Water fightBattle for surface waters fueled by Georgia caseBy Bill Davis, senior editor JULY 24, 2009 -- A federal judge’s recent ruling in a long-standing water fight between Alabama, Florida and Georgia could have a big impact on South Carolina’s ability to protect the amount of water flowing into the state.
 Existing federal law and precedent hold that surface water doesn’t necessarily belong to a state where the water originates. Instead, upstream entities can use water in a “reasonable” manner and in such a way that it doesn’t hurt downstream entities, according to water rights experts.
But the amount of water that is reasonable is what is at issue in separate fights that now pit South Carolina versus Georgia and North Carolina. At stake? The possibility that the state may not be able to protect its amount of surface water -- lakes and rivers -- that feeds its industry, commerce, tourism and drinking glasses.
Catawba battle involves NC
South Carolina is currently embroiled in a multi-year fight with North Carolina over the amount of water that state wants to pull out of the Catawba River. That river begins in the hills and mountains of the Tarheel state, and winds its way past thirsty Charlotte. From there, the river crosses over into South Carolina, east of Columbia, before it merges with the Congaree River to form Lake Marion, which drains into the coastal-bound Santee River.
Ever-expanding Charlotte wants to pull an additional 10 million gallons of water a day from the Catawba. Huge extra water withdrawals from the Catawba might cripple a big chunk of this state, according to S.C. Attorney General Henry McMaster, whose office has filed suit with North Carolina to protect the Palmetto State’s downstream water rights. In October, a specially-appointed federal judge will hear arguments on the Catawba case.
 Another fight with Georgia
A similar fight has begun between South Carolina and Georgia. According to McMaster spokesman Mark Plowden, Georgia wants to “drop a few more straws” into the Savannah River to water Atlanta and its environs, which were nearly dried to the bone over the last few years by an historic drought that gripped the Southeast.
The Savannah River runs more than 200 miles along the border of South Carolina and Georgia and has been seen here as key to growth and prosperity for a big chunk of the southern part of the state, whereas Georgia saw it as key to keeping spigots flowing in Atlanta’s future.
Georgia entered into a similar fight with Florida and Alabama over the water emanating from Lake Lanier, an Atlanta-area lake whose water basin reaches into the two states below. Last week, a federal judge ruled Georgia could no longer use Lake Lanier as a drinking water source. That could send Georgia to the negotiating table -- and could force the issue in South Carolina’s two water fights.
Fights have differences
Charleston School of Law Professor Stephen Spitz, the former chair of the state’s water law commission, said that the Savannah River fight was different from the Catawba fight because of the “200 miles the two states share along their borders.” [Read a 2004 report on SC water law and issues.]
Plowden said the Catawba fight has been further complicated by the North Carolina plan to remove the extra water from the Catawba, use it, treat it and then return it to another river basin. Plowden said the state was also concerned that the water flow models used in the North Carolina plan took into account the 50 years before the massive droughts hit the Southeast.
Dana Beach, the director of one of this state’s most powerful conservation groups, the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, said that to not take into account the driest years would be like making financial models without taking into account the Wall Street meltdown of recent years
Duke Energy responds
Duke Energy spokesman Jason Walls countered the water flow model his company passed on to the state was completed before the drought hit, and that it went back and included a 2007 water flow scenario.
Walls also pointed out that his company, which has been criticized by some in South Carolina for siding with Charlotte’s needs over South Carolina’s needs, contributed the scenarios to a process that created one of North Carolina’s current water pacts that included input and signatures, from several South Carolina entities, including neighborhood associations and business associations.
A representative from the N.C. Attorney General’s office declined to comment on the story, as it involved pending litigation. That representative also declined comment on the Georgia/Alabama/Florida ruling and its potential effect on the Catawba fight, even though the ruling didn’t include North Carolina.
“I don’t think the cases have that much to do with each other,” said Josh Eagle, a USC law professor who teaches property, environmental and natural resources law. But, he warned, water cases take years to sort out and regardless, the fight was far from over.
Crystal ball: Bordered by huge metropolitan cities on each side, Charlotte and Atlanta, South Carolina may find it tough to keep surface water flowing into the state and its economic future. With so much of the state’s future riding on surface water access, look for more attention to be spent once again this upcoming legislative session on mandatory permitting for surface water withdrawals. Beach said the General Assembly’s failure to require such permitting in 2009 was “a major disappointment.”
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Bond, sentencing meetings ahead
Members of both of the Senate and House will attend the next meeting of the Joint Bond Review Committee at 10:30 a.m. for Aug. 5 in 105 Gressette.
A work group of the Sentencing Reform Commission focusing on prison release options will meet at 2 p.m., Monday, Aug. 18 in 516 Blatt, to discuss abolishing the state’s current parole system.
In related statewide agendas:
- A one-day “character education” conference co-sponsored by the S.C. Department of Education will be held at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College on Aug. 15, from 8 a.m-5 p.m.
- The next meeting of the state Budget and Control Board will be held Aug. 18 at 10 a.m. in the Governor's Conference Room, First Floor, Wade Hampton Building on the Statehouse grounds.
- The next scheduled meeting of the S.C. Arts Commission board will be Aug. 18 from 1-2 p.m. at its main offices at 1800 Gervais St., Columbia.
- State election officials have set the calendar for a special election to fill the state House seat held by Carl Gullick (R-Lake Wylie), who has resigned his District 48 seat to move outside the state. Primaries will be Sept. 15, with Sept. 29 set aside if runoffs are necessary. The general election will coincide with municipal elections on Nov. 3.
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Sawyer out
Gubernatorial spokesperson Joel Sawyer has announced he would soon leave Gov. Mark Sanford’s side and seek a job in the private sector. Some wondered if Sawyer did so as a rat fleeing a sinking ship, as many staffers have tended to do at the end of many an administration’s run. Others wondered if he was leaving out of anger over his boss’s Argentinean scandal. Sawyer was put into an awkward position with the press, with whom he deals with on a daily basis, when the governor slipped off to visit his South American lover. It was Sawyer’s job to explain to the public that the governor was hiking.
So far, none of the internal emails and documents the administration has made public have pointed to Sawyer majorly fudging the truth. Sanford has said he misled his staff as to his whereabouts. Regardless, there was sure to be distrust created among the Statehouse press corps. Several Columbia insiders wondered where Sawyer would find work, one saying he and other members of Sanford’s staff could remain “nuclear toxic” for years to come in and around the state capital. Another state agency staffer said that despite Sawyer’s link to Sanford’s hamstrung administration, his knowledge and access to the state process and its players would be very marketable.
See-through transparency
Good news for government transparency fans: the S.C. Budget and Control Board announced this week the unveiling of its own transparency hub site. The Web site will include links to historic budget information, perfect for those who want to track increases in state government spending. It will also include each agency’s annual report and budget request, among other fields. Check it out.
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Conspiracy theories get in way of truthBy Andy Brack, editor and publisher
JULY 24, 2009 -- If something sounds too good to be true, there might be a reason: it’s not true.
 But some people, being people, will keep trying to believe in them despite logic, facts and irrefutable evidence.
There are people, for example, who still believe there was a conspiracy and cover-up in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Others think man never walked on the moon . Instead, they hold astronauts really were filmed walking on a desert made to look like the moon.
These days, popular conspiracy theories hold that President Barack Obama isn’t an American citizen (he is) or that global warming doesn’t exist (it does).
So why do these myths, legends, theories and assertions flourish? Two main reasons are the glut of information – some true, some plain false – available through the Internet and the reality of diminishing resources by our truth watchdogs, the traditional media.
Two years ago, the St. Petersburg Times started PolitiFact.com as a way to debunk erroneous information spouted by politicians and the media, including bloggers and chain e-mailers.
“I felt the news media had not done enough to fact-check claims in American politics,” said Bill Adair, Washington bureau chief for the Times and editor of PolitiFact. “We were letting people in politics get away with big falsehoods … and it was our job to blow the whistle on that.”
Adair noted crackpot theories in American politics have always been around, but that widespread use of the Internet has provided people with a way to publish their claims to a world where other people listen.
 “Before the Internet, a guy with a wacky theory didn’t have access to that many people,” Adair said. “He could write letters to the editor or call into radio stations. He didn’t have that megaphone. Now he does.”
In the past, the media acted as a barrier and check on outlandish rumors and theories. But now, those trying to stir the pot can bypass the traditional media through misleading viral emails, blogs, Web sites, social media and more. In essence, the traditional media has been trumped as a filter. Now, Adair argues, the media need to debunk false and misleading assertions as part of their job. The problem? Media outlets have fewer resources to spend on correcting the record. Hence the need for Politifact.com and a similar site, FactCheck.org.
Just take the issue of global warming. Despite the fact that the world’s top climate scientists from more than 130 nations agreed in 2007 that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” due to man’s impact on the environment, there are scads of people who just don’t believe it.
Former U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said he wouldn’t have spent a good part of his last two years in the Senate pushing for a climate change bill if it were not real. He pointed to the melting of the Antarctic ice cap and the famine and drought of Somalia, Darfur and other places in Africa as conditions that linked global warming to our national security. [To learn more, see reports by CNA.]
Nations in Africa, for example, are fragile sovereignties because of stresses caused by climate change. “If those governments topple, you have a situation where people flow in who often are against the principles of freedom,” said Warner, who was in South Carolina to highlight how global warming had security implications.
University of South Carolina Professor Greg Carbone said man was expected to double the pre-Industrial Age amount of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere by 2050.
“For the climate to have no response to that would be extraordinary,” he said while traveling with Warner. “The likelihood that there would be no change at all is very unlikely by the year 2050.”
So when you hear someone say global warming doesn’t exist or President Obama is really Kenyan, go to trusted news sources or the library to find out the real deal. (Hint: You might want to stay away from Wikipedia because its content can be modified by anyone with a computer and Internet connection.)
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No excuse for restricting access to public informationBy Bryan Cox, S.C. Policy Council
Special to SC Statehouse Report
JULY 24, 2009 -- The city of North Myrtle Beach launched a new policy earlier this month to begin charging for public information and admits it seeks to discourage requests for city records. City Manager John Smithson described it as an effort to limit requests "just to have it.”
 This change comes even though the city employs a full-time public information director whose job includes this responsibility, which means taxpayers now must effectively pay twice to obtain copies of documents they have an absolute right to review.
According to the city's new policy, citizens must pay 25 cents per page for copies, 35 cents per page for color copies and a dollar per page for oversized documents that exceed 10 pages. Citizens are also subject to a $25 charge per hour for any request that takes more than 15 minutes to fulfill. The city manager has authority to waive these fees at his discretion.
North Myrtle Beach’s stated goal of discouraging requests is troubling as it challenges a fundamental principle of representative government. In a free society, public servants work for the people and citizens have an absolute right to examine public documents. It is inappropriate for government to create needless roadblocks to access.
The argument that imposing fees will discourage frivolous requests also misses a fundamental point -- there is no such thing as a frivolous request for public information. Public servants exist to serve the citizenry and citizens should decide for themselves what records they deem important.
North Myrtle Beach's move to restrict information is in sharp contrast with the growing movement by other South Carolina cities and counties to open the books and post government records online. During the past year, eight South Carolina municipalities have posted comprehensive spending records online and a half-dozen more are in the process of doing so.
Just two days ago, the city of Aiken announced its information is now online. Aiken's system updates more than 100 pages of city financial data each month as well as tens of thousands of individual city accounts, including a detailed explanation of who received the payment and the transaction date.
Aiken City Manager Roger LeDuc said it took one city employee a little more than a week to build the framework for the Web site [click here to visit it], and now that the system is in place it can serve as the model for other cities.
"Now that it's been set up...this could be used by any government," said LeDuc.
In a representative government, citizens have a right to examine government records. The technology now exists to make this information available online at virtually no cost without creating a burden on government. There is simply no excuse going forward for any government not to be transparent.
Especially as other municipalities throughout South Carolina are finding ways to make more information available and increase openness, North Myrtle Beach leaders find themselves alone headed in the opposite direction. It’s time they consider turning around.
Bryan Cox is director of communications for the South Carolina Policy Council, which is an underwriter of S.C. Statehouse Report.
RECENT MY TURNS
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Great article about online educationTo SC Statehouse Report:
I wanted to thank you for a well-researched and beautifully-written article in support of online education in South Carolina. [Commentary, 7/17]
I am a proud parent of two South Carolina Virtual Charter School students and president of the newly-formed SC chapter of the National Coalition for Public School Options. Virtual schools play an important role in serving the educational needs of many children. In this 21st century, we must preserve and expand our access to innovative, cutting-edge educational opportunities here in South Carolina. .
-- Beth Purcell, Greer, SC
Something to think about on schools
To SC Statehouse Report:
Why is the first place the state cuts the budget starts with education? Do they not realize that it only hurts the students and teachers?
Programs are cut which could help students who have difficulty with learning that do not qualify for special education. Teachers are given more students and more work which means less individual concentration on each student. Let's step back and look at this for a minute. Teachers are having their pay frozen or losing their jobs while our governor has time for a trip to visit his girlfriend and vacation with his family. Where is the justice in that?
Do you know that teaching is one profession that goes unappreciated because so many people including the state think that teachers get paid for the nine months they work? What they don't tell you is the long hours teachers put into work and the other unpaid time. Their day starts before school opens by getting ready for the day. Then when students arrive they become students' mom, dad, friend, teacher and whatever else might be needed on top of teaching and dealing with little support from heads of school.
Their jobs do not end when the bell rings. They are busy grading papers, making tests, preparing lessons and doing paperwork for the school. During the so-called breaks, they may take a short vacation but are still working towards making lessons fun and interesting while meeting all the standards before PASS testing for the year. Summer vacation is no vacation for teachers either. They have meetings, workshops, classes and planning for the next school year on their plates during the summer. So teachers are unpaid but yet whenever the state needs to cut the budget they start with education. And they wonder why it is hard to find good teachers.
-- Andrea Alerre, Piedmont, SC
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Ups, downs and in the middle
 Hydrogen. The feds are thinking about pouring money back into hydrogen power research, with a big possible future in South Carolina. More: The State.
Jobs. U.S. Dept. of Justice moving 250 high-paying jobs to Columbia. More: The State.
 Unemployment. That unemployment only grew by one-tenth of a percent last month doesn’t mean the economy has hit bottom, yet. More: The State.
Minimum wage. Who wouldn’t want a 70-cent hourly increase? Then again, lots of companies will have to raise salaries to meet federal standards, and that is sad.
 Facilities. Watchdog finds large number of state’s residential care facilities for the disabled may have serious problems. More: S.C. Radio Network.
Politicking. The campaign of 2010 definitely has started with questions about one candidate’s integrity and another whining about the process.
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