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With the start of the state's July 1 fiscal year, the nuclear waste disposal facility in Barnwell County will no longer accept waste from across the country, as it has for nearly four decades.
The Barnwell facility was the only one of its kind. Its closure leaves many states scrambling to determine how they will dispose of their low-level radioactive waste. It also leaves Barnwell scrambling to make its financial ends meet, while some residents hope -- against hope -- that high energy prices could revive nuclear energy and the waste facility here.
The terms of a deal struck in 2000 -- and vigorously fought by political leaders in Barnwell ever since -- will restrict use of the facility to South Carolina, New Jersey and Connecticut after Tuesday.
Environmentalists hail the agreement, saying it strikes a blow against the state's reputation as the nation's nuclear dumping ground.
But political leaders in Barnwell County, happy to have the jobs and revenue generated by the facility, think it's a cruel blow, delivered to a county that takes pride in its ability to safely handle nuclear waste.
"The image that's been put out there by the media ... y'all are trying to convince people that Barnwell County glows in the dark," said Barnwell County Councilman Keith Sloan, a backer of the facility. "The waste being accepted out there is relatively innocuous. It can be handled. It can be handled safely."
Already, the facility is slowing down. It will slow down a great deal more, starting Tuesday.
In 2006, some 40,000 cubic feet of waste was disposed of at the facility, said Jim Latham, vice president of operations at the plant, owned by Utah-based Energy Solutions. This year, about 33,000 cubic feet will be disposed of here. Next year, the figure is expected to drop to around 13,000 cubic feet and then reach 9,000 in the years after that.
Taking in less volume will mean fewer jobs, Latham said.
More than 50 people work at the plant, and the jobs pay well -- an average of $49,357 a year, according to figures provided by facility operators last year. The county's median family income was $35,866 in 1999, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
"You look ahead a couple years, there's clearly going to have to be some reduction," Latham said. "In the long run, not next week. We haven't sorted that out."
Barnwell County also received roughly $2 million a year through surcharge fees paid by Energy Solutions.
About $700,000 more came in each year through business license fees.
"It's all based on volume," County Councilman Keith Sloan said. "Of course, that won't be there in the future."
Sloan said he met with Gov. Mark Sanford to plead the county's case for keeping the facility open to states other than South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey.
The governor backs the new restrictions.
"We don't think that our economic development model should ever be built on accepting waste," Sanford's spokesman, Joel Sawyer, said last week.
Ann Timberlake, executive director of the Conservation Voters of South Carolina, said it should never have come to this for Barnwell County.
Timberlake, who has been in the forefront of the effort to limit the amount of waste shipped into South Carolina, argues Barnwell County has had plenty of time to adjust to the reality of the 2000 agreement.
She said the waste being processed at the Barnwell site is not as innocuous as many think. And it hasn't always stayed where it was placed.
Indeed, higher-than-expected levels of tritium have been found in the groundwater beneath the facility.
Those higher levels were revealed publicly last year through an open records request by The State, surprising even the most dogged environmentalists. Some of the levels found at the site rivaled those at the nearby Savannah River site, which handles more highly radioactive waste.
Tritium is not as toxic as many other radioactive materials, but it can foreshadow the flow of other contaminants that don't move as quickly into groundwater.
"It's like the canary in the coal mine," Timberlake said.
Latham, vice president of operations at the facility, said the types of materials now being disposed of in Barnwell are less toxic than what was brought there in the 1970s. And he said disposal methods are much more thorough now.
Still, Timberlake said the day has come for Barnwell County to find revenue in something other than bringing nuclear waste into South Carolina.
"They need to turn lemons into lemonade," said Timberlake, arguing the county should be looking for ways to use the expertise developed around the nuclear waste facility to bring in other types of disposal operations. "Did they spend those millions of dollars wisely? Did they think it would be a never-ending stream of dollars to them? If so, they acted unwisely."
