The minority leader of the South Carolina Senate this week made an opening bid in the statewide tug-of-war over hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal money up for grabs from last year’s plutonium settlement with Columbia: $100 million for the state, $425 million for seven counties near the Savannah River Site.
“That would be a very fair thing,” state Sen. Brad Hutto (D-40) said during a hearing of the state Senate Finance Committee’s American Rescue Plan Act subcommittee. “We’ve got to start the discussion somewhere,” said Hutto, whose 40th state Senate district includes Barnwell County: one of the three that borders the Savannah River Site.
In 2020, South Carolina won a $600 million 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.
The plutonium was supposed to be turned into commercial reactor fuel in the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF), but that project was scrapped in 2018 in favor of a yet-to-be-built plutonium pit factory, at least deferring the economic lift South Carolina was expecting from the plutonium that now will remain in its borders for decades.
As for the settlement money, $525 million remains after legal fees to outside counsel who helped press the years-long lawsuit that finally wrapped up just ahead of the 2020 elections.
Hutto said that Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell counties, which abut the Savannah River Site, should get the lion’s share of the money, but that Bamberg, Edgefield, Hampton, Lexington and Orangeburg counties — what Hutto described as an outer ring of Savannah River Site commuter counties — should also be cut in, because they also lost potential jobs when MFFF fell through.
“This isn’t normal money,” Hutto said. “This is special money that is designed to compensate us for the impact that this has had on our communities.”
Hutto and his colleague state Sen. Tom Young (R-24) each said the settlement money should go to big-ticket projects such as schools, infrastructure and workforce development — but only in places actually affected by the Department of Energy’s plutonium mission.
“I don’t know of a soul last year who decided not to go to Myrtle Beach because there’s plutonium in Barnwell,” Young said.
Hutto’s proposed 80-20 split drew a few laughs from the room in Tuesday’s hearing, which was webcast. The state legislature wrapped up its regular session in May, and it could be a while before lawmakers actually begin apportioning the settlement money. Last week, the Associated Press reported that state Sen. Harvey Peeler (R-14) cancelled a special session of the body scheduled for October, following the lead of the state House of Representatives, which earlier said it would not return for an autumn session.
That only leaves a scheduled December special session, expected to be dominated by the decadal redrawing of legislative districts. If lawmakers decide not to bother with the settlement money then — some have already said they will not consider a separate parcel of federal COVID-19 relief money this winter — then the dividing of settlement dollars will wait until after the 2022 legislative session.
South Carolina’s annual state legislative session runs from the second week of January through the second Thursday in May.
