From Liberty Steel to Liberty River – Coastal Observer

From Liberty Steel to Liberty River – Coastal Observer

Demolition is due to resume at the former steel mill in Georgetown as the prospective buyer and state regulators review the extent of environmental contamination underneath the 66-acre site on the city’s waterfront. Liberty River LLC entered into a voluntary cleanup contract earlier this year with the state Department of Environmental Services that will allow the company, part of River Development Equities, to remove contaminants from the site of the former Liberty Steel mill without assuming liability for the pollution. Liberty River plans a mixed-use development on the site. A plan presented last week at a hearing on the cleanup contract, known as a VCC, showed in broad strokes how the property will be integrated into the city street grid along with green space and walking trails. “We have laid out a riverwalk, a marina and an amphitheater, and providing citizens with, really, connectivity to the waterfront,” said Warren Waters, founder of River Development Equities.  He cautioned the audience of about 150 people at the Winyah Auditorium that the plan was provided at the request of Environmental Services as “a guideline.” “The design team right now is really doing reconnaissance and developing a framework aspirationally for what might happen,” said Nathan Schutte, a principal at the architecture firm McMillan Pazden Smith in Charleston which drafted the plan. Before redevelopment can start, Liberty River will have to complete a state-approved cleanup and adopt an ongoing maintenance plan to make sure that contaminants in the soil and water that can’t be removed will be controlled. The cleanup and the future uses are linked, said Nick Hammond, the project manager for the DES Bureau of Land and Waste Management. “If it’s going to be sort of single-family, residential use or something that will involve children or the elderly, that will demand a much higher standard of cleanup,” he said. “If the property will be used for industrial purposes, then there may be less of an exposure duration and frequency. Therefore more contamination may be acceptable.” GEL Engineering last week completed sampling on the site. It will take six to eight weeks to complete a report for Environmental Services, said Robert MacPhee, a principal at GEL who specializes in brownfields. Liberty Steel began demolishing the mill last year, raising concerns among residents about clouds of dust raised from the former melt shop and furnace facility. MacPhee said the work stopped to allow GEL to do environmental monitoring.  Demolition of the rolling mill and other buildings is due to resume. MacPhee was told the process will take three months. “I think that’s incredibly optimistic when I look at the heavy machinery in there,” he said. The demolition must be completed before the deal with Liberty River moves forward, Waters said. “There is an economic incentive for them to get it done as quickly as they can,” he said. One former steelworker asked from the auditorium balcony why the focus was on the site’s future rather than protecting residents from the pollutants raised by the ongoing demolition. Hammond said there are other offices within Environmental Services that oversee the demolition, and they would be notified of the concerns. Cleaning up brownfields, as former industrial sites are known, will reduce future pollution, he said. “We’re hoping to have this be a healthier area of Georgetown and somewhere that can be utilized by people and not have to be concerned about being exposed to any of that contamination,” Hammond said. River Equities has been at work in Georgetown for two and a half years, Waters said. Earlier this year, it was named as the buyer for the adjacent International Paper mill site that closed in 2024. That property will also go through the VCC process, as did the former state port property on the Sampit River between the two mill sites that Georgetown County plans to redevelop. “Some of this remediation work will have unintended benefits,” Waters said. For example, it will require a new stormwater drainage system that will help relieve flooding in the area. Another benefit, that Waters said he has seen in 40 years of redeveloping industrial sites, is that the adjacent properties also start to improve. “We like to look at things a little bit deeper than just, OK, we’re coming in here, we’re building something,” Waters said. “It’s a heck of a lot more than that.” There will also be an economic benefit from putting an under-performing industrial site to new uses, he said. “We have an opportunity to build a truly consistent tax base, which will fund decades of city improvements without requiring any additional tax from the citizens,” Waters said. “That’s no joke.” He also said that hiring for the redevelopment will be “hyperlocal.” One person asked if it’s possible that the cost of the cleanup could be too high to make the redevelopment feasible.  “The number would have to be extraordinarily high,” Waters said. “If it was a billion dollars a cleanup, I’m sure we would move on to another project.” By the time brownfield projects reach the stage of the Liberty River cleanup contract, they usually continue through to completion, Hammond said. Although Liberty Steel, and its predecessors that operated the mill since 1969, was a heavy industry, it didn’t have the chemical pollution that comes with textile mills, MacPhee said. An environmental assessment by Environmental Services in 2011 found high levels of hydraulic fluid on part of the site. “I don’t see anything that it’s going through stopping the project based on the environment,” MacPhee said. “There are going to be challenges. I think they can be easily overcome just because of the nature of the steel mill process.”