A New Day for Newtown: Remediating the CSX-T Bramlett Site

This episode of Simple Civics: Greenville County was made possible by support from First5SC.org. Parents of young children in Greenville can find free resources and services for child care, health screenings, and community support at First5SC.org. By answering a few questions on the website, you can quickly determine your eligibility for over 40 programs, apply online, and potentially access immediate assistance at no cost.

Pastor Stacey Mills of Mountain View Baptist Church and Emily Poole, staff attorney at the South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP), discuss the decades-long efforts for remediation of the contaminated Bramlett Road site near the Greenville community of Newtown in Southernside. Learn about the history of the neighborhood, the impact of coal tar contamination on the wetlands and residents, and the ongoing efforts to remediate the site. Explore how a diverse group of stakeholders, including the faith community, government, environmental advocates, and the private sector are working to restore the area and create new opportunities for the community.

Links:

SCELP page on Bramlett

Transcript

Katy Smith:
Just a stone's throw from Unity Park and bordered by two sets of train tracks and the Reedy River is the neighborhood of Newtown, where since 1908, Mountain View Baptist Church has been the heart of the community. The area is now at the center of a process to clean up years of contamination and illegal dumping by an array of owners. The CSXT Bramlett Road site, as it's called by the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services, consists of five parcels along the Reedy River off of East Bramlett Road that saw decades of accumulation of coal tar waste and an unauthorized landfill, which contaminated the soil all the way down to the groundwater.

Katy Smith:
Today, players from the private sector, a nonprofit, a faith community, neighborhood residents, and government are working through the complexities of responsibility, and the cleanup plan, timeline, and what should be done, by whom, at what cost. There is no doubt, however, that a remedy is long overdue. I'm Katy Smith and on this episode of Simple Civics: Greenville County, I speak with Reverend Stacey Mills, who pastors Mountain View Baptist Church, and Emily Poole, staff attorney with the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, who is working alongside the church in Newtown to advocate for a speedy and thorough cleanup of the site through a process currently underway to which you can give input. They'll expound upon the history of the neighborhood, the tangled history of the site's contamination, what's next in the process, and much more. We have links in the show notes for you to learn more.

Katy Smith:
Emily and Reverend Mills, thanks so much for joining us today to talk about this really important topic.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
Thank you for having us today.

Katy Smith:
Let's orient listeners to the geographic area and its history. Pastor Mills, where are we talking about and what do people need to know about it?

Pastor Stacey Mills:
So the Newtown community is a part of what we know in Greenville as the Southern Side, which obviously is not Southern Greenville. It is West Greenville, but it gets its name because of the Norfolk Southern Railroad Depot on West Washington Street. So if you're traveling on West Washington Street and you pass the Norfolk Southern Railroad Depot at the end of the street after passing St. Mary's Catholic Church and the main post office, then you're going to follow that street to a dogleg left under the bridge. And there you'll find Newtown, which, you know, is really an area that has been disinvested over time. And we'll talk more about that today, but it's one mile from the Unity Park. It's a mile and a half from the post office, and it's adjacent to property owned by the Greater Greenville Sanitation Department and Legacy Charter School.

Katy Smith:
Maybe you can talk a little bit about the heart of Newtown, which I think is Mountain View Baptist Church. Can you tell us about the church you pastor and its history?

Pastor Stacey Mills:
I think you're right, and I get really excited thinking about Mountain View Baptist Church and our journey together. Mountain View was founded in 1908, so this year it's 116 years old. It's always been in the heart of Newtown, several little, I guess, areas in that neighborhood.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
So the church began as a storefront on Kelly Avenue, and it was called the Little Mission in 1908. And in its growth, they called a senior pastor, Dr. John Henry Smith, who worked for the railroad, and they built what was called a Brush Harbor Church, which was really branches that they put together. They might call that a lean-to in some other areas, but just think about the turn of the century from 1908 to the early 20s to 1930 and then 1950s when the present building was built that the church is actually in, and there are two iterations of that. But it's a congregation that really is made up of largely over time domestics and their families. The neighborhood was four to five hundred families, not rooftops, because in the neighborhood were shanty-style duplexes, triplexes, and quadruplexes. And it was very much what the old African proverb says, it takes a village. And that village was lively and at work, and they built the church. We have photos of children carrying five-gallon buckets of water for mortar, to make the mortar that the building is made of today. So it's been a very strong institution in the community that has weathered the time. So when you think about post-reconstruction in the United States to Jim Crow South to integration to modern day, so you've got all of that history and those multiple generations that still come to church in 2024 and seek guidance from the church. One of the things, Katy, that I'd like to say about the African-American church and our society is that it's more than the theological center. It is the place where people come for economic assistance and information, as well as educational assistance. So it's a wonderful gathering place, both socially and for religious and faith. And so we're right in the middle of this opportunity to see change happen.

Katy Smith:
There was something else in the neighborhood that led to the contamination that we're talking about today. Emily, can you talk about that?

Emily Poole:
Yes. So located just a number of feet away from the church is the Bramlett site. And this refers to about five parcels, one of which was the site of a former manufactured gas plant or MGP that was owned by Duke Energy's predecessor company. And so MGPs were used to create manufactured gas before natural gas was readily accessible to cities and towns. And one of the byproducts associated with this manufactured gas process is coal tar. Which can move very easily and can seep down into the ground and into groundwater resources. So from 1917 to 1952, this manufactured gas plant at Bramlett operated and produced 5.5 billion cubic feet of gas. And so much of the coal tar associated with all of this gas production ran off the property that has the MGP across East Bramlett Road and into wetlands below, and then through a drainage ditch in those wetlands into the Reedy River.

Emily Poole:
After natural gas became more available, MGPs like the one here were demolished or offloaded in some way. And so this one was demolished in 1958. And about 10 years later, the property changed hands from Duke's predecessor company over to CSX's predecessor company. And so CSX owns the railroad that borders the western side of this site. But what makes this site even more complicated is that in the late 1980s, a man named Robert Vaughn, who owned a construction and demolition company, attempted to buy one of the parcels of the Bramlett site so that he could put in a landfill. And before that transaction was finished, it was actually never finished, but before he had even finished trying to get where he was, he just started illegally dumping construction and demolition debris into the wetlands of one of the site's parcels. And by the time this illegal landfill was discovered and investigated in 1994, Vaughn had dumped 150,000 tons of construction debris into these wetlands. Ironically, the investigation of the illegal landfill is what caused our Department of Health and Environmental Control, which has recently undergone a name change to the Department of Environmental Services. I'll say both to try and show the history. But DHEC, when they were investigating the landfill, is when they found coal tar. They found coal tar at the base of the wetlands, and they were very confused. Why is there coal tar in this illegal landfill? And so CSX started studying the site at DHEC's request to try and figure it out. And CSX took them a few years to trace that it was coming from the former manufactured gas plant. And as soon as that happened, CSX was like, wait, this wasn't us. This was Duke's problem. This was their issue to fix. And so around 2000, Duke started studying the site instead. And the studying of the site continued for many years before Duke signed a cleanup contract with DHEC to actually start thinking about how they will remediate the site. In fact, coal tar was discovered in 1993. That contract wasn't signed until 2016.

Emily Poole:
And it still took eight more years to get to here, 2024, where we now have an opportunity that the cleanup is closer than it ever has been with this process and where we are. And we'll talk more about exactly what that is, but... Duke has given some options of cleaning up the site and DHEC has picked one that they like and have presented that to the public. And so we're in the middle of a public comment period on the site.

Katy Smith:
What a history. Okay, so to sum up, you have a church and a vibrant community that is near the banks of the Reedy River. At the same time, you have a manufactured gas plant working, producing coal tar, which is seeping into the river, which at the time was highly contaminated from them and lots of other folks. And then you have a squatter who comes in and decides to create a landfill where he hasn't yet purchased this. When I came to a public hearing that happened at your church that DHEC hosted, it was really remarkable. It's not even a sufficient word to hear the stories of some of those longtime parishioners and neighborhoods about the exposure. They were kind of in real time recognizing they had experienced. Could you talk a little bit about some of those memories folks have shared about their childhood around that space?

Pastor Stacey Mills:
Sure. So to pay homage to many who have gone before us, there have been incredible leaders that have come out of our church and consequently the neighborhood. But the generations that are contemporary to this issue right now are people who have played in the Reedy. They called it the branch. Or the creek. And, you know, several that night were, as you said, in real-time, realizing, listening to the effects of what this chemical has on the environment, thought longer, what does this impact mean to me personally? They were remembering coming out of the creek, if you will, with tar on their shoes or being covered up to their legs, their knees in what they call black soot. And their mothers, of course, would caution them not to play.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
But as kids were, even the mom didn't know the depth of why not to play, just not knowing that that danger was lurking that close to them. And I have to tell you, Katy, just to back up just a little bit, this neighborhood is framed by not one, but two rail lines. The Norfolk Southern Passenger Rail Line is one of the boundaries in the neighborhood. The Seaboard Coastal or CSX, as Emily mentioned, bounds the neighborhood on the other side. And then there's the Greater Greenville Sanitation Department that had a furnace that they burned trash from other areas in the community. And so then add this manufactured gas plant and this illegal dump, you've got really, but for the buffer of the trees, you've really got a hazardous community just feet from people's front doors. And when you think about the time period… You’re thinking about laundry hanging on the lines and mothers knowing when to hang the laundry based on the engines and the tar from the coal in the engines and the trash from the dump.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
And then the manufactured gas plant was not even on the radar in terms of their thinking, except wanting to protect their children from whatever might have been down there in the water, so to speak.

Katy Smith:
At last, we have an opportunity for remediation. So Emily, can you give us an overview of the process and what's underway right now?

Emily Poole:
That contract I mentioned between DHEC and Duke, it's called a voluntary cleanup contract. And that contract obligated Duke to submit what's called a feasibility study, which is just them studying the site and coming up with options for cleaning it up and cleaning up the extent of the contamination on site. And so that feasibility study was submitted in October of last year, and they came up with five different alternatives, ranging from alternative one being no action, and alternative five being a more thorough excavation of the soil and the sediment that are contaminated with coal tar. And after the feasibility study was submitted, then DHEC looked over the feasibility study, reviewed it, came to their own conclusion, and presented what's called a proposed plan to the community, which is where they say, this is the alternative we'd like to implement.

Emily Poole:
And they showed it at that public meeting that we're talking about on June 6th. And so they presented their preferred alternative and answered questions from the public. There was a great chance for people to come and express different questions that they had. And the community showed up in full force and was asking a lot of very important questions since this has been going on for so long. And so what's going to happen now is that public meeting also signified the launch of a public comment period. And I mentioned that earlier, but this is 60 days for the public to give their voice on the proposed plan, weigh in on if they think that's enough, and share what they hope to happen from this.

Emily Poole:
After the public comment period closes, DES now, it's DES now, not DHEC, Department of Environmental Services, they're going to review all of those comments and issue a record of decision, which is where they say, this is the alternative that we're going with in light of all the public comments that we received. And so they shared at the public meeting that their alternative might change. Whatever they're picking, whatever their cleanup solution is, it might change based on what they hear from the public. It might be more, it might be less. It might have different aspects, but they're going to take into account public comment and respond with how they did so. We would like to think that that would be the end of this process and that cleanup would just start like it needed to. But unfortunately, there is more to the timeline after that, because that voluntary cleanup contract that I've mentioned, it only obligated Duke to do this feasibility study. It doesn't actually obligate them to do the cleanup that comes out of that feasibility study. And Duke's still not the only responsible party here. We've still got CSX as they're the current owner of the land. They're responsible for the landfill, or what happened on their watch. And so both of these parties are going to have to be brought to the table and obligated in some way to contribute to this cleanup.

Emily Poole:
Don't know how long that will take. It can take a long time. I'm a lawyer. I know other lawyers. It's going to be a legal minefield and lots of lawyers are going to have a lot of fun trying to figure out how to avoid too much liability. Then the parties can then create an implementation plan for the remedy. And then after that is when implementation would happen. DHEC at that meeting said that we're probably, perfect case scenario, two years from the actual cleanup. And that's perfect case scenario. And they estimated that this negotiation period only takes six months, but it took three years to get the 2016 voluntary cleanup contract.

Emily Poole:
It's hard to take it at that word that it's going to be two years, and that's part of why we're here, and that's why we've partnered with Pastor Mills and the church, is because this has been too long of waiting, way too long of waiting, 30 years since they found the coal tar contamination, and we're only now about to get it cleaned up. This site has been treated incredibly differently than another site that's just over a mile away, and that is the Broad Street manufactured gas plant. So we have two manufactured gas plants just about a mile and a half away from each other, one at Bramlett in Newtown and one on Broad Street. The coal tar contamination from that manufactured gas plant was also discovered in 1993, just like Bramlett.

Emily Poole:
That is the end of their similarities. It's only differences from there, because two years later, 1995, Duke started cleaning up, remediating, and restoring the Broad Street site. And what was happening at Bramlett during this time? More studying, more delay, and more inaction. Why was this side of the tracks not treated the same way as Broad Street? Why was the more wealthy, predominantly white area of town given better treatment when it came to cleaning up these contaminated sites? Ultimately, CSX, Duke, DES, they all need to do better because this is a categorical example of environmental justice, which is just when the laws and the policies that we have, they're held differently to different communities. They're enforced differently. They're implemented differently for different communities.

Katy Smith:
There's some really exciting opportunities, not just for the Bramlett site, but for the surrounding community. So tell us about the master plan.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
I'd love for your listeners to just envision and think about the other side of the tracks. My office looks out over the reedy and the wetlands. And I'll see, you know, blue herring on the banks of the Reedy River or a red-tailed fox, you know, making its way through the woods. And so there's indigenous plant life, indigenous wildlife all along this stretch of property that we're talking about. What we envision is a restoration of the wetlands, this return to the community of what is a natural habitat, not only for wildlife and plant life but for human beings to be able to interface with that area.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
In addition to that are housing opportunities. When we bought this property over the last two and a half decades plus, we partnered with our city to the community development in their block grant program. We have designed a neighborhood where you can see people living together, thriving together. There's a business sector, a quarter there for small business.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
We're excited about what the other side of the tracks can present as a gift to Greenville in restoring not only the wetlands, not only correcting an issue where nature has been disturbed and then handled improperly through the spill into the ground with the coal tar and this dumping that happened… But it's a revival of sorts of spirits and an opportunity for human uplift, and for people to go from surviving to thriving.

Katy Smith:
Now that folks have heard about this, if they didn't know about it already, what can they do to speak up or get involved or have a hand in the future? Emily, can you talk about that?

Emily Poole:
Absolutely. So we've mentioned this public comment period that was launched on June 6th. It's going to last for 60 days. So it ends on August 6th. So we've got less than a month. But anyone who wants to get involved and wants to have their voice added to this process can submit a comment as part of this process.

Emily Poole:
There's a lot of information on our website, which is SCELP.org, about the Bramlett site. And it has all the information of how to submit a comment, where to submit a comment. It also includes information on the alternative that DES has put forth as their preferred alternative. Because while it does do some things, they've picked alternative five. They picked the most comprehensive one of the ones presented by Duke but there are still some things missing and there are still some things that aren't touched on in their preferred alternative. And so our website walks through all of that. Chiefly what's really missing is a long-term groundwater remedy which we've talked about the groundwater is the place that keeps growing and is the most contaminated and really needs to be dealt with once and for all.

Emily Poole:
And we would really just love for as many people to get their voice out there and share their thoughts on this plan and whether it's a good cleanup.

Katy Smith:
Thank you. I really do believe this is almost a case study in the best of civic life to me, because it's, like you said, it's the faith community, it's neighborhoods, it's a nonprofit organization like SCELP. It is government in our new DES, and then it's the corporate sector figuring out how to untangle this puzzle of ownership and responsibility and how to get this done for the environment, but for the people who enjoy it. So I'm really grateful to both of you for your leadership and for joining us today to help inform everybody.

Pastor Stacey Mills:
Thank you, Katy, for having us and all your listeners for tuning in.

Emily Poole:
Yes, thank you so much.

Catherine Puckett: Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org.