Probate Lawyer in Carlisle, SC

Thousands of Columbia residents rely on the Broad River for their drinking water. But a concerning issue lies 60 miles upstream: The Carlisle Finishing Textile Plant

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Pollution leaking at a closed textile plant in Union County may threaten Columbia's drinking water.

Thousands of Columbia residents rely on the Broad River for their drinking water. But a concerning issue lies 60 miles upstream: the Carlisle Finishing Textile Plant.

The plant was shut down a couple of years ago, but Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler has concerns about what remains.

"What they left behind was several waste lagoons that are filled with PFAS pollution," he said.

PFAS, also known as "Forever Chemicals," are becoming increasingly common in our waterways, according to Stangler. The chemicals can be found in several products, including food packaging, firefighting foam, and textiles.

According to state data, the pollution on the site is 7,200 times higher in groundwater than the proposed federal standard of four parts per trillion.

"The concern is that stuff will make its way into the river and eventually make its way to our drinking water here in Columbia," said Stangler.

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) sent a letter to factory representatives calling the environmental problems at the plant an "urgent legal matter."

According to Assistant City Manager Clint Shealy, meeting the federal drinking water limit for PFAS could cost Columbia $150 million.

"We believe that it is by far the best economical approach to keep these compounds out of the environment," said Shealy.

Javar Juarez has lived along the Broad River for 15 years. He's hoping for swift action from officials.

"This river moves fast," said Juarez. "So not tomorrow, not next month. Today."

In April, consultants submitted a clean-up plan to DHEC.

"The reality is some of the damage has already been done here," said Stangler.

According to Shealy and Stangler, the water is still safe to drink through intense filtration.

Stangler said the company ran a treatment plant for wastewater generated at the textile factory. Still, wastewater systems are not required to filter out Forever Chemicals before releasing wastewater into a river.

Elevate Textiles said in a statement to News19:

"Carlisle Finishing has continued to operate the wastewater treatment facility for the town of Carlisle, SC after selling its manufacturing facility in 2020. Carlisle Finishing strives to meet all regulatory compliance requirements and operates the wastewater facility in accordance with all state and federal regulations and best industry practices. Carlisle Finishing is working with the site's current owner and DHEC to more fully understand and address any outstanding issues regarding wastewater processing at the site."

It's gone by many different names based off of the organizations who host them and the sponsors who attach their name to them, but most of the participants know it by one moniker.

The Carlisle Tour.

That's the informal name for Aiken's local junior golf tour, also known as the Aiken Chapter of the South Carolina Junior Golf Association's Hootie and the Blowfish Summer Chapter Series.

"It has gotten that name, and it stuck. I keep saying, no now, we're the Aiken chapter of the South Carolina Junior Golf Association," USC Aiken golf coach Michael Carlisle joked. "They've got Hootie and the Blowfish sponsoring it, but I guess it's easier to just say the Carlisle Tour. I guess there's worse things that could happen. ... Either that, or I'm just the one they're stuck with running the thing, so they better get my name right if they want to play."

Carlisle is the director of the tournament series, and he estimated his involvement has lasted for around 35 years. Needless to say, he knows better than anyone how being involved with this local tour can benefit a junior golfer.

"It's what we refer to as kind of a grassroots start in competitive golf," he explained. "Golf can be a very expensive game if you're traveling to tournaments and paying entry fees and staying in hotels and things like that. Here, you can stay at home and travel to these tournaments and get some good, competitive experience.

"Even the better players, when they don't have anything really good to travel to, they can stay here and play some local golf courses and play with their friends, guys they've played and grew up with all along. It is just a good grassroots start into competitive golf where you can get out there and find out if you like competitive golf, if you enjoy doing it, and maybe go on to bigger and better things from there."

This year's series has 13 summer dates and between five and eight around Christmas, and he credited the help of the area's golf courses for making that happen despite the challenges caused by the changing school calendar. Still, they were able to squeeze in the schedule and accommodate everybody.

Per the SCJGA's website, dues for the Aiken chapter are $150 for the 7-12 age group and $200 for the 13-18 group, and the contact number is (803) 641-3528.

The series has turned benefited players of all ability levels, and Carlisle has seen some good ones pass through - most notably pros like Kevin Kisner, Scott Brown and Charles Howell III.

"And then there's just been a pile of kids who have gone on to college and played collegiately that have played in that, also. It's turned out some good players, and it's turned out a lot of good people who are still in the game."

Some of those are second-generation players who are keeping it in the family while also reminding Carlisle just how long he's been running the tour.

"It always amazes me, I'll run across somebody who calls me up and says, 'Hey, I've got an 8-year-old and I want to get him involved in competitive golf. I played in those tournaments when I was in their age,'" he said. "I'm thinking, good Lord, I'm getting the kids of former players who are playing now, so that kind of dates me a little bit also."

“He is a master of creating mood in the orchestra....” declared the Los Angeles Times about Carlisle Floyd, a South Carolina born composer and SC Hall of Fame inductee. Floyd is the 2004 National Medal of Arts and the 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Opera Honoree for lifetime work recipient. Opera at USC presents Floyd’s Susannah – 65 years since its premiere it stands as one of the most beloved American operas.

About Susannah, SFGate wrote, “The composer’s first mature opera, and still his best known, is a small marvel of ferocity and compassion....” The opera, sung in English, takes place at Drayton Hall Theatre (1214 College St.) on Friday and Saturday, November 1 and 2 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, November 3 at 3:00 p.m.

The music, characterized by Appalachian folk melodies, also includes some Protestant hymns and traditional classical music. A prominent part of the opera is Susannah’s soaring aria in Act II, "The Trees on the Mountain," similar to Appalachian folk tunes but is Floyd's own composition.

Ellen Douglas Schlaefer, director of Opera studies at the University of South Carolina, gives both graduate and undergraduates the opportunity to learn from a comprehensive program covering every facet of opera production, both on stage and behind the scenes.

Alumnus Daniel Gainey returns to the university to perform the character Little Bat and noted, “South Carolina has given generously of its talents to the operatic world. Carlisle Floyd and Ellen Schlaefer are two such gifts. It is an honor for me to return to SC professionally to help bring Mr. Floyd's music to life in Schlaefer's production. I hope this work can inspire the next generation of SC operatic talent."

The libretto, also written by the composer, has as its basis the apocryphal story of Susanna and the Elders, updated to the recent past and relocated to a fictional rural community. The drama centers on the unjust ostracizing and abuse of Susannah by her community and the powerful leaders who are simultaneously repulsed and captivated by her beauty.

Second year master’s student in Opera Theatre Melissa Starkweather, one of two students performing as Susannah says, “The opera explores themes of hypocrisy, fear and the malleability of crowds, all of which are extremely relevant to our society today. It is an exciting thing to be a part of a show which carries such a powerful message. Both the story and the music are absolutely gripping and will leave audiences with a new perspective on the power of fear.”

Senior choral music education and honors student Catherine Howland also plays Susannah. “Discovering the slow, harrowing transformation and internal struggle that Susannah experiences has been a challenge, but it has also been captivating. I have loved the opportunity to grow as a performer through this wonderful opera. Susannah warns us of the power of a community to do evil, but encourages us to consider how we can instead do good in our own community.”

Susannah has affected T.J. Turner (MM voice performance) who plays Sam, Susannah’s brother. He reflects, “People are ostracized and isolated every day, both for things they have done and things they haven’t. This show emphasizes the destruction and emotional turmoil it can cause for not only those who are accused, but also those who are doing the accusing, despite the reason. I think we can all identify with Susannah, but it’s important to take a step back and learn from what the other characters are doing to her (and her brother, Sam) throughout this masterpiece.”

Despite its serious issues, Susannah was received well and hailed as an instant classic at its world premiere in Tallahassee and later at the New York City Opera in 1956. The appeal of the opera has endured for more than six decades, a rare feat in operas composed in the 20th century. It attests to the composer’s uncommon ability to wed tuneful music with astute dramatic insights to create an opera of complex characters, emotional immediacy and thrilling narrative pace.

Adults: $25; seniors/UofSC faculty & staff/military: $20; students with ID: $10. Purchase tickets online here or at the door. Please note that online and phone sales end at 3 p.m. on opening day. After that you may purchase at the door one hour before show.

Legendary Coach John Carlisle from Eastside High School in Taylors, South Carolina announced his retirement earlier today after 33 seasons as the head coach for the Eagles.

When Coach Carlisle took over the Eagles in 1974, the Taylors school had only been open 4 years and was just a dot on the map in the middle of nowhere in eastern Greenville County. Within 4 seasons, Carlisle had accomplished the impossible winning the 1977 4A state championship with wins over Dorman, Spartanburg and Spring Valley. The 77 Eagles finished 12-2 and were the only state champions from 1968 when the 4 Class System started to 1981 that was not one of the 5 largest schools in the state.

Even in recent years, the Eagles have put a quality product on the field. The 2003 season saw Eastside finish the regular season with a 9-1 record and advance to the state 3A quarterfinals against Union.

Coach Carlisle compiled a 159-168 record in his 34 season despite laboring under the hardships of the Greenville County School System. With smaller stipends for coaches, inadequate faculties and a shrinking enrollment, Coach Carlisle continually prepared his teams making the playoffs 14 years during a 16 period in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Coach Carlisle also prepared his players for the next stage of life as many of his players went on to play college football. The 2003 team quarterfinal team featured 5 players who would go on to play in the college ranks. More importantly however Coach Carlisle prepared his players for life. His past players include young men who are now lawyers, doctors, teachers, clergy and community leaders all over the state. It is very hard to go anywhere in Greenville County without meeting one of Coach Carlisle’s former players.

His contribution to Eastside over the years has been immeasurable. Without Coach Carlisle the school would have never developed into the powerhouse athletically the school has become. Every sport at Eastside has enjoyed tremendous success over the years under his leadership. The Eagles sports have won 20 state titles, an additional 20 upper state titles and 93 region titles under Carlisle.

As Eastside High School worked to first develop their facilities, the school ran into continual problems. The school district did not provide funding for a football stadium and the newly formed Eagle Booster Club could not secure a loan for a stadium. Coach Carlisle put a second mortgage on his own home to secure the loan and signed for it himself to build the stadium. The $250,000 loan financed the Eagles’ stadium with Coach Carlisle putting his own house up for collateral. Without Coach Carlisle’s dedication to his school, the Eagles would have waited years if not decades for their own stadium. How many coaches would put up their own home to help their school in today’s world?

Coach Carlisle’s generosity did not stop at Eastside. As the Taylors area grew, the brand new YMCA in Taylors developed new facilities for the community. One of the top contributors to the YMCA was Coach Carlisle and his wife who paid for the installation of soccer and football fields at the new complex.

Throughout his career Coach Carlisle was always a father figure to his players even after they graduated. A few years back one of his ex players lost his mother. Rather than call the young man who was away at college, Coach Carlisle drove all night to pick him up at school and deliver the news in person. Coach did not want him to be alone when he heard the news but rather have someone there to support him. Coach Carlisle’s tireless dedication off the field is where his true mark as an educator will be missed the most.

As part of the annual Eastside – Wade Hampton rivalry week the 2 schools raise funds for worthy causes in Greenville County. Coach Carlisle was instrumental in starting this life changing event and has instilled the value of charity into thousands of Eastside students. In 2004 Eastside students raised over $ 62,200 for the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. Last fall the school donated $84,120.05 to Cystinosis Research. His contribution in starting this tradition will live on past his tenure at Eastside.

Eastside will immediately look for the first new head football coach since 1973 and hopes to have the position filled by spring practice. Coach Carlisle will finish the school year as Athletic Director before offically retiring on June 30th.

I have always enjoying speaking with Coach Carlisle. His gracsious nature on the field and off made him someone I admired greatly. I wish Coach well in much deserved retirement.

When the small plane he was riding in flew over a closed textile factory several months ago, Bill Stangler saw two slime-covered waste lagoons on the edge of the Broad River north of Columbia.

The proximity of the factory’s lagoons to the river worried him. Stangler, the riverkeeper for the Broad, knew the basins were in an area where high levels of hazardous chemicals had been found in groundwater, sewer sludge and wastewater.

He also knew the river and one of the state’s largest drinking water plants – 65 miles south in Columbia – have shown the same types of chemicals at levels above a proposed federal safe drinking water limit. The site of the lagoons reinforced his concerns that leaks from the plant were perilously close to the river and threatening Columbia’s canal drinking water.

The questions now are whether chemicals from Carlisle Finishing caused the contamination downriver and what can be done to reduce the threat of the toxic pollutants, known as per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in Columbia.

“That site is a potential source of PFAS for the Broad River and certainly PFAS that could be found downstream in Columbia’s drinking water,’’ Stangler said. “This is a potential ticking time bomb of pollution that sits less than 100 feet from the Broad River.’’

At Carlisle Finishing, forever chemical pollution is up to 7,200 times higher in groundwater than the proposed federal standard of four parts per trillion, state data show. Tests show sludge from waste basins has forever chemical levels up to 80 times higher than the proposed federal limit.

Levels recorded in the river and Columbia’s drinking water plant are substantially lower, but they still exceed the proposed limit for the two most common types of PFAS.

Clint Shealy, Columbia’s assistant city manager over utilities, said he wants to know whether the city or state can stop future threats and any existing leaks that are contaminating the river at the Carlisle plant.

Not only does Columbia want to limit forever chemicals in drinking water for safety reasons, but stopping them could save the city hundreds of millions of dollars. Columbia faces the prospect of spending more than $150 million for a filtering system to comply with the federal drinking water limit for PFAS if it can’t keep the pollutants out of its water, Shealy has said.

Because PFAS levels aren’t substantially above the proposed limit at the canal plant — they are less than 10 parts per trillion — any reduction in the chemicals in the Broad River could help bring the city into compliance without costly upgrades to its water system, Shealy said.

“The first logical step is to stop putting this stuff in the environment,’’ Shealy said. “Then, let’s see if our PFAS levels start decreasing. It might bring you below that limit and save customers a whole lot of money.’’

PFAS, a class of thousands of compounds, is commonly called forever chemicals because the materials do not break down easily in the environment. Used since the 1940s, the chemicals were vital ingredients in waterproof clothing, stain resistant carpet and firefighting foam.

But they have increasingly been found to be toxic. Exposure has been linked to kidney, testicular and breast cancer, ulcerative colitis and thyroid problems. Forever chemicals also can weaken a person’s immune system and cause developmental delays in children. PFAS manufacturers have been accused of hiding the dangers for decades.

In this case, it’s possible that even if forever chemical pollution can be reduced and cleaned up at Carlisle Finishing, the damage may have been done years ago.

Stangler said it would not be surprising if Carlisle Finishing released the chemicals for years, long before the public knew about the dangers. The company ran a treatment plant for wastewater it generated at the textile factory, but wastewater systems are not required to filter out forever chemicals before releasing wastewater into a river. Only certain pollutants are required to be treated.

For now, state regulators say they are trying to learn more about the problem at Carlisle. The 68-year-old textile plant, which closed about three years ago, is under scrutiny by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control for the pollution found on the sprawling site between Columbia and Spartanburg.

In April, DHEC sent factory representatives a letter calling the environmental problems at Carlisle Finishing “an urgent legal matter.’’ The letter said Elevate Textiles, a one-time owner, is potentially liable to clean up the mess at the Carlisle plant. In addition to forever chemicals in groundwater, DHEC also has found the presence of volatile organic compounds, the agency said. These types of materials include solvents and chlorination byproducts.

“Because the site poses a hazard to human health and the environment, the department recommends that you give this matter your immediate attention,’’ the April letter from DHEC’s Gary Stewart to Elevate Textiles said.

Consultants have submitted a cleanup plan that appears promising, but DHEC needs to push for a resolution as soon as possible to stop the threat, said Stangler and Carl Brzorad, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The plan says filter systems will be installed to remove PFAS from wastewater before it is released to the Broad River.

Sludge from waste basins also will be disposed of in a lined landfill on the property, according to the April 2023 plan. Sludge from Carlisle Finishing contained forever chemicals, although DHEC did not provide the levels.

In the past, the Carlisle plant distributed sludge to area farmers for use as fertilizer. All told, DHEC had given approval to spread the plant’s waste on more than 80 farm fields that included parts of small communities like Buffalo, Whitmire and Carlisle, state records show.

Tests last year found some wells near sludge fields contained levels of PFAS that would exceed the proposed federal drinking water standard, agency records show. One of those wells showed levels of one type of PFAS was 11 times higher than the proposed limit. DHEC recorded the high level in 2022, before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommended the four parts per trillion standard this past spring. All told, the well registered six different types of PFAS.

DHEC has identified sewer sludge as a major potential source of PFAS pollution in rivers and groundwater. Statewide, the agency has approved about 3,500 farm fields as sites for sewer sludge, including areas of eastern South Carolina where wells are polluted with forever chemicals, The State and McClatchy reported in a recent investigative series.

In a brief email to The State, an Elevate Textiles official said the company is working to address “any outstanding issues regarding wastewater processing at the site.’’

The email said the company tries to follow environmental rules and “to employ best industry practices.’’ The official also noted that Elevate Textiles no longer owns the Carlisle Finishing property.

Union County property records show the land, which is more than 700 acres, is owned by two companies with a Monroe, N.C. address: Carlisle WW Holdings LLC and Carlisle Partners LLC. Efforts to reach a representative of the companies were not immediately successful.

The Carlisle Finishing factory was once part of Cone Mills, a national denim and textile manufacturer in North Carolina. The company launched operations in 1955 and became a pillar of the community in tiny Union County. At one point, it had more than 1,100 workers and was the largest employer in the county.

Through the years, the company’s executives won awards from the local chamber of commerce, and Carlisle Finishing was even at one point included on a tour for people interested in the history of Union County.

The plant was sold after Cone Mills declared bankruptcy in 2003, making room for Elevate Textiles to acquire the company. The Carlisle site, while popular among local citizens, isn’t without blemishes. DHEC has made at least eight enforcement cases against Carlisle since 2006 for violations of environmental laws, records show.

McClatchy data journalist Susan Merriam contributed to this story.

This story was originally published July 28, 2023, 10:29 AM.

The State

803-771-8537

Sammy Fretwell has covered the environment beat for The State since 1995. He writes about an array of issues, including wildlife, climate change, energy, state environmental policy, nuclear waste and coastal development. He has won numerous awards, including Journalist of the Year by the S.C. Press Association in 2017. Fretwell is a University of South Carolina graduate who grew up in Anderson County. Reach him at 803 771 8537.