Scenic SC swamp threatened (+ video)

Shady and silent, Sparkleberry Swamp is so dense that it’s easy to lose your way in the network of narrow sloughs and channels that extend through the watery forest.

But if you know the terrain, it’s a great escape from daily life, locals say.

“I just love getting out, going out in the swamp and looking at the scenery,” said Troy “Duck” Turner, who has visited Sparkleberry since the 1940s. “If I don’t catch no fish, I’m still happy.”

Turner, 73, is among plenty of folks worried these days about how a hazardous-waste dump could affect Sparkleberry, an unusual swamp that likely would be the first casualty if chemicals leak from the landfill next door.

The 279-acre dump has been there since 1978 and for years operated quietly while millions of tons of industrial poisons were buried in the clay just 1,200 feet from the swamp and Lake Marion. The Safety Kleen landfill closed in 2000, and funds from the company’s bankruptcy settlement are proving insufficient to secure the site. A liner beneath the landfill’s oldest section is in danger of wearing out, and a former cleanup manager is urging the state to take action.

“Are the liners going to hold that stuff?” asked Turner, a retired construction worker who is well known in the Pinewood and Rimini areas. “I don’t think so. Eventually it is going to be a problem.’’

At risk is Lake Marion and one of the most unusual swamp systems in the state, a wetland more like those in Louisiana than South Carolina.

Located at Lake Marion’s upper end between Calhoun and Sumter counties, Sparkleberry Swamp contains a thick forest of tupelo and cypress trees – species characterized by the wide, bulging bases that anchor them in the muck.

What sets the swamp apart is the amount of water washing through the forest. Though South Carolina has plenty of swamps, many have solid ground interspersed with creeks, rivers and flood plains.

In Sparkleberry, it’s almost impossible to traverse the area without a boat. Streams cut through the forest like the strands of spiderwebs, some ending in small lakes and others tying back to Lake Marion. The surrounding woods routinely fill with water.

Sparkleberry, a major part of the larger 16,000-acre Upper Santee Swamp, developed those characteristics when a state-owned power company built dams to create lakes Marion and Moultrie more than 70 years ago. The creation of the lakes to make power converted Sparkleberry from a soggy, river plain wetland like Congaree National Park into a flooded woodland.

Larry McCord, the Santee Cooper power company’s environmental resources manager, said the swamp is unique in the Palmetto State. The company considers it a natural area and has no development plans for the property, he said.

“Sparkleberry Swamp is the most impressive part of the entire lake system,” McCord said. “There really is no place exactly like it in South Carolina. There are so many different species of birds and fish and snakes – all the different wildlife. You never know what you are going to come across.”

More than 150 species of birds, ranging from ospreys and bald eagles to herons and ibises, reside at Sparkleberry Swamp. Song birds on their way to the tropics routinely stop there. Migrating ducks once brought a flood of hunters through.

About a decade ago, scientists discovered what was believed to be the largest yellow-crowned night heron colony in the eastern United States. Biologists counted more than 900 nests, according to South Carolina Wildlife magazine.

The abundance of birds prompted the Audubon Society to recognize the swamp system as an important bird area, a prestigious designation not handed out routinely.

Other animals also like Sparkleberry – particularly alligators. Some of the state’s biggest gators, reported at up to 13 feet long, cruise the swamp’s rich backwaters.

Catfish and striped bass grow so big they draw anglers from across the country. Turner said he once caught a catfish that weighed 70 pounds.

Federally protected shortnose sturgeon occasionally may enter the swamp from Lake Marion’s main channel. And crawfish the size of those found in Louisiana have been reported in Sparkleberry.

“It’s the combination of the water and the swamp that give it the special ingredient, one that makes it attractive year-round for lots of wildlife,” said John Cely, a retired biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

Swamp cruise

Sumter native Richard Wheeler knows plenty about Sparkleberry.

He patrols the swamp as a Department of Natural Resources wildlife officer.

In three decades with the agency, Wheeler has rescued lost duck hunters, checked fishing licenses and made sure boaters didn’t get too rowdy when they entered the dark swamp. But he also has spent plenty of his days off there – by choice.

On a recent day, Wheeler puttered through Sparkleberry Swamp in a small boat and pointed out the many places he’s seen through the years. They included dead-end lakes and small islands with scattered camp sites. Cypress trees stood tall, their needles bright green now that spring is here.

Sun filtered through the trees and splashed the channel with a mosaic of dark and light as he made his way through Otter Flats, deep in the interior of Sparkleberry.

“This is the most peaceful place,” he said. “And you see something different every time you come in here.”

As he chugged along, Wheeler pointed out a family of ospreys.

In a tree at Otter Flats near his boat, a large osprey perched, barely moving in the gentle breeze as the big bird called for its mate. It then extended its wings and flew over Wheeler’s boat.

“This here must be papa,” Wheeler said before turning to look at a dead cypress tree in the middle of a stream.

Atop the old cypress was a broad nest, and inside, the tail feathers of another osprey rose above the rim. Spring is the season for hatching and raising chicks, and it’s likely the two ospreys were working together.

Sometimes called fish hawks, ospreys are among the largest birds of prey in South Carolina, with wingspans of more than 5 feet. Ospreys often are found on the coast, but the Santee Cooper lake system and Sparkleberry Swamp have their share.

“We’ve got a pile of them,” Wheeler said. “They’re here year round.”

During the swamp cruise, Wheeler also watched a big gator slither off a bank and plunge into the water, a great blue heron glide toward the Santee River, and a white ibis peck for crawfish in the shallow water of Long Island. The ibis moved deliberately, looking down and stepping carefully in the water like someone on tiptoes.

While Sparkleberry can be remote and silent, enough people have discovered it. Fishermen like the swamp on windy days because it cuts down the breeze blowing on the open water of Lake Marion.

Paddlers like it because the water of the swamp is flat and easy to navigate. Among those are 29-year-old Derrick Geiger of Camden and 28-year-old Daniel Branham of Bishopville. Each has been in the swamp many times, but last week, they were on their first kayak trip.

Neither was aware that a hazardous waste landfill was so close to the swamp they love. But Geiger said the site sounds like a lasting legacy for South Carolina.

“It’s not ever going to go away,” he said. “Somebody’s always going to have to be spending money to maintain it.”

Larger threat

Ask anyone at Pack’s Landing about the landfill and you’ll hear plenty.

Many who work and visit the landing are nervous about the future of Sparkleberry Swamp and Lake Marion.

Those include Stevie Pack, whose family has run the boat landing on the lake since the reservoir was developed in the 1940s. The Packs earn money through a store at the landing and by providing a guide service to fishermen.

Last week, Pack and his brother, Andy, worked steadily to clean striped bass and catfish for a tour group that had just spent a day fishing on the lake. A leak from the landfill could jeopardize the business they depend on.

But while Sparkleberry Swamp is at risk from the dump, South Carolina has a larger concern, Stevie Pack said. People depend on clean water for drinking and recreation throughout the Santee Cooper lake system, he said.

“It’s not just us here at the landing, it’s going to be from here to Charleston,” he said. “This is a large (groundwater) aquifer and the largest manmade lake in South Carolina. If it leaks, it’s going to ruin everybody’s property values.”

That’s why he wants all the garbage in the landfill dug up and removed, a proposal that could cost billions of dollars.

Officials with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control have said that’s not realistic, but they say the site does need an extra $4 million each year to keep the landfill secure.

That would mean state taxpayers would be spending up to $40 million in the next decade to pay for routine work, such as pumping out polluted water that builds up inside of the dump. The site is supposed to be maintained for 90 years, but money from Safety Kleen’s bankruptcy settlement already is running out.

State Rep. Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, said using tax money to maintain a toxic waste dump is an unpleasant expense, but one that must be borne because the original landfill operators are gone. Smith said, however, that the state may need to spend more to install protective barriers between the landfill and the lake in case the dump does leak.

Former landfill site manager Bill Stephens has said more needs to be done. Some preliminary cost estimates for various improvements come in at more than $20 million.

So far, Santee Cooper and state regulators say the water quality of Sparkleberry Swamp and Lake Marion remain unharmed by toxins from the landfill. Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility, conducts routine testing in lakes Marion and Moultrie from about 50 monitoring stations, and it checks runoff from the landfill at Sparkleberry.

The power company operates water systems on both lakes that collectively serve more than 166,000 people from the town of Santee in Orangeburg County to Berkeley County in suburban Charleston.

The landfill was developed with the help of former executives at the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, who joined a company that converted an old cat litter mine into a toxic waste disposal site. Waste from industries and government cleanups across the Southeast went into the landfill. Its past operators, including Laidlaw Environmental Services, rebuffed state government attempts to require more money to maintain and cleanup the site after it closed.

Cely, who has visited Sparkleberry Swamp since he was a senior in high school some 50 years ago, said he remembers hearing the noise of heavy machinery in the distance as he hunted in the swamp one day in the late 1970s, apparently as the site was being prepared as a landfill.

“Anybody who has ever been there (to Sparkleberry) has a huge concern’’ about the landfill, Cely said. “The thing that scares me is the chemical contamination and how that would affect the food chain. A lot of people fish down there, and they eat the fish.”

For Duck Turner, the concern also is emotional. Sparkleberry Swamp and Lake Marion are iconic places to the people of Sumter, Clarendon and Calhoun counties. It’s a local version of South Carolina’s Atlantic coast that also has been discovered by people from across the United States.

“They come here from out of the state to go fishing on this lake,” he said, noting that, “if it ever sprung a bad leak, I think that would ruin the lake.”

This story was originally published April 25, 2015 at 6:58 PM with the headline "Scenic SC swamp threatened (+ video)."