What they said at the time
“This is a new dawn for Beaufort County.”
State Rep. J. Wilton Graves of Bluffton, in The Beaufort Gazette, Oct. 2, 1969
“We foresee a tremendous favorable economic impact in terms of new employment opportunities and improved standards of living for thousands of people throughout a 150-mile area in southeastern South Carolina.”
Gov. Robert McNair, October 1969
“If the kids go out and lie down in front of the bulldozers I hope no one is hurt, but I’ll be on their side. I’m a radical on the issue of conservation.”
Orion Hack of Hilton Head, quoted in Life magazine, Jan. 30, 1970
“The tide was running strongly against BASF — but still, the company had powerful arguments. Most important was the undisputed fact that the group of plants that BASF is planning — eventually to represent an investment of $200 million — would mean hundreds of relatively well-paid jobs for the poor of Beaufort County. Some 20,000 of the county’s 53,000 people are black and suffer from a high rate of malnutrition and illiteracy; a third of them have family incomes of less than $2,500 a year. As Mrs. Hazel Frazier, a welfare leader and herself the mother of 10, put the simplest case: ‘Jobs is a way out, and industry brings jobs.’ ”
Newsweek magazine, April 13, 1970
“We must never lose sight of the fact that our opponents are the public officials, not BASF. As long as the public officials want the firm, there is almost no chance of stopping it. On the other hand, if the public officials changed their minds and decided they did not want the plant, the company would not build, even if it had the legal right to do so. No company will move into a state where the government is hostile to it. The only way to change the opinion of the government is to arouse enough public opinion against the plant. Legal action may give us the time we need to reach the public.”
William Kenney of Hilton Head, a retired vice president and general counsel of Shell Oil, and a member of the Hilton Head Island Community Association task force working to stop the BASF plant. He is quoted by Alan Ternes in the April 1970 issue of Natural History magazine
These waters are going to be polluted, no doubt about that. And the people against it are saying now, if BASF doesn’t come in, they’ll open up other jobs without pollution. Well, one of our girls we sent out the other day on a waitress job was offered 22 cents an hour plus tips — if that’s the kind of thing they’re talking about, forget it. No, when it comes to a choice of the people I know who have to make it here on food stamps, who’re still living like they’ve been living for the past hundred years, or whether we’re gonna keep all these pure waterways and beautiful marshes and wildlife, all this wonderful scenery — I got to go with the people. If I got to put the oyster beds up against people, the oyster beds have got to go.”
John Gadson, who was then running a job-placement center for young black residents around Beaufort, quoted by Marshall Frady in the article “A Question of Plastics in Beaufort County” in Harper’s magazine, May 1970, and the 1980 book, “Southerners: A Journalist’s Odyssey.”
“Looking back, if the large companies had come as they said they wanted to, the composition of Beaufort County would have been entirely different. The county’s reputation as a spot for visitors, tourists, and retirees would certainly be smaller, but the good-paying jobs and benefits would, I believe, have greatly benefited the average working family.”
W. Brantley Harvey Jr. of Beaufort, who was a state representative at the time, from his 2015 memoir, “Palmetto Patriot”
“BASF and its political sponsors lost because they picked the wrong place for heavy industry, both environmentally and politically.”
Michael Danielsen in his 1995 book, “Profits and Politics in Paradise: The Development of Hilton Head Island”
“... the tension between economic development and growth control has dominated Beaufort County politics for 20 years. The issue that launched this movement more than any other was the BASF controversy of 1960-70. ... (It) was the first great victory for the environmental and anti-growth proponents in Beaufort County. Others would follow.”
From the 2015 book “Bridging the Sea Islands’ Past and Present, 1893-2006: The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina, Volume 3” by Lawrence Rowland and Stephen Wise
This story was originally published December 18, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "What they said at the time."