Conway power plant site will make a fine recreation area
For travelers on U.S. 501 approaching Conway from Myrtle Beach, something seems different – the iconic, towering smokestacks are gone. The stacks collapsed three weeks ago in heaps of broken concrete and bricks. The demolition on a Sunday morning drew a crowd of people who identified in one way or another with the Grainger Generating Station of Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility.
For untold numbers of visitors driving to Myrtle Beach on U.S. 501, the Grainger site and Lake Busbee, on either side of the busy highway, signaled being close to a vacation destination – nearing the end of a long drive to the ocean.
Grainger produced electricity by burning coal and making steam to turn turbines and huge generators. Burning coal has a big environmental downside for the planet, although mining coal and transporting it is definitely an economic upside for tens of thousands of miners and railroad workers. Trains brought coal to Grainger, and with rail service in Horry County being restored, trains could carry away the ash produced by burning coal.
Coal-fired generating plants produce tons of ash, typically stored in ponds. Santee Cooper removed 164,145 tons of ash in 2014. The utility planned to cap the Grainger ash ponds, but agreed to empty them after the Southern Environmental Law Center sued. If R.J. Corman trains are used, railroad officials say, the time remaining to empty the ash ponds could be reduced from four years to two. Corman is the Kentucky-based company restoring the county’s rail service. The Grainger ash ponds are on a separate site of over 80 acres. Ash from Grainger is sold to Holcim US and recycled in Holly Hill in concrete products. The Grainger site is Santee Cooper’s first experience in removing from ponds for recycling.
As cleaning up the 12-acre site continues, the utility is talking about future use of the property with the city of Conway, Horry County and the Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp. The property is in the county. When the cleanup is done, likely this summer, the site will be “ready for new business, new industry,” according to a spokeswoman (The Sun News Feb. 10). Conway City Council member Tom Anderson says of the power plant site: “Let’s just leave it alone. We don’t want an industrial site with trucks and equipment coming out of there. ... I would love to see it as just somewhat of an extension of downtown Conway.”
Anderson no doubt speaks for many Conway residents. And regarding the 300-acre Lake Busbee, Anderson says, “Nobody on City Council wants Lake Busbee to go away. I feel confident in that.” Santee Cooper has already said the utility “will deed the lake to any entity qualified to manage it.” The shallow lake holds water required for cooling in the former generating plant. Water for the lake is pulled from the neighboring Waccamaw River, and pumping must continue or Lake Busbee will become a swampy eyesore.
The city, its residents and Santee Cooper are in agreement in not wanting a drained lake. The utility addresses that in citing a new owner of the lake must be qualified to manage it. The trail around Lake Busbee is popular with Conway area joggers and walkers.
Clearly, Lake Busbee and the 12-acre power plant site would make a fine recreation space for the Conway area. We hope the details can be worked out to make that happen.
Grainger ash sold to Holcim US, recycled in Holly Hill
On a rainy Sunday morning (Feb. 7), explosives brought down the 300-foot-tall smokestacks of the former Grainger Generating Station in Conway. The demolition, Santee Cooper said, was a “significant symbol of Santee Cooper’s increasing reliance on emissions-free and renewable generation” of electricity. The 50-year-old Grainger plant burned coal and its byproduct ash is being removed from storage ponds and sold to Holcim US for recycling in Holly Hill.
This story was originally published February 29, 2016 at 8:22 AM with the headline "Conway power plant site will make a fine recreation area."