Dangerous Attitudes: DHEC & Jobs at Any Cost

This past week, a local news channel hosted another series of gubernatorial debates, first with the Republican and then with the Democratic candidates.  During the Republican debate, one of the statements that stuck out in my mind was an answer given by candidate Bauer when he was asked how he would entice new businesses to come to South Carolina.  Part of his answer included the comment "get DHEC out of the way."

Excuse me, but in my recent experiences, DHEC is so far out of the way as to be almost invisible.  As I attend hearing after hearing where DHEC staff issues permit after permit that allows the release carcinogenic, toxic materials into our water, air and soil, I can't help but wonder how this attitude can prevail or be popular.  So it’s come down to a "we don't care how much you pollute, so long as you bring in a few jobs" kind of policy?  Is that where we're headed?  It certainly seems that way.  This attitude is reinforced in the cry up in Chester, where some portion of the local citizenry sees the few jobs created by a proposed garbage incinerator as the only factor worth considering.  No matter that deadly Dioxin is created and unleashed on the nearby residents, that toxic lead, mercury and other heavy metals are deposited into the air and water . . . so what if there's a bit of toxic ash left over . . . we'll find some place to dump it.  We just want the jobs.

This seems to be a prevailing, primarily Republican, attitude: jobs at any cost, whether that cost is paid by the people or the environment.  Of course, this is a predictable outcome for an economy in crisis, and it may well, indeed, get much worse.  In fact, South Carolina may come to look more and more like a third-world country, where all kinds of dirty industries are welcomed just to provide some kind of jobs to the local population, and increase some tax base revenue, although one of the enticement to new businesses would almost certainly be lower taxes paid by those businesses.

The sad fact is that we could be creating thousands of new jobs with clean, green industries, starting with massive retrofitting of homes and pursuing the growing and production of our own biofuels so that we can move away from our oil dependency.  We could be promoting the production and staging of offshore wind farms, investing in solar energy creation and benefiting from all the jobs that could be created from installing solar hot water in a state with 300+ sunny days.  And there are so many more projects than I can list here.

Hopefully, a couple of the candidates do recognize that potential, but, in a state where local state Senators still believe we can't do solar because we have high humidity, it’s obvious there is a lot of educating to be done—Plus, since we don't have a Renewable Energy Portfolio, there is little incentive for green energy businesses to locate here, because there is no state mandate for the use of their products.

It’s a vicious cycle we have allowed ourselves to be trapped in, and it will take a major paradigm shift to get out of it . . . Sadly, it often takes a crisis to create change.