This is a great day for the state. It gives us a manageable water quality standard to protect our rivers. If the Cooper River industry lobby had gotten its way, special interests around the state could easily have sabotaged the health of our precious waterways. But, thanks to the diligent work of Senators Arthur Ravenel, Glenn McConnell, Brad Hutto and Phil Leventis, and the Conservation League's Water Quality Director, Nancy Vinson, the General Assembly has passed a bill that better protects South Carolina's rivers from industrial pollution. Last year, in the 1998 legislative session, the General Assembly passed new rules that allowed additional pollutants to be poured into various rivers around the state, including the Cooper and the Waccamaw.
Additional pollutants are a particularly bad idea for the Cooper River.
We're already over-stressing a very important natural system. Early in 1999, Senators McConnell and Ravenel introduced a bill that simply reversed last year's damaging legislation. So the senators put their heads together and came up with an offer that, in the end, the Cooper River Association could not refuse. Last year's legislation allowed industries to discharge additional pollutants into rivers that are naturally low in dissolved oxygen, a critical component of clean, healthy water. Pollutants tend to lower the level of dissolved oxygen.