Anderson County, South Carolina is seeking a $450,000 loan to help finance the final cleanups of the old Toxaway and Pelzer mills.
Once those cleanups are finished, both sites — which were home to thriving textile mills for decades — will be ready for redevelopment.
On Gossett Street in Anderson, bricks, concrete and construction debris remain and about 5 acres of the Toxaway Mill property still needs attention. On the Pelzer Mill property, a small burned warehouse is waiting to be demolished. Other debris and asbestos will be removed before erosion-control work is done on 7.5 acres near the Saluda River.
About $200,000 of the loan would be used on the Toxaway site and $250,000 would be used in Pelzer, according to county documents.
“Getting these two sites cleaned up would mean so much to the neighborhoods built around them,” said Michael Forman, Anderson County’s planning and community development manager. “These properties are craters in their communities — reminders of what’s gone — and huge safety concerns. Cleaning them up helps not only physically improve a community, it psychologically improves it.”
The county is seeking money from the state’s Brownfields Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund. The fund is made possible through a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Up to 30 percent of the loan — $135,000 — may be forgiven. These loans are designated specifically for sites that are considered “brownfields” — properties that have been contaminated and thus are harder to redevelop.