The Charleston Area Justice Ministry released the following statement in response to the South Carolina Supreme Court Ruling on Friends of Gadsden Creek v. South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and WestEdge Foundation, Inc.:
"The Environmental Justice Committee of the Charleston Area Justice Ministry (CAJM) continues to stand in support of the Friends of Gadsden Creek, the South Carolina Environmental Law Project and all citizens who have joined the growing effort to preserve and protect the environmental commons known as Gadsden Creek. This ecosystem continues to provide vital ecosystem services for our City, especially the historic African American community experiencing amplified flooding and heat health hazards as a result of decades of environmental injustice inflicted by both City leaders and commercial developers.
CAJM is a highly eco-literate community, with many of us actively serving our City/County/State as environmental scientists, engineers, and educators. We stand with our science community, who use the best evidence possible to guide their decision making, always with the goal of doing no harm, of doing right, as our guiding metric. In February of 2024, CAJM facilitated an event called Gadsden Creek: Daylighting the Science at Burke High School. At this event, a panel of expert environmental scientists and engineers, including residents of Gadsden Green, convened to speak for the creek and to bear witness to the environmental injustices endured by the Westside community. Gadsden Creek, owned by the City of Charleston, has significant preservation value; its salt marsh ecosystem protects our residents by storing up to 10 times more stormwater runoff than the developer’s proposed system of closed pipes.
A preserved Gadsden Creek will continue to filter heavy metal and other pollutants that have been running off the roads and development around and on top of it for decades. It will continue to provide an irreplaceable outdoor classroom for environmental science and stewardship education. Along with Halsey Creek, already being preserved and protected, Gadsden Creek will continue to serve as part of a vital ecological corridor.
CAJM stands with programs like The South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative (SASMI), which “envisions preserving an equitable human element of the marshes, where a rich blend of communities continues to include multigenerational residents, communities of color and others bonded to this ecosystem.”
There is a preponderance of evidence to support the claim that the only citizens of Charleston who want to destroy Gadsden Creek are the developers and partners who would benefit from the tourism dollars that the hotels and condos they want to build on Gadsden Creek would generate. There is also a history in Charleston of power brokers using exaggerated claims of environmental harm to displace and/or marginalize low-income African American public housing communities. History is now repeating itself.
Our CAJM EJ community understands that “evidence of environmental contamination” paid for by WestEdge who stands to gain from this statistic represents a profound conflict of interest. We understand how a rhetoric of fear and the improper use of unfamiliar terms like “leachate” can be used to mislead the public, our City Council, and, yes, even our judges not trained in water quality science or landfill engineering.
Fifty years ago for a ten-year period, the City of Charleston dumped household garbage on top of Gadsden Creek and then packed and covered it with soil. The landfill was unlined, with no system of collection wells to capture and assess what kinds of contaminants might be found in the “leachate fluid” that had percolated through the landfill. Since that time, every building, road, and parking lot on top of the landfill has been shunting non-point source pollutants via their parking lot drains directly into the creek. Despite this insult, Gadsden Creek has continued its vital function of naturally bioremediating pollution from all sources, binding it in sediments and its plants, keeping it out of the river. To disturb these sediments via excavation would be to invite water quality degradation of the Ashley River.
CAJM also understands the many public health hazards associated with stormwater retention ponds, especially those located near a tidal ecosystem in a time of climate change and ever more extreme weather events like hurricanes. From increased drowning risks to overgrowths of disease-causing pathogens, the stormwater retention pond that would be part of the WestEdge proposed “nature viewing water feature” presents a threat of which few are yet aware.
In this era of sea level rise and ever more extreme weather events, The City’s Water Plan is grounded in sound science and places a high priority on preserving and protecting all of our wetlands, even those that are “polluted.” Newmarket Creek, having one of the highest levels of heavy metal contamination of any SC creek, is slated to be restored as a part of flooding mitigation in that part of the city. Shem Creek and James Island Creeks continue to have beyond unhealthy levels of fecal coliform bacteria. No one is suggesting these valuable resources and public assets be destroyed and paved over.
Finally, There are significant resources available for remediating polluted wetlands and brownfields, especially if the action serves a historically harmed and neglected community like Gadsden Green. For example, the Technical Assistance to Brownfield Communities (TAB) is a program, funded by a grant from the USEPA, which is intended to serve as an independent resource to communities and nonprofits attempting to clean up and reclaim brownfields.
Preserving Gadsden Creek is to honor and acknowledge its central role in the historic and self sustaining Gullah community that once lived along its banks, to recognize what they have always known about its inherent value and yes, the sacred worth of our salt marshes. We must come up with more regenerative ways of living with water."
