Wedding & Event Venue Near Charleston, SC.

The work continues to move nearly 200 James Island residences from septic tanks to sewer lines.

JAMES ISLAND, S.C. (WCSC) - The work continues to move nearly 200 James Island residences from septic tanks to sewer lines.

Officials are now sharing a rough timeline of the over $10 million project and what residents can expect will be installed in their yards.

James Island Public Service District officials said the projected investment for this project is around $52,000 per property or $10.3 million total.

They said the majority of the cost per property will be covered by a combination of federal, state and local funding, but the big question within the affected neighborhoods is: what will each homeowner have to pay out of pocket?

“You know the cost is going to be everybody’s concern and mine as well,” resident John Gerlow said. “There’s going to be a tipping point for a lot of people, where is that tipping point, is it $1,000, $2,000? Is it $5,000?”

Gerlow said despite the anxiety about the unknown cost, he thinks the benefit to the James Island Creek will be worth it.

“That’s why everybody loves the Lowcountry right? Because of the beautiful waterways. And if we can’t go out there and swim and fish and have a good time then we’re really not experiencing the low country,” Gerlow said.

DHEC named James Island Creek an impaired waterway over three years ago, and James Island officials said septic tanks leaking into the creek is a primary cause of the bacteria.

The District Manager of the James Island Public Service District David Schaeffer said as the sea level rises, septic tanks will continue to become less effective, and cause more pollution in waterways. He says now is an ideal time for homeowners near the creek to switch off septic.

“This is the time to do it because the federal dollars, the state dollars, the local match dollars are all there,” Schaeffer said.

Schaeffer said the Service District hopes to have the engineering and construction contracts by the end of 2024, and to begin hooking residents into the sewer system by the third quarter of 2025.

The Service District will work with each homeowner to install these grinder pumps into their yards to connect them to sewer.

He said the “tap and impact fee,” or what residents will have to pay out of pocket, is still unknown, however--

“We want to be able to minimize those financial burdens on each one of the customers,” Schaeffer said. “And we’re going to be working with other localities and continue to pursue all the funding sources available.”

The Mayor of James Island, Bill Woolsey, said although there’s been a mixed response from residents, they have no choice but to move forward with the switch.

“If the town and the city and the county do not take action to clean up the creek, this could be like million dollar per day fines,” Woolsey said. “So, we are obligated to do something.”

Schaeffer said affected homeowners can expect a letter the week of June 12 with more details and says to be on the lookout for community meetings in the coming months.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

Malaysian restaurant Makan, currently based in D.C., is actively exploring a second location in the Lowcountry. “I grew up in South Carolina, have family in Charleston, and have always loved the city’s warmth, beauty, and history,” says Makan chef James Wozniuk, “The last few years it has become such a versatile food city full of people who just love trying new things and having a good time.”

Wozniuk thinks that there is a place for Malaysian cuisine in Charleston. “It’s both unique and very approachable,” he says, “There are influences from China and India that people will recognize and super-cool things people won’t, but all of it is delicious.”

His obsession with Malaysian cuisine began on a research trip while he was a chef de cuisine at Cambodian and Taiwanese cafe Maketto, also based in D.C. After a 15-hour layover in Kuala Lumpur, on the way to Hanoi, he found himself going back multiple times to research and eat. He went on to open Makan in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of D.C. in 2020.

Eater D.C. lists Makan as one of its essential restaurants, stating:

At this Malaysian restaurant in Columbia Heights, chef James Wozniuk navigates a balance of pungent, spicy-sweet, and funky umami flavors that vary in intensity but never veer out of control. Wozniuk’s condiments — sambal made from bird’s eye chiles, palm sugar, tamarind, and fried anchovies; appetite-piquing pickled limes with prune and golden raisin; and peanut-based satay sauce — assert themselves in an array of rice and noodle dishes. The bar mixes complex tropical cocktails, like a blackstrap rum and pineapple Jungle Bird, that vie for attention.

“I fell in love with Malaysia over a decade ago and it was so amazing to bring that to D.C. when we opened Makan there,” says Wozniuk, “I just hope we can bring the same love into Charleston and be a part of that natural hospitality the city’s known for.”

In preparation for a second location, Makan is doing a pop-up at Chasing Sage (267 Rutledge Avenue) on Sunday, June 11, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., with reservations available on Resy.

DuPont and two of its spinoff businesses have agreed to pay almost $1.2 billion to settle litigation over toxic chemicals that contaminated water systems across the country, days before a high-stakes trial is scheduled to get underway in Charleston.

The deal was announced June 2, as lawyers met with a judge in a federal courtroom on Broad Street to receive instructions about the proceedings set to begin next week.

DuPont de Nemours Inc., Chemours Co. and Corteva Inc. said they reached an “agreement in principle” to settle claims over a class of man-made substances known as “forever chemicals.” The $1.18 billion payment will go into a compensation fund.

The companies and other big-name manufacturers such as 3M Co. are facing more than 4,000 lawsuits that have been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gergel of Charleston. Many of the complaints allege that the toxic substances leached into public and private water systems, triggering a host of human health ailments, ranging from cancer to fertility issues.

DuPont, Chemours and Corteva denied the allegations in their joint statement Friday. They said that they expect by next month to submit a formal agreement that will require Gergel’s approval.

It would mark the first major settlement among the mountain of cases that have been transferred to federal court in Charleston over the past four years.

The companies said they “will continue to assert their strong legal defenses in pending litigation” if for some reason the deal isn’t finalized.

The settlement excludes personal-injury lawsuits and water-contamination complaints that some states are pursuing on their own against DuPont, Chemours and Corteva. The companies said they “will continue to assess and defend the cases” that aren’t being resolved.

The deal does not exempt other defendants from the litigation.

“This settlement by DuPont, in our mind’s eye, deals with really just a fraction of this contamination,” Michael London, lead counsel for one of the law firms that has been filing the cases, told the Associated Press.

At the core of the litigation are “perfluoroalkyl” and “polyfluoroalkyl” substances that have been used for decades in a variety of consumer products, from Teflon-coated cookware to waterproof clothing to stain-free carpeting. They earned the “forever” moniker because they don’t break down easily.

The trial scheduled in Charleston next week centers on the use of the chemicals in a firefighting foam developed in the 1960s that allegedly contaminated the water system in Stuart, Fla., after being sprayed repeatedly on the ground for years during training exercises.

The coastal beach community north of West Palm Beach is seeking $115 million from 3M to pay for various expenses, such as new water-purification equipment and the removal of polluted soil. Bloomberg News reported Friday that the Minnesota-based company is considering a minimum $10 billion settlement to end its role in the foam case, citing unidentified sources.

“Our take: We are excited that 3M appears to be making progress, but more is needed before we think we’ll see a real clearing event for the name,” Sanford C. Bernstein analysts wrote in a note. “We also emphasize the report of ‘at least’ $10B in settlement and believe ultimate settlement will end up significantly higher.”

3M declined to comment on the settlement report.

Earlier in the day, Gergel said he expected “a multiweek trial” that would begin after the jury is selected. He also set down some ground rules, such as requiring that facemasks be worn to avoid “a petri dish” environment.

He said another one of his “peculiarities” is that he likes “to keep a speedy trial,” and that lawyers need to be sure their witnesses are outside the courtroom when called to testify.

“Not at Starbucks. Not having a cigarette,” Gergel said.

The first thing to keep in mind is that Eric Gallien had no control over how the Charleston County School Board came to offer him the job as superintendent. Regardless of what we think of the board or its search process, and assuming Dr. Gallien and the board reach an agreement for him to take over running the district, we should all be pulling for him to succeed.

The second thing to keep in mind is that the secretive way the board handled the search was not technically in violation of state law — although it certainly violated the spirit of that law when it refused to release the names of the three finalists until the search firm gave its blessing.

South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act requires state and local governments to release the names and materials gathered about three finalists for government jobs. This isn’t simply so we can second-guess hires after the fact: It’s supposed to give the public a chance to vet the candidates and provide boards with information they might not otherwise have, in order to make the best selection.

Some state and local boards and councils embrace the requirement and would release names, bios and other information even if it weren’t required, and they would do so well in advance of making their choice, because they recognize they can reach a better decision if they know more about a candidate than what a search firm tells them.

The third thing to keep in mind is that the Charleston school board isn’t the first governing board that has refused to provide that open process, where the public gets a chance to weigh in and board members actually consider that input before making a decision. But it needs to be the last.

And until the Legislature takes action to prevent other state and local governing bodies from locking the public out of the hiring process, apparently we need to start scrutinizing the contracts between governmental entities and the search firms they hire to create a slate of candidates.

We already knew from the search that led to the University of South Carolina hiring Bob Caslen as president that search firms and, when they’re also employed, search committees can stack the deck by winnowing down the list of candidates to the one they want to get the job along with a few other candidates they know will be unacceptable.

What we learned in the local superintendent search was how search firms can give boards another excuse — not a legitimate excuse, but an excuse — to make sure the public doesn’t have a clue who the candidates are until a decision has been made.

The Illinois-based search firm BWP and Associates presented the school board with information about six candidates, the board winnowed the list to three, and then refused to release their names. The story’s a little convoluted from here, involving a leak of the three finalists’ names on social media while the district still hadn’t released the names, and two candidates dropping out because their names had been released before they expected. Which might or might not have been their reason and in any case isn’t relevant.

What’s relevant is that school board chairwoman Pam McKinney told The Post and Courier’s Sara Gregory that the board had a confidentiality agreement with the search firm. “Our understanding with BWP is that the information about the applicants is kept confidential and is the property of BWP until a finalist is decided by the board,” she said.

Which is astounding. Who in the world enters into a contract like that? Don’t answer; unfortunately, it’s not the first time a South Carolina governing board has agreed via contract to hide public information from the public and in some cases directly violate state law.

It’s more astounding coming from a chairwoman who as recently as December declared that at least when it comes to the superintendent search: “We’ve got to be more open. We will not go into executive session unless it’s required by law.” Yet the board has discussed the superintendent search multiple times in executive session — and never because state law required it to do so.

All this despite the fact that most board members were backed by — and some would argue propelled by — the lobbying group Moms for Liberty, which considers government transparency so important that it requires not only candidates it endorses but even parents who seek to join the group to pledge support for increasing transparency. And this board full of Moms for Liberty-endorsed members entered into a contract that allowed a private entity to dictate when and whether it complied with an important state transparency law.

School board members need to apologize to the public for the secrecy that has surrounded this search — and pledge to reform. Moms for Liberty needs to demand those changes — and hold its board members to account if changes aren’t forthcoming.

And while we await the advent of porcine aviation, our Legislature needs to make it clear that public officials may not enter into contracts that are at odds with state law. It also needs to put more detail into the public vetting law. That could start with requiring state and local agencies to release the list of finalists a week before a vote, along with new penalties tough enough to get elected officials’ attention.

With a powerful yet vulnerable presence Willie Lee Kinard III opened Piccolo Spoleto’s Sundown Poetry Series on May 30, guiding listeners through the complex journey of growing up Black in the religious South.

The series features multiple poets reading their work in the warm sunsets at Washington Square Park. With each poet vulnerably reciting art made from their own experiences, the Sundown Poetry Series is a must-see for anyone eager to learn what it’s like to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

In coming days, festival-goers can enjoy these poets as the sun sets in the part at 80 Broad St. Signings and receptions will follow at nearby Buxton Books, 160 King St.:

Sharing an hour of his life through prose, Kinard read from work from across the years, some published in poetry journals, such as Poetry Foundation and Poetry Daily, while others came from his self-published book “Chroma.”

Every carefully dictated word dripped with emotion and determination, syllables neatly flowing into each other in lines such as “Yes, shaken does the body good” from “The Choir, or Chatteracks” — a reminiscing of his time in a gospel choir.

Ending each poem with a thank you, Kinard followed with a short retelling of what the work meant to him, maybe a joke about his grandmother or their upbringing in Newberry, S.C.

In the sonnet “Catfish,” Kinard combined Southern fish fry and the social media term for when someone pretends to be someone else, blending together tradition and the contemporary.

“I fed thousands of egos, served my body hot off the skillet and expected to still have feeling in it,” Kinard said.

In these words, Kinard described the struggles of hiding or changing themselves entirely in hopes of getting love in return, only to lose themselves in the end.

With an easily embraced and in-your-face style of poetry, Kinard set the ideal stage for the rest of the Sundown Poetry Sessions.

With a copy of her debut poetry collection “Thresh and Hold” in hand, Marlanda Dekine’s session of Piccolo Spoleto’s Sundown Poetry shared a look at the world through the lenses of sunflower-yellow glasses.

Starting in a world of chartreuse blades of grass with “Origin,” Dekine’s poems drew not only from the lived experience of an entire life, but from those which came before as well.

“I couldn’t escape the stories,” Dekine said, remarking on how the collection was never intended be as seemingly auto-biographical as it became. In “My Black, Rural, Queer Childhood,” the auto-biographical nature of the collection was apparent in more than just themes as Dekine seemed to touch on feelings of dysphoria and presentation with the feeling of wanting a body that isn’t referred to as such.

Bound together in the collection by recurring images of nightingales and shades of “collard-colored greens” and purples, tinted photographs of the mind intermingled with those more material vignettes, stories that her family had shared were seemingly exposed over a very different kind of life in Dekine’s words.

With no small amount to draw upon, the ways in which Dekine spoke about religion showed a deeper connection to it than many other queer poets, something used to incredible effect in “When The Preacher Was God.” Remarking on both her grandma’s violet church hat and her grandfather’s booming voice in the church, the imagery used was almost close to Genesis, even as Dekine invoked the more contemporary Sega version.

With a captivating use of language that Dekine remarked was fed to them “like grits,” Piccolo Spoleto’s Sundown Poetry has brought in works that are not only well-told and unique, but manage to push the boundaries more than written words can do alone.

IF YOU PLAN TO GO: 6 p.m. at Washington Square Park, 80 Broad St. on June 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9. Free admission. Receptions follow at Buxton Books, 160 King Street.

Timia Cobb and C.M. McCambridge are arts journalism graduate students at Syracuse University.

Love Best of Charleston?

Help the Charleston City Paper keep Best of Charleston going every year with a donation. Or sign up to become a member of the Charleston City Paper club.