SC

SCDHEC Removes Beach Warnings From Website

USERS NOW HAVE TO HUNT FOR “NO SWIM” ADVISORIES The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) has scaled back polluted water warning labels from its online map of Palmetto State beaches – sparking outcry from local activists. As recently as last week, SCDHEC’s map showed twenty-three beaches along the Grand Strand with “no…

USERS NOW HAVE TO HUNT FOR “NO SWIM” ADVISORIES

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) has scaled back polluted water warning labels from its online map of Palmetto State beaches – sparking outcry from local activists.

As recently as last week, SCDHEC’s map showed twenty-three beaches along the Grand Strand with “no swim” advisories in place due to elevated levels of bacteria in the water.

Now?  Not so much …

The advisories are no longer immediately viewable on the SCDHEC water quality website.  Instead, users are greeted with this message …

beach

Hmmmm …

The partial scrubbing of the site comes amid an ongoing battle between activists and tourism bureaucrats over the quality of the water along the Grand Strand (especially in Myrtle Beach, S.C.).  We addressed these concerns previously (here and here).

Myrtle Beach argues that it has dealt with the pollution issues via a new taxpayer-funded “Ocean Outfall” project – one subsidized by a fee increase on residents’ water bills.  Critics claim the project is a special interest boondoggle that does nothing but pump dirty water further out into the ocean.

“This system does nothing more than pump storm water with higher concentrated bacteria levels farther out to sea,” local activist David Hucks wrote in an email to his supporters earlier this month.

Problems with crime and pollution continue to dog the “Dirty Myrtle,” the heart of the Palmetto State’s “Redneck Riviera” and the key to its multi-billion dollar annual tourism industry.

Also problematic?  Local officials’ inability to shoot straight regarding both issues …

Anyway, we will continue to keep a close eye on the situation as the tourism season approaches.

***

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27 comments

sparklecity March 21, 2016 at 6:04 pm

What a crock of shit
If I didn’t know better South Carolina’s “movers & shakers” are no better than the communists they used to call out for allowing nothing but state approved news
But this ain’t new, some years ago, DHEC stopped regularly publishing restaurant heath scores in the local newspapers and it’s hard as hell to navigate the DHEC website for restaurant inspection scores. A 12 year old kid could design a easier site to find stuff……
But in a way the citizens of the Great state of Ser kackalicky are getting what they deserve…you know….’we don’t need the damn goberment looking over us, we can take care of ourselves” mantra…….
That and FITS decrying/slamming the EPA and DHEC shitloads of times….
I wish I had a dollar for every time FITS has slammed the EPA and DHEC for being intrusive and overbearing now he is concerned with water quality and the lack of communication of same?????=====WTF???
FITS and others can’t have it both ways…………

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TroubleBaby March 21, 2016 at 7:37 pm

“What a crock of shit”

More like a soup actually, kind of continuously stirred up by the Gulf stream current.

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swpbbls March 21, 2016 at 8:33 pm

DHEC was the first castrated agency. Just ask this guy:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-monroe-8a646824

~~~

full disclosure: his superiors may summarily have you quarantined — perhaps you ingested too much mushroom Kool-Aid in high school (or some other undocumented pretense) — but you can revel in your self-vindication at a later date at some point along the trail of iniquities.

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Lenny and Squiggy ride again! March 21, 2016 at 8:42 pm

“What a crock of shit”

Just more Boz and FitsNews bullshit.All they do is laugh.

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swpbbls March 21, 2016 at 8:44 pm

Get Real! We are small potatoes here in SC.

Have you ever been to Boca Raton during the Season of Body Lice? It’s wicked itchy.

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Buzz Martin March 22, 2016 at 8:59 am

I spent the winter of ’11 in Del Ray (working in Deerfield Beach and on Virginia Key) and I hung out at Boca a lot. Must not have been the right season. Or I didn’t hang with the right people to get that brand of cooties. lol

There was this one Thai/Asian-fusion restaurant that had the best Pad Thai I’ve ever tasted. Amazing sushi, too. I miss FL.

Buzz Martin March 22, 2016 at 9:08 am

No. It was all me. I pissed in the water just before they tested. Skewed the results.

Hey look, simp: The water problems got reported by 10 different sites besides DHEC, but when it became an issue it was all called lies and blamed one blogger they’re out to kill, and (as “social media”, on me, who they only want to maim and possibly lobotomize for writing on that blog and reporting about it).

So now the chamber, city and DHEC are trying to spin it all away. To deflect attention away from Mike Wooten, and from the fact that they could have fixed all this decades ago at the city level, but the leaders then chose to just slide by with minimally safe water. Now they will spend millions on trying to convince tourists we are all crazy or are criminals out to hurt Myrtle Beach.

Hey, that could be a source of $$$ for you. Check into it, if you’re not already on that gravy train. Otherwise …

Go away, pogo.

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Marleny Hensley Hucks March 24, 2016 at 5:39 pm

If you go to the DHEC map and on the key for beach access scroll down to Myrtle beach, the permanent advisories pop up along 14 spots in myrtle Beach. Go figure! There is a reason they aren’t pulling it down . They’ve just made it harder to be public.

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9" March 21, 2016 at 6:28 pm

there’s nothing more conservative than conservation.don’t fuck your progeny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V0Vu_utUZY

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CallUsFlintSouth March 21, 2016 at 6:49 pm

DHEC is a Nikki Haley Cabinet Agency. This is the Same State Regulatory Agency that thinks ongoing discharges of raw sewage by the City of Columbia into rivers and streams is no big deal. Gee, if vacationers to the Grand Strand thought they’d be swimming in sewage, they might not come! Then we wouldn’t get their money! Nikki would much rather They Not Know.

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TroubleBaby March 21, 2016 at 7:12 pm

Myrtle Beach or Turdle Beach?

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erneba March 21, 2016 at 7:45 pm

When I was a kid at the ocean in Myrtle Beach a long time ago, the only turds you had to worry about walked the streets.

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Mike at the Beach March 21, 2016 at 10:09 pm

That’s still pretty much the case. I have no dog in this fight (other than living here, I guess), but the beaches are fine. Only tourist morons want to play and frolic in what is clearly a freaking runoff. It was that way decades ago when I was a punk-ass teenaged lifeguard, it’s that way now, and it will be that way when my kids’ kids are one day running up and down that beach.

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erneba March 21, 2016 at 10:17 pm

I was a lifeguard at Cheraw State Park for two years when I was in high school, many, many moons ago.
My favorite lifeguard joke when teaching young ladies how to swim.
“If I take my finger out, you will fill up with water and sink like a rock”.

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Tazmaniac March 22, 2016 at 8:40 am

Spent a brief time in my Senior year LG at a Country Club. Made “Caddy Shack” all the funnier for me. My folks wanted me to be either a golf pro or a commissioned officer in military. I wasn’t hearing of it, I wanted to be the second youngest Manager in Winn-Dixie history. They had my store manager/mentor literally make me go to the Life Guard job with the hopes i would get hooked on all the CC poon running around there. All I wanted was independence and the structured life of college or the military was not me. Maintained a Red Cross card until my late 30’s though.

erneba March 22, 2016 at 9:45 am

I worked at a Winn-Dixie during my first year in high school. After we closed on Thursday, the stock was delivered at about 8 PM. Never got out of there before 11PM. Friday, after school and then re-stocking for the weekend till about 10 or 11PM. Then 8AM till 8PM on Saturday. I hated that job, but needed the money.

Tazmaniac March 22, 2016 at 9:58 am

While the grocer life is terrible on relationships, the camaraderie we used to share was great. It never seemed like work, just one race after another. I was a production monster, often described as a whirlwind, hence the nickname. Back then you took pride in being the fastest,the best. Now one guy looks at the other scared that they might work a little less than you. Sad, real sad.

Mike at the Beach March 22, 2016 at 7:42 pm

Similarly, my year lifeguarding was both the best and worst job I’ve ever had. Ridiculous hours, ridiculous tourists, ridiculous pay. FANTASTIC “social” benefits for a 17 year old surf goober, though… ;-)

TroubleBaby March 22, 2016 at 9:24 am

” I have no dog in this fight (other than living here, I guess), but the beaches are fine. Only tourist morons want to play and frolic in what is clearly a freaking runoff.”

Excellent, common sense point.

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Drink the lead and copper March 21, 2016 at 7:28 pm

Dhec and Haley’s Dept. of Commerce, what a crock. Wait until people find out about the water they are paid high fees for and how little of the money goes to provide safe drinking water, how little is used on system upgrades, etc; but is siphoned off and used to supplement general operating expenses of the particular Town, City, or system. The city of Columbia, Aiken are examples.
How much lead, unnecessary levels of chlorine, pesticides etc. is being consumed by customers in SC? How much money for these systems go for operations outside the systems, exorbitant salaries, trips, etc., at the expense of safe potable drinking water? The answers will probably shock and infuriate!
The monies to help these systems is housed at DHEC and Commerce. Under the Haley Regime, now nothing but a slush, pork fund.

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jimlewisowb March 21, 2016 at 8:01 pm

Way to go Gypsy Queen, Fuck those Yankee Tourists up the Ass

Myrtle Beach has Shit Water and Flint has Lead Water, they will get it at both ends

Maybe before you leave office you and Bobby can open a Water Park over at Savannah River

With a little luck you could expose a few hundred thousand kids to radiation poisoning before you move on

Fuckin’ Cockroaches

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Rocky Verdad March 21, 2016 at 9:33 pm

That would rock. The Rainbow Water Park. You go in tan, you leave green.

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LouieBuoy March 21, 2016 at 10:58 pm

Ask most any lifeguards – Do not allow your kids to play in any water stream entering the beach from land, since it is most likely toxic storm water runoff and other forms of waste water. Do not allow any swimming within 100+ yards of these toxic water flows entering the surf. The beaches with no storm water collection systems are more likely to have safer less toxic surf water. But you always swim at your own risk, even in a public pool. If you smell the strong odor of chlorine, the pool water is dirty and the chlorine is bound up and cannot effectively sanitize the water. And don’t forget about those nasty amoeba”waiting to swim up your nose and eat your brain. Dang, it makes you want to stay away from the water in the summer.

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Trumpism March 22, 2016 at 8:00 am

Pray for Belgium.While the radical,Alinski loving, closet Muslim Obama is praising one of his political hero’s in Cuba on vacation with the family, his ISIS hero’s just went on another murdering rampage.

Time for Donald Trump for President.

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mamatiger92 March 22, 2016 at 9:10 am

Time for your meds.

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SendBushForWarCrimes March 22, 2016 at 10:57 am

Thank George W Bush for personally creating ISIS as a Direct Consequence of his pathetically fucked up iraq “war”.

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Philip Branton March 22, 2016 at 11:35 pm

As a Civil Servant ….I am appalled…!! SC DHEC employees should convene and have an informational conference. They work for taxpayers NOT politicians playing games with information.

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