Home Care In Jenkinsville, SC

JENKINSVILLE, SC (WIS) - You may not think twice about water, but it has become a bit of a controversial issue in part of Fairfield County.

A packed meeting last week in Jenkinsville was supposed to be a time to elect a board of trustees for the water company the area uses. The man running it, the company's president, is also the town's mayor. Customers are worried there is a conflict of interest.

New York transplant Jeff Schaffer pays about $50 a month for his Fairfield County water bill. "Lake Monticello is a wonderful area, great community we have," said Schaffer

It's not the bill that Schaffer says bothers him, it's what's happening down the pipe at the Jenkinsville Water Company. Last week, he joined a room full of water customers at a packed meeting all wanting in on who would be on the board of trustees for the area's only water company.

"I wish I could be the judge and jury on whether it's a legal thing or an ethical thing," said Schaffer. "I think it's a confused thing. All I want is some answers."

That may be because of what his neighbor, Joe Pilon, tells him. Pilon is on the board of trustees, and has questions about last week's election of new board members. "Several people passing hats so we don't know if we have exactly who filled out ballots or not," said Pilon. "It got so chaotic and board members walked out."

He says the head of the company, Gregory Guinyard, passed his own hat to collect the votes for board member nominees, including himself. "I was picking ballots up," he said.

Guinyard says what he was doing was perfectly acceptable. He even had an attorney oversee the process. "He was there to make sure election was done in the proper way," said Guinyard. "He had Robert's Rules [of Order] in hand, by-laws in hand to make sure everything was conducted properly."

Guinyard is a man of several hats. He is also Jenkinsville's mayor. "The two positions are not, they don't intertwine at no point, couldn't be a conflict of interest," said Guinyard. "They're two separate entities total."

Pilon says he plans to resign from the board. Guinyard says he's running a clean business and will answer questions.

Copyright 2011 WIS. All rights reserved.Copyright 2011 WIS. All rights reserved.

JENKINSVILLE, S.C. (WIS) —

Another earthquake has been reported in a South Carolina town, making this the seventh one to be reported there in a week.

The South Carolina Emergency Operations Center called the earthquakes a swarm in a release on Monday.

Officials with the United States Geological Survey confirmed that a magnitude 2 earthquake occurred in Jenkinsville on Monday morning around 11 a.m.

The first earthquake to be reported in the town was Monday, Oct. 25, around 12:40 p.m. That earthquake was measured at a 2.2 magnitude.

Three of the seven occurred on Oct. 28, (1.8, 1.7 and 2.1, respectively) according to USGS officials.

The fifth earthquake to be reported by officials was a 2.1 magnitude earthquake on Oct. 29 at 6:21 p.m.

A sixth earthquake measuring in at 2.2 magnitude, hit Jenkinsville at 4:23 a.m. on Halloween. (See video above.)

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You can report and see reports of people feeling the earthquake by clicking here.

Seismologists believe these low-magnitude quakes, while unusual, are normal background activity and are not indicators of larger earthquakes to come.

“Earthquake swarms are not an uncommon occurrence in the vicinity of the Monticello Reservoir – a much larger swarm of microearthquakes occurred as the reservoir was first filled starting in December 1977,” Dr. Steven C. Jaume', with the College of Charleston’s Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences Department said. “Thousands of earthquakes, none larger than magnitude 2.9, occurred in the years that followed. Earthquake activity declined in the late 1980’s through the mid-1990’s, but then picked up again in late 1996. Between December 1996 and mid-1999 several more earthquake swarms occurred, with nearly 1,000 earthquakes occurring at that time, with the largest being a magnitude 2.5.”

More earthquakes are possible for the next several months or even years in the area near the Monticello Reservoir, according to Jaume’, and how frequently they occur cannot be predicted.

Twenty earthquakes have been recorded throughout South Carolina since January 2021, SCEMD said. The Palmetto State normally experiences an average of 10-20 earthquakes each year. The South Carolina Emergency Management Division encourages all residents to stay informed about earthquake activity in the state and to have a family emergency plan in the event of a major earthquake.

“We know our state was at the center of major earthquakes in the past. We all need to be prepared for the possibility of a large-scale earthquake, however unlikely the possibility may be,” SCEMD Director Kim Stenson said.

The epicenter of the largest earthquake ever recorded along the eastern United States seaboard was just outside of Charleston on Aug. 31, 1886. The 7.3 magnitude quake devastated the region and was felt from Chicago to Cuba. According to a study commissioned by SCEMD, an earthquake of similar magnitude occurring today would result in tremendous loss of life, severe property damage and extreme economic loss. Results of the study are detailed in the South Carolina Earthquake Guide.

Residents can keep track of all earthquakes in South Carolina and even get notified when one occurs using the earthquake map tools located within the SC Emergency Manager mobile app, available in the App Store and on Google Play.

Additional earthquake resources are available through The Great Southeast Shakeout and through the South Carolina Earthquake Education and Preparedness program.

The State

State regulators are pressing a small utility with a history of troubles to explain why elevated levels of radioactivity showed up in the drinking water the company piped to customers last year in Fairfield County.

The Jenkinsville Water Co. violated state drinking water standards for radioactivity from July through December of last year, even though the company had installed a treatment system to filter out the contamination.

Radioactivity levels have dropped to within safe standards in recent months, but not by much — and state regulators say they are concerned about the 2,500 people who rely on Jenkinsville Water.

“You are responsible for providing safe potable water to your customers,’’ according to a July 23 letter to Jenkinsville from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. Water quality “data indicates a necessity for you to initiate an investigation and some form of corrective actions to resolve the violations.’’

The letter gave Jenkinsville a month to tell the public about the violations. In the meantime, DHEC is considering making an enforcement case against Jenkinsville Water that could result in fines or other sanctions. The violations have been referred to DHEC’s enforcement staff, agency spokeswoman Laura Renwick said in an email.

Jenkinsville, a community of working class neighborhoods and higher-end lake houses north of Columbia, has had problems with radioactivity in the water before. Since 2010, the water company has been sanctioned by DHEC four separate times for failing to comply with state drinking water standards, including two for radioactivity.

The company began treating the water at one problematic well after finding radioactivity exceeded safe drinking water standards in 2013 and 2014. Some of the problems cleared up after the treatment process began, but radioactivity levels spiked last year in the public supply well on Clowney Road, DHEC records show.

The Jenkinsville Water Co. operates in a part of South Carolina served by the V.C. Summer nuclear plant, but its problems are not known to be related to the power plant. Like some other small water systems, Jenkinsville is in an area where radioactivity occurs naturally in groundwater.

Despite that, water systems must take steps to lower the naturally occurring radiation in drinking water they supply to customers to make sure people’s health is protected. Over time, drinking water with elevated levels of radioactive pollutants can increase a person’s chances of bone cancer and kidney damage.

In this case, Jenkinsville was cited for having gross alpha levels above safe drinking water standards. These readings are a measure of radioactivity in the water from contaminants such as radium or uranium.

DHEC says it is not common for water systems to have violations for high gross alpha readings. Agency records show that from 2012 to 2018, the agency made more than 250 enforcement cases for drinking water violations statewide, but only about a dozen were for radioactive pollution in water.

Jenkinsville Water Co. manager Greg Ginyard said the water is safe to drink. He maintained that the treatment system is functioning since radioactivity has met the safe drinking water standard this year. DHEC said other wells the company relies on comply with the radiation standard.

Ginyard questioned whether elevated levels of gross alpha radiation last year resulted from DHEC errors since that agency tests the water. He is scheduled to meet with DHEC Aug. 7.

“It could have been a mistake,’’ Ginyard said. “We didn’t know anything about it until Thursday, when we got the letter from DHEC.’’

The Jenkinsville Water Co. is one of many small utilities across South Carolina that struggle to comply with drinking water requirements. Unlike big systems, scores of smaller systems lack the money or the expertise to operate in compliance with state and federal safe drinking water laws, The State reported in its “Tainted Water’’ series this past March. Small water systems individually serve only small pockets of the state’s population, but collectively provide water to about 800,000 people.

Through the years, the Jenkinsville Water Co. has had a tense relationship with some customers who have said the system needs substantial improvement.

Fairfield County Councilwoman Bertha Goins, a customer of the system, complained this year of substandard service and muddy water running from her tap. Ginyard has hotly denied that, and this year, had the company’s attorney threaten to sue Goins if she did not stop complaining or provide proof of her complaint.

The Jenkinsville Water System was built in 1975 with money provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to an engineering study by HPG Consulting Engineers Inc. Ginyard says the system is not a public body, despite a state Attorney General’s opinion that it is.

Records show that the utility averaged gross alpha radiation levels of 18 pico curies per liter for the period from January 2018 through June of this year. The safe drinking water limit is 15. The highest levels found were 34 during the testing period last fall, according to the letter from DHEC to Ginyard. The levels dropped to below 13 for the three-month testing period that ended in June, records show.

Matt Mattoon, a Lake Monticello property owner who gets water from the Jenkinsville System, said he’s concerned. Mattoon said the local utility has not done enough to safeguard water it pipes to customers. He has been tracking the issue of radiation in the water since 2013.

““It should be scary for all of us if we’ve been having water problems since 2013 -- and now it’s 2019 and we’re still having problems with the same well,’’ Mattoon said. “Long-term exposure to this water is dangerous.’’

A 2014 report prepared by the Jenkinsville Water Co. says the radioactivity treatment system would be installed while the company examined whether to build a small drinking water plant on the Broad River.

At the time, DHEC said the treatment system was a short term solution until the surface water plant was built. But the surface water treatment system, targeted for operation in 2017, was never constructed. Ginyard said Monday the surface water plant turned out not to be a viable alternative.

“Developing a new water source, adding additional treatment methods or implementing different treatment methods could resolve the problem’’ of elevated gross alpha radiation levels, DHEC’s Renwick said in her email to The State.

JENKINSVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Federal officials have issued a warning about a substantial safety violation at a South Carolina nuclear plant after cracks were discovered again in a backup emergency fuel line.

Small cracks have been found a half-dozen times in the past 20 years in pipes that carry fuel to emergency generators that provide cooling water for a reactor if electricity fails at the V.C. Summer plant near Columbia, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The agency issued what it calls a preliminary “yellow” warning to plant owner Dominion Energy last week.

It is the second most serious category and only seven similar warnings have been issued across the country since 2009, nuclear power expert David Lochbaum told The State newspaper after reviewing records from federal regulators.

A crack first appeared on a diesel fuel pipe in 2003, and similar pipes have had other cracks since then.

During a 24-hour test of the system in November, a small diesel fuel leak grew larger, according to NRC records.

The agency issued the preliminary yellow warning because of the repeated problems.

The commission’s ruling is not final and Dominion will have a chance to explain what happened, utility spokesperson Darryl Huger wrote in an email

Dominion has already started to put in place a plan to improve the reliability of the backup system and like all nuclear reactors there are multiple backup systems in case any component fails, Huger said.

“With a commitment to continued safe operations, we are inspecting and maintaining our generator and related components. We will continue to keep the NRC updated on our future strategy to further enhance our diesel generators,” Huger wrote.

Virginia-based Dominion hasn’t been the only owner of the plant. SCANA built and started the plant in 1984. The South Carolina company had plans to build two more reactors, but billions of dollars of cost overruns forced it to abandon the project in 2017 and sell to Dominion.

Dominion has recently requested to renew the license for the nuclear plant for an additional 40 years.

Longtime nuclear safety advocate Tom Clements told the newspaper the pipe problems should mean a lot more scrutiny by regulators.

“This incident serves as a wake-up call to fully analyze all such systems prior to a license-renewal determination,’’ Clements said in an email.

As two South Carolina utilities cease construction of a pair of nuclear plants this month, over 100 manufacturing workers are being furloughed from their jobs at contractor Westinghouse Electric in Rock Hill.

The furloughs at the Westinghouse Electric office on Mt. Gallant Road are the result of South Carolina Electric and Gas and its partner Santee Cooper’s decision to abandon construction of a nuclear plant in Jenkinsville, S.C., near Columbia, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed to the state.

After Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March, the utilities building the South Carolina plant had originally hoped to still complete the $14 billion project in Jenkinsville. But they reversed course this month, scrapping the project in mid-construction. The plant was about $3 billion over budget and years behind schedule, Columbia’s State newspaper reported.

According to the WARN notice, 113 local workers are affected, most of whom work in field services. Another 561 Westinghouse workers will lose work temporarily at the V.C. Summer power plant in Jenkinsville, which is about an hour and 45 minutes southwest of Charlotte.

“This furlough is not a layoff – it is a company-initiated unpaid short-term leave of absence; not a loss of employment,” a Westinghouse spokeswoman said. “This was done so that employees could retain their benefits and employment status during the temporary furlough period.”

She added that the affected employees will be “separated from the company” if they receive no other assignment from the company before Aug. 31.

The Japanese company Toshiba Corp. bought Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse in 2006 as part of an effort to prioritize nuclear power, which is cleaner than generating electricity with coal or natural gas. But building nuclear reactors is prohibitively expensive, and Westinghouse has saddled Toshiba with mounting losses.

It is unclear whether the decision to stop construction of the South Carolina facilities affects Westinghouse operations in Charlotte.

A Westinghouse spokeswoman could not be reached for comment. Rick Rothacker and Bruce Henderson contributed.

This story was originally published August 21, 2017, 1:09 PM.