An ad hoc committee of the South Carolina legislature was scheduled to discuss on Aug. 24 which of the counties surrounding the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., will share in a $600 million federal plutonium settlement.
“I want to make sure our friends from Aiken understand that Aiken County is not the only consideration for those funds,” state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D-66) said during a Tuesday meeting of the SRS & ARPA Appropriations Ad Hoc Committee. “I wanted to make sure that they didn’t leave this meeting with the impression that because SRS is in Aiken County, y’all getting all the money.”
ARPA refers to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.9-trillion federal COVID-19 bailout law. That COVID relief package is separate from the 2020 settlement that saw $600 million transferred to South Carolina from the federal judgement fund as part of an agreement that binds the Department of Energy to remove 9.5 metric tons of plutonium from the Savannah River Site by 2037. South Carolina sued DOE because the agency missed a legal deadline to begin removing plutonium from the state by 2016.
Allendale, Bamberg and Barnwell counties could be considered for a share of the settlement dollars, said Cobb-Hunter, whose district includes part of Orangeburg County west of Aiken in south-central South Carolina. Among other things, the money could address “our educational disparities,” Cobb-Hunter said.
Rep. William Clyburn (D-82), whose district includes Aiken, said that “Aiken and the surrounding counties ought to be really given very strong concerns” when the committee apportions the settlement money.
The SRS & ARPA Appropriations Ad Hoc Committee was scheduled to reconvene on Aug. 24 at 1 p.m. Eastern time, state Rep. Bruce Bannister (R-24), the committee chair, said at the close of Tuesday’s meeting.
“This is going to be a fairly in-depth process,” Bannister said Tuesday, forecasting “several more meetings after today.”
