SC’s Little State Park, born of the state’s largest business | Columbia News

COLUMBIA – A 27-acre island on the northeast side of Lake Meeree, which for years was a private resort for South Carolina electric and gas workers, will become the first new state park in two decades. And the smallest – barely.

Covered by a sandy beach and scattered with trees, the edge of Pine Island overlooks Lake Murray’s irregular shoreline and 50,000 acres of water.

The calm of the island, about 20 miles west of Columbia, belies the turmoil surrounding the $9 billion SCE&G nuclear plant expansion, which ended in lawsuits and criminal charges against executives and was deemed the state’s costliest business failure.

Pine Island is one of four properties that Dominion Energy, which bought SCE&G’s parent company in bankruptcy, will turn it over to the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism to pay hundreds of millions in back taxes. The failed expansion of the VC summer nuclear station.

Dominion is preparing to transfer the properties by the end of March, and the PRT hopes to have some of the properties, including Pine Island, used as state parks by the end of the year, state officials said. Pine Island is already equipped with benches, beaches and beaches, so if the property is converted to the state, the property will open up quickly, PRT officials said.

When Pine Island opens, it will be the first park the state has opened since H. Cooper Black Memorial Park opened in Chesterfield County in 2006.

Some in the Columbia area see the new park as a potential asset to the community.

State Rep. Jay Kilmartin, R-Columbia, said: “When we moved here 20 years ago, we couldn’t believe there wasn’t a good place (on Lake Murray) that was open to the public. “It was great to have a place.”

But Pine Island’s neighbors aren’t convinced the island can handle the large traffic that’s accessible by boat and wheelies. They threatened legal action if the park was disturbed.

“It was just workers,” said Rick Levitan, who lives near their neighborhood, coming to Pine Island. “Now, it’s the world. I don’t know how you (open a state park) without any work conditions.”

The benefits of Pine Island Park outweigh the problems, said Paul McCormack, director of PRT’s state park service.

“Pine Island provides access to the lake,” he said. “Many of the beaches are private homes, especially (near Columbia). This provides a public recreational opportunity for people who can’t necessarily afford to live on the water.”

Refund

In the year In the 1960s, South Carolina Electric and Gas, which operates Lake Murray, established Pine Island as a club for its employees and their families. During the summer months, employees go to the island to swim, play tennis and volleyball, and prepare cookouts.

Weekend traffic to the Pine Islands can only be closed by SCE&G crews, island neighbors said. That’s why they expect the problem to get worse when Pine Island opens to the public.

In 2008, SCE and Aji began expanding the VC Summer Nuclear Plant in Fairfield County to become Pine Island State Park.

When the project began, SCE&G reached an agreement with the state Department of Revenue. The utility and its contractors can purchase materials without paying the state’s 7 percent sales tax. Most of the taxes will be waived when the two new reactors come online.

That never happened.

After nearly a decade of price hikes and schedule delays, SCE&G ended its 2017 VC Summer expansion. The cancellation prompted criminal fraud charges against company executives and a lawsuit by ratepayers, shareholders, financial regulators and municipalities against the utility.

In addition, state officials began calculating how much SCE and G spent on materials and how much the Cayce-based utility owed in taxes.

In 2019, Virginia-based Dominion Energy purchased SCE&G. A year later, the Virginia-based company closed the Pine Island Club.

Meanwhile, the state’s tax agency and Dominion have negotiated a $165 million bill for unpaid taxes on an unfinished nuclear plant expansion in 2021.

Not all taxes owed are paid in cash.

As part of the settlement, Dominion and the state agreed that the utility would transfer more than 2,900 acres of land in three counties, much of which, like Pine Island, was used for recreation by the company’s employees and their families. The assets account for more than a third of the $165 million in debt.

While state officials realize they rarely accept land in exchange for cash, the parks agency is seizing the opportunity to add 47 parks.

“It was fun for all of us,” McCormack said. “We’re jumping from 47[parks]to 53 in short order, and each one has its own unique challenges.”

State park opening

As part of the deal, South Carolina will take ownership of Pine Island and Bundrick Island, a 94-acre property also on Lake Murray. Misty Lake, a 190-acre property in North Augusta; and Ramsey Grove, a 2,600-acre, historic plantation on the Black River in Georgetown County.

Pine Island ends the reign of South Carolina’s current smallest state park, the 35-acre Colleton State Park 10 miles north of Walterboro on the Edisto River.

Dormant as of 2020, Pine Island is full of unused picnic tables. The water pipes in the air-conditioned buildings discharge dirty water from unused pipes.

Although it hasn’t been used in years, South Carolina officials say it’s easy to start as a state park. “As far as a state park goes, Pine Island is pretty key,” said PRT spokesman Sam Quinn.

The island already has a marina, boat ramp, parking lot and picnic tables, as well as on-site housing for the park manager and rentable event space.

With the island’s more intimate location comes the challenge of managing capacity on the island, McCormick said.

In selecting land from a list provided by Dominion, PRT McCormack selected properties that “have incredibly unique cultural or natural resource value that we do not currently have representation in the State Park Service.”

Whether the parks attract visitors beyond the local sphere is the second part of the equation, he said.

Transferring the two Lake Murray sites from Dominion to the state took some time because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission oversees the lake as a hydroelectric reservoir, Dominion spokeswoman Rhonda O’Banion said. Dominion needs FERC approval for the land transfer, which was granted in November.

Once the PRT takes control of the land, it will begin assessing the site’s condition and infrastructure needs, McCormack said.

“Once you’ve decided what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, you have to find the funding to build the infrastructure you need,” McCormack said.

In the case of Pine Island, very little work is needed, he said.

“For some we do a fully completed master plan, for others we do a site assessment and if there is already development on the site we do an internal operations plan,” McCormack said.

Elsewhere, PRT plans to open Ramsey Grove as a canoe and kayak to the Black River when the park opens, but will add a visitor center and campsites after further planning.

balancing function

Not everyone is happy with the state’s plans for the new parks.

Access to Pine Island requires winding and narrow residential roads, with traffic to and from the state park raising alarms with neighbors worried about safety concerns and major headaches.

Opponents have written to the PRT, lawmakers, FERC and Gov. Henry McMaster asking for stricter regulations on the island, neighbor Stuart Mungo said. In July, dozens of angry neighbors gathered with parks leaders on Pine Island to demand PRT solutions to manage traffic and safety on and around the island.

“We don’t have a problem with it being a state park, but we think it needs to be[parked]so that people aren’t just coming through the area, checking it out, and not having a place where they can’t park and turn around,” Levitan said. But we have not heard anything from SCPRT.

PRT was contacted by mail and community meetings last summer with upset residents, Queen said.

“We responded as best we could, but until the document was reported there was not much to report,” she said. “We plan to hold another public meeting before the park opens.”

Some plan to file an injunction if the park becomes a traffic or disturbance problem for neighbors, Levitan said.

The PRT plans to work with local law enforcement on traffic control to address the pressure on the park, and has begun working with a consultant to conduct a traffic study on roads around the island, Queen said.

PRT is considering installing signs on major roads when the park reaches capacity to limit unnecessary traffic on residential roads, McCormack said. PRT doesn’t yet know Pine Island’s exact capacity, but Queen said he doesn’t expect more traffic than he’s seen the island operate privately.

“I know the roads to that island are in terrible shape and there’s not a lot of infrastructure to accommodate visitors in that neighborhood,” Kilmartin said.