The Risk of Fuel Tanker Fires, A Water Guzzling Plant, Another Denial of Public Comment and Inquiry, and the Overdue SRNL feasability study.

by Don Moniak
April 24, 2023

Parker’s Kitchen Convenience Store and Gas Station at Stratford and Whiskey Road

The most contentious issue on Monday night’s City Council meeting will likely be the first reading of Savannah-based Parker’s Kitchen plan for a its third convenience and fuel store, this one at the corner of Whiskey Road and Stratford Drive. The proposal and developer’s application was first reported in Introducing Parker’s Kitchen. Since that report, the City of Aiken planning department has refused to release developers’ applications when Public Hearings are announced.

A few key issues that have emerged since the application was submitted include the facts that:

1. The developer met with City staff from the planning, economic development, and engineering departments two months before submitting their application. Engineering department requests made in the memo were either not completed in the initial application, or not made public; i.e. the requirement that a stormwater checklist be submitted in the initial submission. This document, obtained via a FOIA request, was either not provided to the Planning Commission nor City Council, or withheld from public disclosure.

2. Neither the engineering nor Department of Public Safety reviewed the actual application, contrary to Planning Director Marya Moultrie’s claims that reviews are a routine procedure that precludes public release of applications when public hearings are announced (1)

On January 10th the Planning Commission (PC) heard the case in a public hearing, but first met in work session to discuss the application; which is arguably an Open Meetings violation. According to the meeting minutes, the PC “clarified that it is not appropriate for members of the public to make statements or ask questions, although the Commission is able to ask questions of applicants who are present.” In this system, citizens are spectators, and developers are participants.

At the PC hearing, about fifteen neighbors from the subdivisions accessible only via Stratford Drive spoke either in opposition to the plan or questioned the plan. There was no support for the plan, but the PC recommended it to City Council by a 5-2 vote.

Among the concerns raised that day and likely to be raised again, some by Savannah River Site (SRS) employees who are constantly focused on safety and the possiblity of accidents, were:

a. The Stratford Drive entrance, the only one that accesses a traffic signal on a notoriously busy road, could be blocked by any accident, which would negatively impact emergency response time. One of those possible accident scenarios is a tanker fire, such as the one that recently occurred on the eastbound off-ramp at Exit 18 of I-20 and closed the exit for several hours. To aggravate that situation, another tractor-trailer overturned just one mile west of the exit shortly after the tanker fire began.

Nicole Drey, who identified herself as an HOA, and a mechanical engineer at SRS where worse case scenarios are routinely analyzed, stated:

“There is only have one entrance and exit coming into Stratford for the villas for Springstone and Stratford Hall. If there’s any kind of there’s any event, whether a tanker has an accident or explosion, we are stuck.”

b. The presence of a convenience store and gas station, combined with other recent commercial developments, will lower property values—a very difficult contention to prove without a detailed appraisal study.

c. Twenty years ago City Council passed a concept plan for the property that excluded the possibility of car washes, petroleum stations. People bought homes and property when those conditions were in place, but Council overruled that when it approved the LuLu’s Car Wash, and now claims:

“Since no building permits were issued within 5 years of the original commercial component of the concept plan approval, the 2003 concept plan approval for the commercial component expired.” (City Manager Stuart Bedenbaugh memorandum to City Council, Page 53)

d. On March 27th, Parker’s Kitchen representative and former Goose Creek city planner Daniel Ben-Yisrael lobbied Aiken City Council for a hearing on their proposal. While not illegal, it was a breach of the planning process protocol, as developers should refrain from lobbying Council outside of the official process. The exchange, which began at the 21:30 mark of the meeting and featured eight interruptions by Mayor Osbon, lasted 4.5 minutes—1.5 minutes past the allowable comment time.

Mr. Ben-Yisrael was both correct and incorrect on one key point, that it was his understanding that traffic studies did not have to be final and approved before being heard by Aiken City Council. Another project being held up by a traffic study is the Sundy Street apartment complex proposed by a Charleston-area developer.

However, this is not typically the case. Two notable examples of this double standard on traffic studies include the Silver Bluff Shopping Center (2) and the Rutland Drive rental townhomes development. The former is a Village at Woodside project. Seven months after a traffic study was promised, and five months after it was ordered, the study remains incomplete. Yet, the project was unanimously approved without any submitted traffic study.

The owner of the Rutland Drive property includes former Aiken County assistant administrator and North Augusta City Manager Todd Glover— who addressed the Planning Commission and Council during the three hearings that preceded unanimous approval. The traffic study for that project is also incomplete.

This dichotomy suggests one standard for large, connected, local developers and another standard for smaller, downstate developers. The traffic management ordinance itself defines a single standard that says traffic studies shall be submitted during the approval process:

“Where required by section 42-178, a traffic impact analysis study shall be submitted as part of any request for approval of a site plan change, an annexation, a rezoning to a category that allows more intense uses than currently allowed on the site, a major subdivision, a concept plan for a tract zoned commercial or planned unit development, or a request for city services except where the subject property is already developed and no redevelopment is proposed. This article shall apply to any new development or change to an existing site.” (City Code, Article VI, 42-176(a).

The standard for requiring a study is 100 trips during the peak hours of 7-9 a.m and 4-6 p.m. There is no specified consideration of existing traffic, or recognition of inherent safety risks at intersections or blind curves.

Water Guzzling Data Center.

As reported in “Is Google Coming to Aiken County, “ Aiken County Council approved an agreement with an unnamed tech company to build a Data Center in the Sage Mill Industrial Park area; where the County also has $5 million to spend from the SRS/plutonium settlement.

In short, the agreement lists only the benefits of the project—50 jobs and an $800 million investment—but not the costs. The latter likely includes the need for hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, although the necessary amount is as secret as the name of the involved company.

County Council negotiated this deal without openly divulging information on the known and potential environmental costs.

According to the Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC), this area is subject to newer groundwater extraction regulations as part of the relatively new “Western Capacity Area,” as well as surface water withdrawal rules. The DHEC web page on the subject states”

“Groundwater withdrawal permits are required to withdraw and use groundwater equal to or greater than three million gallons in any month in the counties in these areas.”

Another Denial of Public Comment and Inquiry.

At the second reading of the Data Center, public comment was accepted but questions were prohibited.

On April 11th, during deliberation of a change in its by-laws, the City of Aiken Planning Commission denied any citizen comments or input during a public hearing when the by-laws were on the agenda. After introducing the agenda item, Chairman Ryan Reynolds stated,
at the 35 minute mark of the Public Hearing in which the by-law amendments were on the agenda: 

“This is not necessarily a discussion for the public” 

While the changes were minor, barring citizen input during any announced Public Hearing simply sets a bad precedent.

The Overdue Feasibility Report

On February 6th, Aiken Corporation Consultant K.J. Jacobs, of the architectural firm McMillan, Pazden, and Smith, provided a timeline (below) for a “feasibility study” of the proposed Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) downtown office complex. The draft preliminary report was due in mid-April and the second public meeting for the first week of May. To date there have been no reports issued and no public meetings scheduled. No new website has been announced, and the Aiken Corporation website is not updated.

To comment on the SRNL plan, write to nationallabaikenproject@mcmillanpazdensmith.com

Footnotes:

(1) The claim was made at about the 1:19:30 mark of the February 14, 2023 Planning Commission meeting. The meeting minutes indicate that

“Ms. Moultrie responded that the items on the agendas are still being vetted between the time that the application is received and the time it is heard so the applications cannot be shared in advance of meetings.”

The actual transcipt is as follows:

“Applications are submited 35 days ahead of time because there’s an extreme amount of vetting that has to occur. Just because we put legal ad out does not mean any of those applications have been vetted. These staff members don’t happen by Magic, we have to submit them to engineering, public safety, traffic engineers. We have to vet these against our own zoning ordinances.”

A FOIA request for staff reviews of the Parker’s Kitchen at Stratford proposal yielded only the notes from the October 2022 developer’s meeting and a January 5, 2023 memo from the city’s traffic studies consultant.

(2) Disclosure; I have worked as independent researcher on the Silver Bluff shopping center case in a paid capacity. Neither this article nor the FOIA request were billed.