Stinging toxic goo threatens boaters, wildlife on Congaree. SCE&G is key to cleanup

Cleaning up a toxic mess in the Congaree River has left regulators and a prominent utility struggling for answers since a kayaker stepped in the stinging black goo nine years ago.

Now, the state’s environmental agency and SCE&G have settled on a cleanup plan that would eliminate 70 percent of the mucky coal tar that drained into the river from an old gas plant in the early to mid-20th Century.

During a public meeting Tuesday night, officials said they have a big task that will take at least three years to complete. Coal tar covers parts of the Congaree River bottom between the Gervais and Blossom street bridges.

“It could be a lengthy process,’’ said Tom Effinger, an official with SCE&G told the crowd of about 100 people who gathered at the Edventure Children’s Museum.

SCE&G has revived a version of a plan to clean up the mess, rather than leave it on the river bottom. The proposal calls for construction of temporary dams in two sections of the Congaree to divert the river while excavation occurs. Excavation equipment would scoop up the polluted muck and deposit it in dump trucks, which would haul the material to an approved landfill.

The current plan is to excavate 4,204 cubic yards of the 5,627 cubic yards of coal tar, concentrating on areas where the public is most likely to come in contact with the material. Most of the coal tar is on the Columbia side of the Congaree River. The area to be excavated would cover about three acre near Senate Street and downriver closer to Blossom Street.

Before any cleanup happens, the company needs an array of environmental permits, including a key approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps must be satisfied that the temporary dam won’t cause flooding on the West Columbia and Cayce side of the Congaree while the work is occurring.

Effinger and officials with the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control said no work can start until that permit is approved, so it’s unclear when actual excavation would begin. The expectation is that the company would be limited to working only parts of three years. Work must be done to see if old bombs and explosives from the Civil War, which were reportedly dumped in the river, are located -- and if they exist, hauled away.

SCE&G’s removal plan could cost from $9 million to $18 million, but Effinger cautioned that those numbers could change as the cleanup plan advances. Company officials could not say if the clean up would result in a rate increase for SCE&G customers, but they said similar work has been done at other sites without rate hikes.

The power company, acquired by Dominion Energy of Virginia this year, at one time had proposed building a dam and removing all of the coal tar, but later dropped that plan in favor of putting a stone and fabric cap over the material.

After river protection advocates balked in 2017 at the proposal to leave the tar in the river, the company -- at the urging of state regulators -- decided again to try and dig up much of the coal tar with a scaled back cleanup plan. SCE&G won’t be able to excavate all of the coal tar because it would require a more extensive dam and the Corps would not likely approve that permit, officials with SCE&G, DHEC and the Congaree Riverkeeper said Tuesday.

During Tuesday’s meeting, some in the crowd, including former Riverkeeper Stuart Greeter, said they wanted the entire river cleaned up because it’s unknown how polluted coal tar might affect the environment in the long run. But others, who live in a condominium complex near the river were concerned about noise and traffic from the operation.

Charlie Leedecker, who moved to Columbia eight months ago, said the company ought to place a cap over the coal tar and leave it in the river. Bringing in military officials to search for potentially unexploded Civil War material, then excavating the river, is a bad idea, he said.

The company did limited work looking for the material several years ago, but the effort did not include all areas to be excavated under the new plan.

“We’re looking at an alternative that might take three seasons,’’ Leedecker said. “I think there is a far greater danger from (this) kind of removal action.’’

Effinger and Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler said, however, that leaving the pollution-riddled coal tar in the river is not the answer.

“What I don’t want us to start thinking here is it is OK to leave this toxic coal tar for every future generation to have to deal with,’’ Stangler said. “That is what the cap would have done and that is what doing nothing does. At the end of the day, while we can’t get every speck of coal tar out, making sure that the next kid that walks down 100 yards from here doesn’t have to worry if they are standing in toxic coal tar .... is the end goal.’’

Coal tar contains a mixture of toxins that can be hazardous to people, as well as the fish and the river organisms they feed on. Benzene, a cancer-causing material, has been found in coal tar, as have polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. In some parts of the country, tumors have been found on fish exposed to coal-tar polluted water, research has shown.

The effects of the tar on fish and river organisms isn’t well known in the Congaree, but Stangler said it makes sense to clean up as much of the tar as possible, as a precaution.

Cleanup supporters say getting rid of the coal tar is also significant for the capital city’s economy. The stigma of pollution in a river popular with kayakers and fishermen could hurt the city’s ability to market itself and its rivers. The Congaree is the most visible of the three rivers that run through Columbia, separating the capital city from West Columbia. Future development is expected along its riverbanks.

Coal tar, while in the river for generations, has been a big issue in recent years. The public became more aware of its presence in 2010, when a kayaker stepped in the muck near a boat landing just below the Gervais Street bridge on the Columbia side of the Congaree.

State regulators then put up signs warning the public about the hazard. People who have been exposed to the coal tar have said it stung and burned their skin.

SCE&G is responsible for tar that drained off the Huger Street manufactured gas plant from the early 1900s to the 1950s.

Cleaning up coal tar has been a challenge across South Carolina and the nation, which at one time, had an estimated 5,000 sites contaminated with the substance. In South Carolina, power companies have spent at least $100 milion on coal tar cleanups from Charleston to Greenville.

This story was originally published April 3, 2019 at 7:15 AM.