By Scott Graber
It is Saturday, and I’m in Port Royal. This morning I have my coffee and news that Mayor Kevin Phillips has sent a letter to Safe Harbor — the Port’s owner/developer — citing “concerns.”
In August we learned there is a problem with arsenic in the old rail bed that cuts through the center of the proposed Neighborhood Bluff subdivision. The Beach Company — the Charleston-based builder — now believes it (or Safe Harbor) should retain ownership of the tract, and rent houses, so it can better handle remediation.
Many years ago, when I was still unformed and largely uninformed, I worked at the Medical University of South Carolina. And in those faded days I worked for Dr. Jack Finklea (who would later run the EPAs primary laboratory in Raleigh) recruiting people who could be tested for trace amounts of lead and arsenic.
In those days, there was lead in old paint and that lead would sometimes flake from interior walls and eventually wind up in the tissue of children — especially children in Charleston’s Black community. The arsenic we sought (to measure) originated in the pesticides that cotton farmers applied in their fields east of Orangeburg.
My task was to convince farmers and their families to collect their urine — in mason jars — over a week’s time. Then I would drive up to Calhoun County every Saturday morning collecting those still-warm-to-the-touch jars hauling them back to the Medical College for analysis.
In the 1970s the application of pesticides was as important as the application of phosphorous. All of which brings me to an article, published in the New Yorker last February, titled “Phosphorous Saved Our Way of Life — And Now Threatens to End It” by Elizabeth Kolbert.
Ms. Kolbert says that phosphorous (along with nitrogen) is absolute essential for growing everything we eat. Most of our domestic phosphorous is mined in Florida, and that supply may be gone in 30 years. When that happens we will have to rely upon Morocco and compete with the rest of the world’s farmers for this finite element.
All of this was interesting to me because once — in the late 1800s — a huge amount of Phosphate rock was shipped out of Port Royal. The rock that we “mined” in Beaufort County came from nodules located on the bottom of the shallow tidal waterways surrounding St. Helena, Morgan and Coosaw islands.
“Manual laborers, with little more than a rope tied around the mid-section dove from the sides of boats to extract the precious nodules from the river beds.” That rock was then washed, processed and then barged over to docks in Port Royal.
Although there is cadmium in phosphate, there is no indication that this heavy metal accumulated in the Port Royal dirt. But there was a railroad connecting Port Royal to Augusta and that railroad track probably used railroad ties that may have been saturated with chromated copper arsenate; and It is possible that some of the arsenate leached into the ground.
Pitchfork Ben Tillman, the fire-breathing Governor who single-handedly disenfranchised the Black population in South Carolina, believed that the Lowcountry phosphate companies were not paying an adequate tax. He upped the state tax from $1 a ton to $2 a ton, then sued the industry, and with an assist from a huge, well-timed hurricane (in 1893) sent the nascent phosphate-mining industry to Florida.
By the time that my wife and I arrived in Port Royal (1980), the port was used for the shipment of kaolin — a naturally occurring clay that was used in the making of polished paper. The kaolin came in railroad cars that often coated the townspeople with a dust. But there was nothing toxic about this dust although housewives complained it colored their sheets as they hung on the line.
Mayor Phillips doesn’t believe that 239 rentals — adjacent an existing, small-house neighborhood — is a good idea, and Council has just mailed a letter (to Safe Harbor) saying so.
“Council has significant concerns about a ‘build to rent’ project and adamantly opposes such proposal for the Bluff Neighborhood and Ribaut Village.”
Mayor Phillips then asks, “Why is the Beach Company still involved in the project; (b) does Safe Harbor have any contractual duties or obligations to sell a portion of the Property to The Beach Company; (c) has Safe Harbor had conversations with any other developers regarding the Bluff Neighborhood or Ribaut Village …”
The Mayor wants answers by January 12, 2024.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
