainage ditches and eventually contaminated a former landfill site on an adjoining property, according to public documents. Southernside community leaders and environmental justice advocates are pushing for Duke Energy — and state regulators — to move more aggressively to clean up the lingering
pollutants from the plant that ceased operation six decades ago, and in a way that doesn’t pose a risk to the environment or the community’s redevelopment. “It is imperative that it be cleaned up,” said Mary Duckett, a longtime Southernside resident and president of Southernside Neighborhoods in Action. Duke, which was the plant’s primary owner and operator, is working with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control and the property’s current owner, CSX Transportation Inc., to investigate and remediate the contamination, according to Ryan Mosier, spokesman for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based utility. Mosier said Duke has spent $6.7 million on the properties since the early 1990s. “We’re closely managing the whole process through repeated monitoring, routine water testing, and coordination with DHEC,” Mosier wrote in an email to the Greenville Journal. “We hope the substantial investments we’re making at the site to ensure the public’s continued well-being demonstrate this commitment.” State health officials say the contaminants pose no threat to public health or water supplies.
