The effort to protect and contain the nearly 3 million tons of toxic sludge held back by the dam at Lake Conestee is almost complete.
At the end of this week, engineers will be mostly done with the new concrete structure that sits 50 feet in front of the 130-plus-year-old stone dam that spans the Reedy River at Conestee Nature Preserve in Greenville County.
This new concrete structure is built to last 100 years and to contain 100-year storms.
To be fair, the stone dam that’s been sitting there since the 1890s has been excellent at doing the same thing. But considering that that dam was built to last 50 years, and considering what it’s holding back, environmentalists, activists, and engineers have been trying to sound the alarm about the structure for decades.
If it ever had failed, century-old deposits of iron, vanadium, copper, and other toxic metals would have washed down the Reedy and most likely would have ended up in Lake Greenwood – and would likely have killed the lake, which provides drinking water to communities in Greenwood, Laurens, and Newberry counties.
But all of that doomsaying, real though the possibility seemed just two years ago, is all but over. The new structure is expected to be completed before the year ends, a full year-and-a-half ahead of schedule, and well under the $47 million budget the state Legislature gave the project to build the new retaining wall.
Major players in the project, like Kelly Lowry, president of Conestee Dam Restoration Project, say “the stars aligned.”
The thing is, all the stars aligned – the site was geologically ideal to build the dam, the state government moved quickly once the concerned citizens south of Greenville made their case, the money did not restrict much of what engineers could do, the engineering firm – Kiewit – has been able to move the project at great speed, and, importantly, the original dam didn’t break.
Dayne Pruitt, a Greenwood County Councilman, makes a point to thank everyone involved in getting the dam project fast-tracked. For the record, those people and entities are:
· Greenwood County residents
· Laurens County residents
· Greenwood County Commissioners of Public Works
· Laurens County Water and Sewer Commission
· Greenville County
· ReWa
· Duke Energy
· Ralph Cushing (founder of Save Lake Greenwood)
· Kelly Lowry
· Dave Hargett (founder of Lake Conestee Project and original champion of a replacement dam)
· Myra Reece (director of the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services)
· State Sen. Billy Garrett (R, 10th)
· State Rep. Bruce Bannister (R, 24th)
· State Rep. John McCravy (R, 13th)
· The press
“There was a couple of folks that saw it in the newspaper or heard about it through some of our meetings,” Pruitt said. “All of a sudden they grabbed a hold of it and they started sending letters and emails to state legislators and even the governor's office.”
Lowry adds Kiewit's workers to that list.
“This crew is exceptional,” he says.
Both men say that relief is the largest emotion they're feeling, even if there's still an edge to that relief.
"We're not out of the woods yet," Lowry says. "But we're inches away."
For our coverage of the Lake Conestee dam since 2020, click HERE and HERE
