Yesterday the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit, aka the “Pascalis Lawsuit,” released a media advisory, a summary of two depositions from former Aiken Municipal Development Commission (AMDC) Chairman Keith Wood and Vice Chair Chris Verenes, and the depositions themselves.
The Media Advisory read as follows:
“Today the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al lawsuit, also known as “The Pascalis Project Lawsuit,” are releasing the sworn depositions of former Aiken Municipal Development Commission officers–specifically former Chairman Keith Wood and Vice-Chairman Chris Verenes. In addition, Plaintiffs are also releasing a six-page memo summarizing the findings from the deposition and other discovery documents.
The revelations from the Wood and Verenes depositions include the following:
Some City officials knowingly failed to comply with state law and standard ethical guidelines for procurement practices by “steering” the contract for the $75 million Pascalis Project towards a preferred developer who was not selected via an open, official procurement process.
The procurement aspect of Community Development Law was knowingly violated when an official, open procurement process was knowingly delayed in November of 2021 until AFTER a contract was signed with a preferred developer in December of 2021. The depositions reveal that the AMDC was not made aware of this irregular, unethical, and illegal process by City staff and their attorney until seven months later, at a closed-door meeting on June 23, 2022. Shortly thereafter, the AMDC took the position to restart the project with a new redevelopment plan and a legal, open, official procurement process. This restart, however, was derailed by this litigation.
After being informed of the transgressions, at least two Aiken City Council members advocated a no action approach, declining to pursue an investigation as to the cause of the debacle.”
While the Plaintiffs have yet to release their volume of exhibits, some key documents cited in the depositions were obtained from the City of Aiken via a Freedom of Information Act request that yielded approximately 120 formerly “privileged” emails (spread out in redundant fashion in more than 1200 pages) and that provides additional supporting documentation to the summary.
The key documents include a June 29, 2022 email from Keith Wood in which he described “knowing violations” of state Community Development Law; and a three-page memo from Woods outlining a timeline of key Pascalis project events in which he highlighted “facts associated with what transpired that is potentially unethical and potentially in violation of SC statute.” These documents are available at Privileged Records of the Pascalis Project.
The depositions, coupled with pertinent records, indicate that some city officials did knowingly violate the law, and were reportedly advised by legal counsel not to delay a Request for Proposals. The Defense, which did cross examine both Wood and Verenes, failed to provide any documentation to challenge the assertions of at least one serious willful violation. No evidence was presented that indicated the delay of an official Request for Proposals in order to benefit a preferred developer was an “honest mistake.”
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Coming soon: The Steering” of the Project Pascalis Contract: May 2021 to June 2022.
One of Aiken County Council’s July 15th public hearings took an unusual turn when the Council voted 6-2 to table a proposed ordinance to amend the manner in which it conducts business; for now voting on the side of The People. Most notable among the proposed changes are practices that could marginalize citizen engagement with their elected representatives.
(Editor’s note: Aiken County residents Vicki Simons and Don Moniak commented during the public hearing. Their full comments can be read here.)
by Don Moniak July 22, 2025
On July 5, 2025, Aiken County government published a public notice in the Aiken Standard to announce the County Council’s July 15th Public Hearings. One of the public hearings was vaguely titled:
Ordinance Amending Chapter 2, Administration, Article II, Council, “Generally,” “Standing Committees,” “Rules of Procedure,” and “Preservation of Council Actions.”
Chapter 2 of the Aiken County Code governs the administration of county business. Article II addresses how the County Council conducts its business. It contains seemingly innocuous, routine rules, including the Order of Business during meetings, publication and distribution schedule of agendas, composition of committees, and completion of meeting minutes.
Most important to County residents– Article II defines the rules for concerned citizens to engage with, provide input to, and obtain information from their elected representatives on the County Council.
Presently, the four facets of these rules of public involvement are:
1. The open public comment period known as “The Informal Meeting of the Whole;” where citizens are alloted three minutes to speak to Council on any issue not already on the agenda. This is oftentimes the most informative and problem-solving portion of the meeting. 2. Public hearings; where citizens are alloted five minutes to address proposed ordinances. 3. Public presentations of up to fifteen minutes, if requested at least five days in advance. 4. The publication and distribution of County Council’s meeting agendas and associated documentation–collectively known as “the agenda packet.”
The Amendments, or Lack Thereof
On July 14th, the County Administrator’s office publicly released Council’s agenda packet for the July 15th meeting. According to the agenda, details of the Chapter 2 amendments were on pages 46-64.
On examination of those pages , details of the proposed amendments to Article II were absent. No strikeouts were present to indicate the language that was being stricken, and no text was underlined to indicate additions. Only the final amended version was presented.
To determine what changes were proposed, Council members and concerned citizens were required to cross-check the final amended ordinance with the existing ordinance.
Aiken County resident Vicki Simons discussed this oversight during the Public Hearing. She described how legislation routinely involves markings to show changes to South Carolina law–underlined text for additions and strikethroughs for deletions—before pointing out that “this ordinance is completely devoid of these markings.”
She went on to state that “this lack of transparency reflects badly on both Aiken County Government and the Aiken County Council.”
Marginalizing Citizen Input
One of the changes was easy to detect, and it was the most egregious. If the amendments were approved, county residents would have to wait until after any scheduled closed-door Executive Session—which can last for more than an hour—in order to present their ideas, thoughts, and concerns during the “Informal Meeting of the Whole.”
Article II, in its present form, places the Informal Meeting of the Whole towards the end of the meeting, but prior to any scheduled, closed-door Executive Session. The proposed amendments include reversing that order, so that people who come to speak to Council about a myriad of issues—-i.e. noise and light pollution, bad roads, stormwater runoff—would have to wait an additional undetermined length of time to speak their mind.
Ms. Simons addressed this issue by reminding Council that Aiken County is larger than the state of Rhode Island and “it takes considerable effort for Aiken County residents from outlying areas to attend meetings in person.”
She described the proposed reversal of the order of the Executive Session and IMOTW in two ways. First, she stated, “I strongly oppose this change because it would codify a marginalization of the very people whom you were elected to represent!”
After describing how people had to wait for more than an hour during the April 15, 2025, meeting for an Executive Session to end, she explained, “forcing people to wait to speak on matters important to them may be considered a form of censorship that undermines their Creator-endowed right of freedom of speech.”
Article II also allows for individuals or groups to request, in advance, time to make a presentation on their subject of choice to Council for up to 15 minutes during the Regular Meeting.
Officially, any public presentation must be on the regular meeting agenda; currently item 12 in the Order of Business. In practice, Council has been ignoring this rule for years by scheduling presentations either during committee meetings or work sessions. While work sessions tend to have large time windows to allow for 15-minute presentations in spacious Council chambers, committee meetings have very narrow time windows and are held in the tight confines of relatively tiny conference rooms.
Even though public presentations are uncommon, the amendments would result in further marginalization. The new timing would arguably censor citizens by shifting their presentation time from better-attended regular meetings held in spacious Council chambers to poorly attended committee meetings held in relatively tiny conference rooms—thus preventing a larger audience from hearing the message of presenters. Since Council still refuses to livestream its meetings or keep detailed meeting minutes, any message would, in practice, be largely unheard and lost in the largely inaccessible audio archives of Council meetings.
No Amendment to Improve Timely Information Access
The release of agendas determines how much time citizens have to be fully informed about what is actually being proposed at Council meetings.
Presently, Article II dictates that agenda packets be distributed to Council members on the Friday before the regular meetings, which are generally held on the third Tuesdays of the month, as well as the first Tuesdays from January to June.
However, these agenda packets are not made available to citizens and the media until the day before the meeting. Although Article II dictates that the packets must be released by 8:30 a.m. on Mondays, that is rarely the case. While this timeline meets the letter of the Open Meetings section of South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, it clearly violates the spirit of the law by withholding completed agendas and agenda packets over the weekend.
There is no proposed change to allow citizens access to agendas and agenda packets on the same day Council members receives theirs—meaning that residents will still have to wait until the day before meetings before being able to review the large amounts of information pertaining to public hearings and other Council business.
The Vote
When it came time to vote, Councilman Mike Kellems made a Motion to Table the agenda item and send the proposed ordinance back to the County Administrator’s office for rework. Council then voted 6-2 to table–choosing to demand better information prior to moving forward on the ordinance amendments. This will require another public hearing.
The six who voted to table were Council members Ron Felder (District 1), Mike Kellems (District 2), Landon Ball (District 4), Sandy Haskell (District 5), Phil Napier (District 6), and P.K. Hightower (District 8).
Voting against tabling were Chairman Gary Bunker and Councilman Danny Feagan (District 3).
What is Next?
The effort to amend Article II is likely to return during the next Council meeting this August 19th. Aiken County residents can share their opinions on the rules governing citizen input and access to information by contacting Chairman Gary Bunker and their elected Council representative, or by attending the August 19th meeting and addressing the issues directly to Council.
For four years, the City of Aiken has pursued an unwritten policy of opaqueness regarding the disclosure of information related to Project Pascalis; and for that matter, the Pascalis project properties that the city still owns and is seeking to sell.
Throughout most of 2021, project details and progress were kept secret or obscured via multiple closed-door Executive Sessions.
In August 2021, Aiken City Council’s approval of a $10 million general obligation bond to fund the Aiken Municipal Development Commission’s (AMDC) purchase of Project Pascalis properties failed to identify any specific properties. Instead, the bond issuance was tied to purchases of any parcels in “the Parkway District” as part of a “land bank.” However, it was known to some, if not all, Council members that the properties in question were for the AMDC’s downtown Pascalis demolition and redevelopment project.
As reported in City of Aiken Information Games, obstructionism of citizen efforts to learn details of the project began in March 2022 when city officials issued identical, exorbitant** $5,312 fee determinations to two distinct and separate Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requestors.*** Two months later, an identical fee determination letter was issued in reply to a third FOIA request; one bearing no similarity to the first two. None of the requestors became aware of this malfeasance until six months later.
In August 2022, City officials went further in their efforts to deter public inquiry by levying a charge of $48 per hour for time spent redacting Freedom-of-Information-released documents—but only for Pascalis-related queries. This tripling of FOIA fees was implemented under the justification that “high volumes” of requests were being filed.
That same month, officials attempted to redact project invoices that had previously been publicly disclosed. This trend would continue with the attempted redactions of legal invoices that were also already a matter of the public record; an effort that went as far as redacting the very term “Project Pascalis.”
As reported in Three Missing Pages, an arguably fraudulent $599 FOIA fee determination was made in April 2023 for a request pertaining to the Pascalis properties; one that ultimately led to a response involving only a single three-page document.
Sometime during the Summer of 2024, the City took down the AMDC’s website, aikenmdc.org, and in the process erased the history of the Pascalis project as viewed from the AMDC’s perspective.
Finally, in the case of Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al, in January 2025, a Judge ordered the City to produce requested records to the Plaintiffs by March 10, 2025–by this time, the City was claiming there were approximately 120,000 emails that met the discovery criteria.
There was a catch. The judge allowed a “clawback” of any documents the city deemed, within ninety days of the production of records, to fall into the privileged records category. The Plaintiffs, who had to commit to a nondisclosure agreement, then would have seven days to challenge the City’s assertions of privilege. All documentation is to be treated as confidential until a final determination is made on whether a document falls under the privileged category.
In May of this year, the City denied access to any property appraisals of its downtown Pascalis properties, citing the FOIA exemption for documents related to the sale or purchase of a property. Such knowledge earlier in the process would certainly have sullied the City’s proud announcement on June 9th of a new developer for the properties. (Seven weeks later, the appraisal was released. It showed the remaining six properties to be worth only $2.5 million, meaning a potential $5 million loss for the City.)
A few weeks later, City Solicitor Laura Jordan responded to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the Pascalis lawsuit discovery documents with a $45,000 fee determination (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Response and fee determination to City of Aiken FOIA Request 129-2025. The documents in question have already been turned over, in part or in whole, to the Plaintiffs in the Blake et al. vs. City of Aiken et al lawsuit. Therefore, there are no search and retrieval costs.
While this beyond-exorbitant fee would never be paid, even in part, it has clear implications for city taxpayers who have already footed legal costs exceeding $200,000 (Figure 2).
The redaction fees cited in the FOIA response reflect the potential legal costs to the City of determining which of the reportedly 120,000 emails contain privileged information. But at a rate of $180-250 per hour, four times that quoted in the FOIA response, even a fraction of the total time dedicated to reviewing for privilege could yield costs similar to the $45,000 FOIA fee.
Figure 2. Memorandum to City Council with update on Project Pascalis lawsuit costs to date.
Finally, the City took more than six weeks to even reply to FOIA request 166-2025, filed on May 21, 2025, for a series of emails from Keith Wood and Chris Verenes. The statutory response time is only ten days.
For this request, the City charged $365 for redaction fees for a relatively meager 1,300 pages of records. In a separate email, the City made the spurious claim that the request that yielded a $45,000 fee “is duplicative of 166-2025 and the response will be issued through request 166-2025.” The City then canceled the $45,000 FOIA request.
Thus, according to the City of Aiken’s legal department, a request that involves an alleged 120,000 emails and requires a $45,000 fee to process is “duplicative” with a request that involves 1,300 pages that requires $365 to process.
As reported in Which Project Pascalis Records Remain Hidden from Public View, City Council members are on the record supporting the release of all Pascalis project records. Yet, nine months after Keith Wood and Chris Verenes revealed the presence of 120 emails that are in a “privilege log,” and four months after a judge ruled that any pre-July 2022 emails from the pair should be released, the privilege log documents remain a secret; although one that might be unlocked, at least in part, through a deposit to the city coffers.
To this day the City of Aiken continues to obfuscate and erect detours obstructing information access to Pascalis project records, whether it be exorbitant FOIA fees, nondisclosure agreements for discovery records, or excessive redactions.
This is not just a matter of withholding documents; it is a matter of withholding the basic facts as to whether city officials unwittingly violated state law or did so knowingly. Without a full accounting of the project, how can elected officials and city administrators arrive at any real lessons learned?
Footnotes
* In July 2022, AMDC Chair Keith Wood wrote, in a letter to the Historic Aiken Foundation, that the AMDC had purchased the Pascalis properties “at the behest” of City Council.
** According to South Carolina law (Section 30-4-30(2)(B)), public bodies “may establish and collect fees…reasonable fees not to exceed the actual cost of the search, retrieval, and redaction of records…the records must be furnished at the lowest possible cost to the person requesting the records… Fees may not be charged for examination and review to determine if the documents are subject to disclosure.“
In the case of the $45,000 FOIA fee determination, the City of Aiken charged unreasonable fees in two manners:
First, by inappropriately charging for review time to determine if documents needed redaction; whereas SC FOIA only allows for actual redaction time and explicitly states that fees may not be charged for examination and review time. Notably, the City also made the same mistake in 2022 for the $5,312 fee determination described in City of Aiken Information Games.
Second, by failing to acknowledge that the records requested were already in bulk files that had been released to the Plaintiffs in Blake et al vs City of Aiken et al. As such, the records were already reviewed for privileged and confidential legal status.
*** The City and AMDC did take the opportunity to create an illusion of openness by releasing information that was mostly already publicly available—i.e., news releases, AMDC resolutions, meeting minutes and agendas—on a new website, aikenmdc.org. Some of the new information did include spending receipts and banking information (the books), but very few pertinent records were released unless prompted by a FOIA request.
Living in Aiken, I routinely observe the failures of our government to protect public safety in our water system.
From June 25, 2025 through June, 29, 2025 (and continuing), widespread complaints about ‘brown water’ were reported by Aiken residents. By reading local newspapers, everything seems to be okay, but I fiercely disagree. The Aiken Standard reported that “Discolored Water Is Still a Problem for Aiken Customers.” After four days, Aiken is still flushing out the muck from water mains but not addressing the real problems.
Heat has Mistakenly been Blamed for Brown Water
Heat has been blamed as a primary cause of recent discolored water (“Discolored water reported throughout Aiken as extreme heat takes toll.”). However, temperatures are slightly hotter this year than last year (“Weather History in Aiken“), when brown water was not so large a problem (see Figure 1). In short, surges of brown water complaints drastically increased in August 2022, July 2023 and May 2025, but not during the summer of 2024. Temperature and hot weather are clearly not a driver for brown water increases. Water hammer provides an explanation for these three incidents and smaller incidents throughout the years, where such hammers are created by operating pumps and valves.
A new water system was being placed in service, and a water hammer during startup may have blasted corrosion debris loose throughout the system. That is, a possible cause of Aiken brown water on June 25, 2025, was operator error, rather than weather or infrastructure improvements. Confirmation data is unavailable to the public at present. Aiken staff may not even be aware of the possibility or occurrence of a water hammer, since hammers are frequently not heard when pipes are securely fastened and cannot bang when hammered.
Facing Our Government Again
Accordingly, I sent the following unanswered letter to the Aiken Mayor and all members of the City Council.
“We have serious problems that are not being addressed for the Aiken water supply. Please note the conclusion below: ‘In conclusion, Aiken breaks our mains and then blames residents if they are poisoned.’
Aiken Brown Water and Parallel Health Hazards (6/7/2025)
Although brown water in the Aiken drinking water supply is generally considered to be reasonably safe, water hammers that generate rust in our drinking water continue in Aiken, and those same water hammers endanger our drinking water safety. Aiken is spending tax dollars to fix the symptoms of health problems and health problems accelerate. Aiken needs to stop damaging our water system to protect our health.
On June 23, 2025, an Aiken City Council meeting promoted more money for unidirectional flushing, which effectively washes away rust in water mains. This method flows water into fire hydrants and flushes rust out through the next closest fire hydrant. Aiken is even installing more hydrants to increase the flow rates between some hydrants to remove more rust from our water mains.
Published by commercial water companies, brown water is claimed to not present a health hazard, since iron in rust is not a health hazard, and small quantities of detrimental manganese in rust are not usually present in high enough concentrations during brown water events to affect health. In other words, the brown water problem can be washed out of sight, but the acceleration of brown water creation hammers forward.
Peer reviewed publications and supporting scientific research prove that Aiken is not addressing the primary cause of rust in water mains, where water hammer creates brown water, or rust, in water mains (“Water Hammer Causes Water Main Breaks“). Basically, the operations of water pumps, industrial valves and fire hydrants cause high-pressure shock waves in water mains that travel throughout the city to crack water mains and generate rust in those cracks, and subsequent hammers disperse brown water to residents.
A 2024 City of Aiken Water Report [that was a flyer delivered to customers] described water treatment before water enters water mains. Also, Aiken tests and [reports]’ ‘drinking water once per year or less, but Aiken tests 60 locations daily per the Aiken Mayor, but Aiken does not specifically check water from water mains after known water hammer events. Also, there are 22,000 connections to the water supply, and Aiken does not yet know where all of the lead pipes are located for customers. At present, lead contamination levels throughout Aiken are not known. In other words, we do not know when all of our water is safe or not.
In that report, Aiken stated that we, the Aiken residents, “share the responsibility for protecting [ourselves] and [our] family from lead”. In conclusion, Aiken breaks our mains and then blames residents if they are poisoned.
The Facts of Aiken Water Main Destruction
A parallel unanswered letter was sent only to the Aiken Mayor to provide further technical basis for these claims.
Aiken Keeps Breaking Our Drinking Water Supply (6/27/2025)
Evidence in Figures 1 to 3 below clearly proves that Aiken brown water complaints, water main breaks, and city-owned water system leaks continually rise. With respect to brown water complaints, Aiken is unnecessarily destroying the Aiken water system. That is, brown water is caused by water hammers, as I testified as an Expert Witness in Talbert vs. American Water in 2023. Aiken fails to protect our water system and fails to protect our health.
Figure 1. Brown water complaints caused by water hammers – mostly preventable – June 25, 2025 major complaint surge not shown since data is not yet publicly available. (Image by Leishear Engineering, LLC) DetailsDMCAFigure 2. Aiken water main breaks caused by water hammers – mostly preventable. (Image by Leishear Engineering, LLC) DetailsDMCAFigure 3. Aiken city-property leaks caused by water hammers – mostly preventable.’ (Image by Leishear Engineering, LLC) DetailsDMCA Data for these three figures was obtained from Donald Moniak (“City of Aiken, Water Main Breaks“). Zero values in the figures indicate that data was unavailable.
The Coverup Continues
Once again, I suggested to the Aiken Mayor that we meet to work together to improve the Aiken water system. I received no response (“Aiken Coverups and New Scientific Advances in Water Main Breaks“). After sending the above letters, I sent the following unanswered letter to the Mayor of Aiken.
“City Council Workshop? (6/28/2025)
Perhaps you would now be willing to discuss the problems with our water main system. In my [professional] opinion Aiken staff does not have a clear understanding of how they are damaging our water system. My extensive experience and extraordinary education can help them accomplish success with respect to brown water, water main breaks, lead poisoning, and disease transmission.”
Water Hammer as the Brown Water Cause
Aiken is working ‘around the clock’ to fix this problem, but they are a likely cause of this problem in the first place. In my nearly 35 years of water hammer experience, I have learned that sometimes the largest water hammers – and the most damage to water systems – occur during startups of new facilities, similar to the June 25th case considered here.
In such cases, pressures can be near 1,000 pounds per square inch in 100-pound-per-square-inch water systems, which could certainly break loose a lot of rust to create brown water. From the scant information that is publicly available, such a water hammer is possible, but further information is needed from Aiken.
A possible cause was a ‘scheduled shutdown’ ‘to connect the new water plant to the water main’. In fact, ‘the water main at US 1 and the water plant underwent a scheduled shutdown last night [the night of June 24, 2025] to connect the new water plant to the water main (.cityofaikensc.gov/alerts).’ This situation provided the conditions for one of the largest potential water hammers within the Aiken water supply. A Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) was submitted for closure of this water hammer concern, as follows.
FOIA Request (6/28/25)
Please provide SCADA, or other electronic data, plus log book entries, and any other pertinent operations, maintenance, and construction data for June 24-26, 2025 for the new water plant near Highway 1. I would like to see if operations at this plant caused the recent brown water event in Aiken.
Additional detailed information was submitted in a subsequent FOIA to better understand operations at US1 prior to the brown water fiasco.
In my professional opinion, a brown water incident of this magnitude was initiated by a high-pressure water hammer. As soon as the facts are available from Aiken, the sooner this brown water mess can be resolved, where many residents are affected and restaurants have closed (“Aiken water troubles impact local business“).
In this developing story, the Mayor of Aiken stated that they are working ‘continually’, as of 5/27/2025 to correct brown water (“City of Aiken Discolored Water Release“) Even so, an investigation of a possible water hammer related to this significant brown water incident, and other certain brown water incidents, should be investigated. The only obstacle between me and the truth of this brown water fiasco is the Aiken government.
There are many Aiken brown water complaints on the internet. One such complaint provided the following June 26, 2025 photo. Another such complaint noted that Aiken Regional Hospital was affected, but the hospital would not confirm or deny.
This brown water problem has affected much of Aiken. Brown water has been reported in downtown Aiken, the north side of Aiken, the West side of Aiken, and the south side of Aiken. Sen so, I live on the South side of Aiken, and we have good water quality, i.e. no brown water at all.
Will Aiken Ever Stop Damaging Our Water Mains?
In an effort to address the current brown water situation in Aiken, I sent the following unanswered Letter of Request to the Aiken Mayor and City Manager, including a copy of Figure 1.
“June 25, 2025 – Possible Brown Water Cause (6/28/2025)
Would your staff show me what they did at US 1 on the night of June 24th to remove the water main to the plant from service. If so, we should be able to determine the cause of the current brown water situation, which would prevent future occurrences? High demands cannot explain the fact that there were spikes in brown water complaints during 2022, 2023, and 2025, but not 2024, where summer temperatures were comparable each year. Water hammer from operations at US 1 can provide such an explanation.”
Along with the following letter, a link to this Op Ed was forwarded to the Aiken Mayor, City Manager, and City Council immediately after publication of this Op Ed.
“Please Stop Breaking Our Drinking Water Supply (June 29. 2025)
The following Op Ed was published today, “Aiken, S.C. + Drinking Water = Brown Water + Parallel Health Hazards”. Comments are welcome.
For the past six years, I have asked Aiken officials to stop water hammers. As I have previously published, water hammers create increasing rust, increasing cracks, increasing brown water, and increasing water main breaks; and water hammers contribute to infectious diseases and lead poisoning in water supplies. Yet, you continue to hammer our Aiken water system to cause increasing damage.”
The Lead Question and the June 25, Brown Water Fiasco
I hesitate to address this issue since all of the facts are not yet available, but this issue is too important to ignore. Assuming that a major water hammer started at US 1, that pressure wave had the ability to travel to many parts of the system in seconds. In such a case, lead from lead service lines to older homes could induce lead poisoning into drinking water.
Disclaimer
This Op Ed is based on available information and is subject to change as information is made available. Access to information is hindered. I emailed the City Manger a simple question about how many brown water complaints have been received, and rather than answer, he responded that I should fill out an FOIA request, which can take up to 10 days for response. Guessing what information has been withheld from the public limits a public understanding of how this brown water fiasco unfolded. Aiken refuses to discuss this issue to improve our water system.
As a foremost expert in water main failures, I have raised serious public health concerns, but I am blocked by Aiken government. In fact, I invented peer-reviewed theories to explain brown water creation and water main failures that were misunderstood for the past century. These discoveries should be the backbone of this Aiken investigation but are not.
The investigative spotlight on the City of Aiken shines dimly at the Aiken Standard. In 2024, the paper filed a single Freedom of Information Act request to the City. The total cost was $132.
by Don Moniak
March 17, 2025
This week marks an annual media celebration known as Sunshine Week, described at sunshineweek.org as a collaboration that “shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.” All across the country, newspapers run op-eds touting their investigative performances at exposing malfeasance, corruption, and irregularities in government and business.
Central to these investigative efforts involving government is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which also serves as a motivation for the government to create a larger domain of publicly accessible information.
For example, Section 30-4-30(D) of South Carolina’s FOIA requires several categories of information, such as public meeting minutes, to be made publicly available without a FOIA request. Compliance with that legal provision can be achieved if the “public body places the records in a form that is both convenient and practical for use on a publicly available Internet website.” Thus, local governments routinely archive meeting minutes and agendas, which are readily accessible online.
When it comes to espousing its dedication to sunshine, the Aiken Standard is no exception, previewing its participation with a quarter-page ad in its own newspaper. The ad features a photo of the Hotel Aiken, boasts of the paper’s efforts to expose the costs of Project Pascalis, and implores people to contribute to its investigative fund. (Figure 1).
The ads were supplemented with an op-ed by Executive Editor John Boyette touting the Aiken Standard’s and North Augusta Post and Courier’s past investigations, citing “stories ranging from Aiken’s downtown redevelopment efforts to the issues surrounding Wagener’s fire department. We’ve also investigated illegal bus searches along Interstate 20, allegations involving North Augusta’s former football coach, and the trail of legal action involving a developer who was involved with two high-profile local projects.”
In his column, Boyette states that this year’s investigative fundraising goal is $150,000.
Figure 1: Aiken Standard’s March 13th advertisement soliciting money for its Investigative Fund. All information leading to the “expensive truth” was in the public domain and required no FOIA requests. It was common knowledge that the City spent $9.5 million in 2021 on seven downtown properties. The ad neglected the fact that $1.125 million has been recovered through the sale of the Newberry Hall property and that an undetermined amount will be recovered when the remaining properties are sold.
However, when it comes to utilizing FOIA to investigate local city government, the paper’s efforts are a mere pittance.
According to City records, the paper filed only one FOIA request (1) with the City of Aiken in calendar year 2024. The City initially estimated the cost to be $132–but later reduced that by an unidentified amount. (The FOIA request and responses were obtained through a FOIA request, and all the files can be viewed here. )
To be fair, the January 3, 2024 request was actually composed of three incongruous parts that could have been separately filed and thus tripling the number of FOIA requests made by the newspaper in 2024. The information requested included:
1. Various correspondence and records related to Project Pascalis for the months of November and December 2021; including expense reports and emails between former Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant and former Mayor Rick Osbon, Pascalis organizer and investor Ray Massey, AMDC attorney Gary Pope, and, curiously enough, Aiken Standard editor John Boyette.
The response to this request was mostly a denial of records. There were no emails found involving either Pope or Boyette, and both the Osbon and Massey emails were denied with this language:
“Emails are exempt from disclosure. S.C. Ann. Code Section 30-4-40(a)(5) and (9) provide that a public body may exempt from disclosure ‘documents of and documents incidental to proposed sales or purchases of property,’ as well as correspondence ‘relative to efforts or activities of a public body…to attract business or industry to invest in South Carolina.’”
2. A listing of all FOIA requests to the City of Aiken for calendar year 2023.
This request was completed in full.
3. “Correspondence including emails, text messages, and records of phone calls from Aiken Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant regarding Donald Moniakor Don Moniak from June 1, 2023.”
This request yielded some concrete information, but the most critical aspect of the response was a denial of email records showing that former Economic Development Director Tim O’Briant had been conducting personal business while on the City’s time clock, and had used his city email account to conduct personal legal business. :
“Emails that are exempt pursuant to S.C. Code 30-4-40(a)(7) that are correspondence or work products of legal counsel for apublic body and/or any other material that would violate attorney-client relationships; (2)Emails between Mr. O’Briant and his personal legal counsel. Such communications are likely subject to attorney-client privilege in the ongoing civil lawsuit of O’Briant v. Moniak, andFOIA does not supplement or displace the applicable rules of discovery. (See Pope v. Wilson,427 S.C. 377 (S.C. App. 2019); NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U.S. 214 (1978); S.C.Code 30-4-40(a)(4)).”
The paper apparently did not view this transgression as worthy of a spotlight, or even a dim light bulb, even given the fact that Mr. O’Briant “abruptly departed” his position with the city just four weeks earlier.
This is hardly the only example of the Standard not conducting due diligence in its investigative reporting on city affairs. As reported in Which Project Pascalis Records Remain Hidden From Public View, on October 17, 2022, the Aiken Standard submitted a FOIA request to the City of Aiken for information about the Pascalis project. It was the paper’s only known FOIA request from 2022 and 2023 pertaining directly to Project Pascalis.
Request item #9 was for “The conditional purchase and sale agreement between the Aiken Municipal Development Commission and RPM Development Partners.”
In its response, the City also denied that request, citing the SC FOIA exemption for “Documents of and documents incidental to proposed contractual arrangements and documents of and documents incidental to proposed sales or purchases of property.”
However, on November 10, 2022, the Aiken Chronicles published Downtown Aiken Half-Price Sale, which contained a link to the $5 million Purchase and Sale Agreement (PSA) between the AMDC and RPM; the same PSA that the Standard had requested.
The PSA was obtained after it was inadvertently placed in the City’s online document repository on October 21, 2022, about the same time as the Standard’s FOIA request. It was removed on November 11th, the day after the Aiken Chronicles story.
Even though it was a well-read article, the Aiken Standard never reported on the very document that it had requested via FOIA, even after it became publicly available by other means—and remains available.
The paper has chosen since that time to omit from its reporting the very information it had sought via a FOIA request.
Footnote
(1) No answer was made by the Aiken Standard to an email query to confirm the existence of only one FOIA request in one year.
