MB Council to get a public meeting report from DHEC on AVX pollution

By Steve Porter
The Herald

Myrtle Beach—Myrtle Beach City attorney Tom Ellenburg reported to the Myrtle Beach City Council at its regular meeting on Tuesday that the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control would likely appear before the council, in public session, at its next meeting on Jan. 22.

The purpose would be to give the council a full report on the cleaning solution that spilled into the area surrounding the AVX plant, causing concerns about longterm health effects and financial damage to owners of surrounding properties.

A recent public hearing on the problem was held by DHEC for local property owners and residents and the severity of the problem at the time was significantly downgraded, but concerns remain and Ellenburg said he asked a DHEC official at that meeting to consider making a report to city council. That is now apparently in the works.

“Hopefully it will provide more finality than we have heard to date,” said Ellenburg.

He also reported that he and Tom Leath, the city manager, other city officials, and AVX officials and legal counsel had also been meeting and having what he called “frank discussions about the past and future,” of the problem.He said the next phase of the issue would be for remediation options to be discussed, but that those options cannot be determined until the “boundaries of the pollution plume” can be determined by continuing measurements of the area around the plant.

Continued . . .