CLEMSON — U.S. District Court Judge G. Ross Anderson Jr. knows what he thinks should be done with South Carolina’s $9 million in settlement money in the case of PCB pollution along Twelve Mile Creek. But it isn’t up to him.

Anderson submitted a recommendation this week to the Department of Natural Resources’ trustees in charge of that money, suggesting it allocate $3 million to the removal of a third dam further upstream on Twelve Mile.

“While he doesn’t have the authority to order the removal, he has strongly recommended that the trustees fund all or at least a portion of the removal of the third dam,” said Larry Dyck, retired Clemson University professor who was the key river expert in the proceedings in Anderson’s courtroom throughout the ongoing Twelve Mile saga.

Twelve Mile Creek, which begins in northern Pickens County and runs through Clemson and into Lake Hartwell, was contaminated from 1955 to 1977 by hundreds of thousands of pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which were dumped there by the Sangamo-Weston capacitor manufacturing site, now owned by Schlumberger Technology Corp.

A 2006 consent decree required Schlumberger to remove the contaminated sediment from the riverbed and take down two of the three dams on the river to allow fresh sediment to naturally cap the polluted bottom of Hartwell, where an advisory against eating fish in those waters has been in place for years. While Schlumberger has gotten to work on tearing down the two dams, the removal of the third dam is imperative in true river restoration, Dyck believes.

“I’m hopeful that they’ll (DNR Trustees) recognize that the third dam project should be the top priority,” Dyck said. “The project of removing the two dams opened up two miles of river corridor. Take out the third dam, and you open up 100 miles.”

But Paul League, attorney for DNR, said earlier this month that the trustees, not yet presented with any proposal to remove the third dam, came to the conclusion through research that the dam’s removal was not necessary.

“Removal of the Easley-Central dam is not necessary to implement remediation of PCB contamination as directed by the Environmental Protection Agency, or to compensate for losses in recreational fishing services,” League said.

But Dyck, who is a member of the Lake Hartwell Association, has developed a proposal estimated at roughly $5 million that would take the dam, owned by the Easley-Central Water District, tear it down and then replace it with an out-of-stream reservoir, including associated piping and pump systems.

“What was really said then (in the last hearing) is that they’d not received a proposal, and for that reason they couldn’t see fit to take that project on by themselves,” Dyck said. “We’d not submitted a proposal in advance because there was a hearing to determine the fate of all of this.”

The list of money allocations by the DNR was released just days before the hearing in which Dyck presented a proposal of the third dam’s removal, which some say would stop the unnatural release of bulk sediment, slowing the natural sedimentary flow that would cover the PCB tainted bottom of Lake Hartwell.

Thus far, much of the designated money goes toward rehabilitation of fish habitats, as well as a $3 million Water Education and Environmental Center, which Anderson also recommended.

“The third dam project is the only project that is specifically mentioned in the original consent decree,” Dyck said. “What it says in that decree is that the third dam project will be considered for the use of the restoration fund.”

There has been some discussion by DNR regarding possible use of some of the settlement money for the third dam project, but Dyck said disclosing the nature of those talks would be “premature.”

Another public hearing on the matter has been tentatively set for Nov. 17.

andrew@dailyjm.com | (864) 973-6684