BLACKVILLE — South Carolina's rivers were the focus of a Thursday gathering at the Edisto Research and Education Center in Blackville, as representatives of the public and private sectors gathered to share ideas and field questions on surface water availability, with particular emphasis on the Edisto River.
The primary speakers, addressing an audience of about 130, were Ken Rentiers, with the Department of Natural Resources; David Baize, with the Department of Health and Environmental Control; and Kirk Westphal and John Boyer, both with engineering firm C.D.M. Smith, which is developing a model for studying South Carolina's eight river basins: Saluda (for the pilot project), Edisto (next in line), Broad, Pee Dee, Catawba, Santee, Savannah and Salkehatchie, to be assessed in that order. Hopes are to use the information to build a state water plan, as legislators have requested.
After an overview of the model, speakers addressed questions on such concerns as the needs of rivers' recreational users, consumptive use of power plants and statistical methods of hydrology. Water stewardship was in the news during the past couple of years largely in connection with the Edisto and how much water should be allowed for irrigation by large agricultural operations.
"I am so glad that this topic of water use is coming to South Carolina," said Wagener resident Allen Williams, who retired this month after three decades as an agriculture educator. "It is a major topic. Of course, water's an element that we've all got to have, and it's time that we get some science behind it, to make the proper decisions."
Also among the listeners was Michele Harmon, an associate professor of biology at USC Aiken. She commented, "I think South Carolinians are starting to recognize that water is a very valuable resource, and so we have to have a way to quantify it in order to figure out how much we can use and how much we need to leave behind. We have to have tools like this in order to do that."
Thursday's event provided "a very good exchange," Harmon said. "Our lawmakers ... should be making educated decisions, and they need tools like this."
Helping run Thursday's event was Jeff Allen, with the South Carolina Water Resources Center, based at Clemson University, which promoted the gathering as "an opportunity for interested stakeholders in the Edisto River Basin to learn about this assessment, time frame, expectations and ways to stay involved." Information (including slides) from the presentation is available at www.scwatermodels.com.