If memory serves me, Liberty Steel and the Steelworkers Union were united in their request that the channel connecting the Ports Authority docks and the Intercoastal Waterway be dredged so that the mill could economically ship its finished product to by barge to Wilmington and/or Charleston for transshipment to customers elsewhere. Transport by truck or rail was said to be too costly, rendering the mill unprofitable.
Assuming my memory is connect, then how does the math work when adding the cost of transshipment of billets from Peoria, llinois to Georgetown, South Carolina by rail so that they can be rolled into wire here ultimately reduce costs low enough so that selling steel wire rolled in Georgetown then becomes profitable to Liberty? There's a rolling mill in Peoria, isn't there? Why not just make the wire there and save the cost of shipping billets all the way to Georgetown? Either that, why not simply disassemble the rolling mill and pay the railroad the one time cost to move the rolling mill equipment from Georgetown to Peoria rather than paying, over and over again, freight charges to ship billets from Peoria to Georgetown? At some point, the cost of dismantling the rolling mill, its shipment and reassembly would add up to less than the continuous, on-going and ever mounting bills from the railroad for shipping tons and tons and tons and megatons of billets to Georgetown, plus the cost of shipping to customers around the country from the East Coast rather than from the middle of the country, will add up to lots more, cutting deeply into profits, won't it?
I hope that somebody at Liberty has done the math here. I'm certain that (a) Georgetown County would cooperate with Liberty to provide it with more than ample space at the county's industrial park to move the equipment from the rolling mill there is continued shipment of billets from Illinois to SC is, in fact, a good, long term business plan. Liberty could likely work a deal with the city and/or county to swap land with the county for the mill property in town, avoiding legal liability for the costs of demolition and environmental clean-up. A simple hold harmless agreement would ensure that. EPA's Superfund won't pursue those costs from local government -- it won't, that is, if Senators Graham and Scott have any clout in Washington.
The jobs at the rolling mill are important. If the partial reopening of the mill is something more than a ruse to delay the change in the zoning law, there's a way to work things out that is profitable and beneficial to Liberty, good for the Steelworkers and good for the City of Georgetown and Georgetown County. If reopening is just a ruse === well, keep in mind that melt shop will have been shut down for over a year by February 1, no matter how you do the counting, and, therefore, that part of the operation is dead, zoning wise. To repeat what I've written before, zoning regulates USE. Once a USE is abandoned, it's dead. Besides, in order to start up the furnaces and melt scrap metal here in Georgetown, Liberty needs to have an air quality permit from DHEC so it can dump toxic electric arc furnace dust on everyone who breathes in Georgetown. That big vacuum cleaning on the top of the melt shop is about as effective as a cheap vacuum cleaner from Wal-Mart. Ya'll remember what it was like when the "fugitive dust" that DHEC couldn't identify was like and how it mysteriously and miraculously disappeared when the mill shut down.
Georgetown needs to move forward. The Ports Authority needs to agree to annex its property into the city limits. The Governor needs to direct or urge or prod or whatever the Ports Authority to sign over its property here in Georgetown to the SC Department of Higher Education so that Clemson, USC, and Coastal Carolina can construct a combined campus focused on environmental studies there. All three universities already have a very strong presence in Georgetown County. Horry-Georgetown Tech could join the effort with a program focused on high paying jobs in environmental cleanup. Doing all that would put Georgetown squarely on everyone's radar and provide a place at the table for young people here so that those with "get up and go" don't have to "get up and go."
Hey, I'm an old man who ain't gonna be around much longer. So it ain't my future. It's yours. Yours and your children and grandchildren.
