County residents divided on Santee Cooper decision

If you spend a little time talking to some of Johnsonville leaders, you’ll hear about a town with an economy that’s in need of some help.

“We have people coming in to city hall who have to struggle to pay a water bill,” said city councilman Brad Richardson.

But recently, the possibility that a Santee Cooper energy Facility would locate nearby brought them some hope.

“I mean this was going to be an extreme amount of revenue that could have benefited Pamplico and Johnsonville,“ Richardson said.

It’s been dubbed the Pee Dee Energy Campus, and it was expected to be a 600-megawatt facility. But for now, Santee Cooper has pulled the plug on their plan to build it, and Richardson says that short-circuited his expectations.

“It’s no jobs again,“ he said. “We’re back at square one.“

Richardson expected the facility would offer an economic boost to the communities of lower Florence County, especially while the facility was being built. He estimated that 600-700 people would work on the project, bringing money into the town’s grocery stores and gas stations while they were in town.

But not everyone is disappointed with the decision.

“I was absolutely elated,“ said Pamplico resident Mike King, who doesn’t believe the facility would bring nearly enough jobs to stimulate the economy. He estimated it would create about 250.

“And unfortunately it was such a high-tech industry,“ he said, “that many of the people would come from elsewhere to run it,“ he said.

But he also applauds the decision for its environmental component. He feared the coal-powered facility would bring with it ponds of coal ash that would ultimately leak into the Great Pee Dee River.

“We just dreaded having those ash ponds on the banks of the Great Pee Dee,“ he said.

Richardson maintains that Santee Cooper would run the facility in such a way that it would be “as clean as anything else we can get.“

King also felt the decision not to go forward with the energy campus was fiscally responsible on the part of Santee Cooper, noting that the facility, in his opinion, wasn’t needed.

“Our group has always maintained that by teaching people more responsibility in the use of their power, that they could alleviate the need for this plant all along,“ he said.

Richardson said he wishes there was still a way for Santee Cooper to be the community’s good neighbor.