Quiet Batesburg-Leesville home to hidden stress, study says

To paraphrase a song from the 1950s play “The Music Man,” they’ve got trouble with a capital S in the home of the South Carolina Poultry Festival.

That’s S as in “stress” instead of “sin,” affecting Batesburg-Leesville, a study suggests.

Analysts at online career service Zippia rank the quiet town of 5,400 residents on the west edge of Lexington County as the seventh-most-stressful community in the state – tops in the Midlands.

The study considers any commute to work of longer than 30 minutes a hassle, a drive Mayor Rita Crapps agrees is common for many residents who work around the Columbia area.

Crapps doesn’t consider her commute to her job in the Harbison area, which can last up to 50 minutes, a strain. “I find it soothing,” she said of a drive mostly through the countryside. “I don’t find it to be an annoyance at all.”

Long commutes are “the trade-off for living in a family-conducive place,” Crapps said. She has been commuting for six years after closing an electronics supply store she ran a mile from her home.

Other factors cited for Batesburg-Leesville are high rents – the amount isn’t defined – and lack of health insurance.

Zippia’s analysis is based on census figures through 2014 before federal requirements made health insurance mandatory as it is today.

And, yes, Crapps acknowledges that Batesburg-Leesville has low-income pockets that have lingered for more than 30 years since the closing of textile mills that provided hundreds of paychecks.

Efforts are under way to attract new jobs. But economic development experts said the town in a largely rural area 10 miles north of I-20 is too far off the beaten path for many industries.

Only slightly less that a fourth of South Carolina communities – 62 of about 270 – were reviewed by a study looking at communities home to at least 5,000 persons.

So outlying Midlands communities such as Chapin, Eastover, Gilbert and Pelion also known for long commutes escaped notice.