As plastic pellets wash up on SC beaches, state should do more to stop it, lawyers say
Environmental groups in South Carolina say the state and a company in charge of shipping plastic pellets isn’t doing enough to stop them from going into the harbor and showing up on the beaches around Charleston.
State officials said it was a “one-time accident,” but environmental groups have been patrolling the beaches and say the company continues to pollute the harbor.
Plastic pellets began showing up on Lowcountry beaches in July, according to a lawsuit notice from the Charleston Waterkeeper and the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League.
State officials cited a packaging company, Frontier Logistics, for spilling the plastic “nurdles” in the water, the groups say, but that was not enough to make them stop.
Lawyers with the Southern Environmental Law Center said in a letter to Frontier Logistics, the state Department of Health and Environmental Control and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that they plan to sue under the Clean Water Act.
“We have evidence that leads us to believe Frontier’s plastic pellets continue to spill into our harbor,” Charleston Waterkeeper Andrew Wunderley said.
“We find pellets everywhere we look, from Capers Island to Waterfront Park downtown,” he said in a press release. “Frontier must be held accountable for polluting our harbor, beaches, and waterways with its plastic pellets, especially when we have no state or local safeguards protecting our waterways from plastic pellet pollution.”
“It was our hope that DHEC would hold Frontier accountable for this pollution, but that does not appear to be the case,” Coastal Conservation League Executive Director Laura Cantral said, according to SELC.
“Fortunately, the Clean Water Act allows private citizens to bring a lawsuit when a state agency like DHEC has not – or will not – protect our iconic waterways,” Cantral said.
Frontier vice president and general counsel Paul Hear told WCIV, “They are not responsible for any spill, reiterating that the company does not even handle some of the type of plastic pellets collected in July’s spill. He said they will respond to the notice appropriately.”
“DHEC says the July incident is closed,” WCSC reported Monday.
The groups received photos from DHEC as part of a Freedom of Information request that show tiny plastic pellets strewn around the facility, in storm drains and the water where Frontier packs them along the Charleston harbor, according to the legal notice.
The letter states, “Charleston has now witnessed firsthand just how challenging—and even impossible—it is to clean up spilled pellets. When pellets began washing ashore on Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms in mid-July, the State Ports Authority hired contractors to comb the beach, sometimes on hands and knees, to find and remove the pellets.”
After DHEC cited the company for allowing plastic pellets to drain into the harbor, Frontier said in a letter to the regulator that not all of the plastic pellets found on area beaches looked like they came from their company. The citation letter, released to the environmental groups in a public records request, states that the company is in full compliance with requirements to keep plastic pellets from getting into the water.
“After the spill, Frontier noted in records that it had voluntarily installed silt fencing and other measures to keep the pellets from getting into the river. However, an expert in pellet-source controls, Dr. Aiza Jose, told SELC those measures were likely insufficient to prevent ongoing spills,” the SELC said in a release.
“Frontier believes that improvements to its business operations practices can eliminate the potential for plastic pellets to leave our facility under almost any circumstance,” the letter said, according to documents obtained through the public records request.
