Personal Injury Attorneyin Augusta, SC.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Eight total earthquakes hit the Palmetto State Wednesday, near Columbia, and some of the aftershocks were felt in areas as far away as Augusta.

The first, a quake registering 3.5 magnitude was recorded at 2:43 p.m. Wednesday three miles east of Elgin.

An Augusta resident reported feeling it as far away as Doctors Hospital.

A magnitude 2.1 aftershock was also felt where the quake occurred, followed by a third magnitude 1.88 quake at around 4 p.m. and a fourth magnitude 1.51 being reported shortly after that.

The fifth, a magnitude 3.6 quake, was reported at 7:03 p.m. After initially being reported as a magnitude 3.34, the USGS revised its report - marking the strongest earthquake felt in South Carolina since 2014.

A pair of aftershocks - magnitude 1.79 and 1.46, respectively - were also reported following the latest quake.

And the eighth and most recent quake hit the Midlands near midnight Thursday. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) reported a 2.4 magnitude earthquake at around 12:23 p.m. It was located about 3 miles to the south west of Lugoff and approximately 4 miles below ground.

Elgin has been a focal point of a so-called swarm of earthquakes lately, including a 3.3-magnitude quake early Sunday.

According to the South Carolina Emergency Management Division, there have now been more than 30 earthquakes near Elgin since Christmas.

Dr. Scott White, director of the South Carolina Seismic Network and a professor at the University of South Carolina’s School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment, said while this activity is unusual, it’s not abnormal for South Carolina or the Southeast.

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Plus “there’s nothing about this that suggests that the earthquakes are going to get any larger,” he said.

That is because, according to White, in the geological record there are almost never foreshocks, which are earthquakes that precede larger earthquakes in the same location. They can happen, but they are quite rare, he said.

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White says that while earthquakes are often measured in magnitude, another detail to consider is intensity. This measures the amount of shaking one may feel from an earthquake at any given location.

He said most of the earthquakes in the Elgin area have been about a 4 in terms of intensity. An intensity of 5 is when you could start to see loose objects fall, White said.

Still, the quakes can be jarring.

“It is terrible to feel something shaking you and you don’t know what it is,” said Elgin resident Carmen L. Jackson. “I mean you’re in the bed and the bed’s shaking. Man, that’s like a horror story on TV.”

WIS and WMBF contributed to this report.

Copyright 2022 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.

NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - Who doesn’t love the feeling of completing a challenge? Especially being the first one to do it.

At North Augusta High School, a class of students did that while learning about local history.

For eight years, Travis Spears has given this challenge.

“There’s a whole lot of history around here, and if you don’t stop and look at it, you would never know it’s there,” said Spears.

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Every year he gives out a list of 27 clues. Each one is a local historic place. The challenge is to find them, go to each one, and take a selfie.

“I love history, so I want to pass that love on to my students, and if this gets them interested, that’s what I want to do,” he said.

No one’s ever completed the challenge. But this year, one group of students went after them all. Normally, you get extra credit for finding the most or a certain number. But they wanted the big prize.

“It’s a pretty big incentive in my class to have a 100 for a test grade,” said Spears.

Kailyn Seider is a student. She said, “I think it definitely like bumped up all of our grades very well.”

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These students say their grades look great now. To earn the prize they had to spend two days together in the car.

“It was a little interesting being stuck in a car with just the four of us for two days,” she said.

They say it was nice to learn about the history all around them. They have no regrets.

“We’re still alive,” said Seider.

They’re alive with good grades knowledge, and lots of memories. Spears gives the challenge before winter break, and students have until the end of the year to complete it.

Copyright 2023 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.

Nobody won the multimillion-dollar top prize in Saturday’s Powerball drawing, but a ticket sold in South Carolina matched enough numbers for a five-digit payday.

A $50,000 winning ticket was sold at a gas station/convenience store in North Augusta, South Carolina Education Lottery officials said Monday in a news release.

So far, the ticket holder has not come forward to claim their prize.

The prize-winning ticket was one number away from matching all of those selected in Saturday night’s Powerball drawing, according to the release.

The ticket matched four of the five white balls, along with the red Powerball number, officials said.

The winning numbers from the drawing were 11, 24, 58, 66, 67 and Powerball: 26.

The ticket was sold at the Circle K store at 226 Georgia Ave., according to the release. That’s near SRP Park, a baseball stadium on the banks of the Savannah River.

The winner has 180 days to claim their prize, according to lottery officials.

The winner will be allowed to retain some privacy, as South Carolina is one of eight states — along with Delaware, Kansas, Georgia, Maryland, North Dakota, Ohio and Texas — that allow lottery winners to remain anonymous.

“Sign the back of your ticket and put it in a safe location until you’re ready to come forward to claim the prize,” lottery officials said.

For complete information on claiming prizes, go to sceducationlottery.com.

The odds of matching four white ball numbers and the red Powerball number are 913,129-to-1, according to the release.

The chances of winning the top prize in a Powerball drawing are 293,000,000-to-1, officials said.

Because there was no jackpot winner, the top prize in Monday night’s Powerball drawing has risen to $131 million.

The convenience store in North Augusta will receive a commission of $500 when the ticket is turned in to lottery officials.

There was another five-digit prize winning ticket from Saturday’s drawing sold in South Carolina, according to the release. A player at Lotto Palace in Mullins also won $50,000 in the Double Play drawing, officials said.

This story was originally published February 27, 2023, 11:54 AM.

One of Nike’s largest events, Peach Jam, will return to North Augusta in 2023. But it is going to take place during the Fourth of July holiday from July 3-9.

The date change comes after the release of the 2022-2023 NCAA recruiting calendar for Division 1 men’s basketball. The new calendar shows a “dead period” during the weeks the tournament has been held previously.

“I think we mentioned this to some of the hotels in the accommodations tax meetings and quite frankly, I think it works to their advantage because people aren’t here in town on the holiday weekends and it’s not like we are a destination for July 4th,” North Augusta Parks and Recreation department head Rick Meyer said. “A lot of people are on their family vacations and a lot of people are going out of town and now you got your hotels filling up.”

Meyer highlighted the importance of keeping Peach Jam in North Augusta and in the Augusta-Aiken area especially for economic and tourism impacts.

“One of the things that the city is noticing is the amount of money, the revenue going up on (accommodations) tax, and Peach Jam has a lot to do with that, especially with them being here a full week. You throw in the Masters, you throw in a full week of Peach Jam and a lot of the other travel events that we have, and you are seeing a lot more hotel rooms and ‘A’ tax money being available for North Augusta organizations to use towards tourism events,” Meyer said.

Meyer said the smaller recruiting-style tournaments, like the Peach Invitational Tournament or Adidas’ summer basketball circuit 3SSB in Rock Hill, allow for more teams to stay locally and impact tourism.

“You have a new hotel being built at Exit 5 which would add to that ‘A’ tax money because for years all of that money has been going to Augusta,” Meyer said. “You can’t find a hotel room in Aiken during Peach Jam because of all the auxiliary events that come with the Peach Jam and we are going to see that again in 2023 and might even see even more teams in the area.”

“They know the NCAA is limiting the number of live events they can have, therefore they want to do as much as they can when they come here because college coaches want to see as many players as possible, and not every team and every player qualifies for the Peach Jam,” Meyer continued. “It makes it convenient for the college coaches if they are playing in Augusta or they are playing in Aiken, they are there.”

Meyer is appreciative of Nike returning year after year to Riverview Park.

“The economic impact, the real winner is the communities and the surrounding areas, the business people, the hotels, restaurants and gas stations,” Meyer said. “To have all of those people in our town and know our town, if we haven’t said it before or a million times, I can go on vacation and wear a Peach Jam shirt and people go Peach Jam – North Augusta, South Carolina. They know our community and we are branded now.”

Construction of a new copper-smelting and metals recycling plant not far from North Augusta is supposed to begin later this year, but its potential to emit a large number of pollutants in an area already given poor marks for air quality has prompted sharp criticism from a local environmental watchdog.

Construction of the facility was announced by its German ownership at the end of last year; its 150 acres will be part of the Augusta Corporate Park on Valencia Way, just off Mike Padgett Highway on Augusta’s south side.

The new plant is expected to create more than 125 jobs, but it’s also expected to add to an air quality problem already exacerbated by decades of industrial activity, asserts local environmental non-profit Savannah Riverkeeper.

The Savannah Riverkeeper submitted nine pages of formal comment to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GaEPD) in opposition to Aurubis Richmond, LLC’s new industrial facility and the requests the company made in its air quality permit application.

The Riverkeeper asserted Aurubis’ permit request “includes a shockingly high number, over 30, of highly dangerous pollutants, from arsenic to o-Xylene, to be released in and around the facility.”

The permit application, obtained on request by Post and Courier North Augusta from GaEPD, does list exactly 30 contaminants that are expected to be released as a result of operations at the Aurubis facility. Included in that list are both arsenic and o-Xylene, as well as the carcinogens beryllium, cadmium, chromium and nickel.

The Riverkeeper, headed by executive director Tonya Bonitatibus, said in its comments submitted to GaEPD that allowing the new plant to discharge pollutants at the volumes requested in Aurubis’ permit application would be “irresponsible and un-protective of the citizens our state Environmental Agency works to protect.”

“This is a facility requesting the ability to handle a large number of hazardous chemicals many of which if incorrectly handled could create legacy groundwater, soil and surface water contamination our community will have to deal with long after the company is gone,” the letter continues.

Though not required to do so, GaEPD may hold a hearing on the permit application if director Richard Dunn decides that doing so would aid the body in reviewing whether Aurubis’ facility would be able to meet state and federal guidelines.

In the submitted comments to GaEPD, the Riverkeeper requested that the permit application be denied as currently written and that a 90-day extension be given to the review process.

The Riverkeeper also requested more information be given about how Aurubis will finance its facility, specifically the “bonds, insurance, and funds Aurubis will be required to maintain to ensure the protection of our citizens both from pollution” and from any economic burden that might otherwise come down to the taxpayer should the operations not produce what the company promises.

“In the unfortunate event that hazardous materials are leaked, spilled, or escaped from this facility, what are the steps and financial coverage set up to ensure that the state and federal governments are not left with the remediation and cleanup bill?” the Riverkeeper asked GaEPD.

Despite the environmental challenges ahead, Aurubis’ Augusta project received a boost of long-term confidence by the city of Augusta on May 31 when a Richmond County judge authorized the city’s Economic Development Authority to issue a maximum of $760 million in revenue bonds to “finance a portion of” the Aurubis plant.

Revenue bonds, unlike General Obligation bonds, are project-specific and paid back by the revenues generated by the project, in this case by the revenues that the Aurubis plant would take in through its operations.

The bond issue was authorized in three installments, with the first series A bonds not to exceed $360 million or an amount just above Aurubis’ original promise that its Augusta plant would be a $340 million investment in the area.

The series B bonds would be issued later on at a maximum $150 million, and the final series C bonds at a maximum $250 million.

Aurubis’ new plant is expected to create more than 125 jobs, according to a Nov. 10, 2021, news release from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office. The announcement had been made jointly with the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

Construction of the plant is expected to begin later this year with commissioning to start in the first half of 2024. The plant would be fully online for production beginning in the latter half of 2024.

Operations at the facility would take circuit boards and copper cable and process the materials into some 35,000 metric tons (or about 77.2 million pounds) of blister copper annually. That material would then be further processed into other industrial and precious metals, largely at its European smelter sites, according to Aurubis’ own news release.

The company’s ownership stated in that same news release that the Augusta facility is “a clear affirmation of the circular economy and the goal of carbon neutrality” and that the company “considers itself a provider of solutions for ecologically sustainable business activity to accelerate decarbonization.”

Aurubis also stated in the announcement that it has a goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050.

But how its new Augusta plant might fit into that goal still raised questions around how its emissions — those pollutants that are readily measured and controlled, but also “fugitive,” or escaped, emissions assumed to travel offsite — will directly impact the area.

“Those [fugitive] emissions should be aggressively minimized,” the Riverkeeper urged in the pages of comment sent to GaEPD. Raw materials “should be contained in warehouses and dust should be aggressively mitigated. Stormwater controls should require proper filtering of stormwater to ensure pollutants used on site have been removed from the stormwater before leaving the site.”

“A facility unable to reduce its waste stream to a more manageable level should not locate in a community where air quality is already a serious concern,” the Riverkeeper said.

The American Lung Association has repeatedly listed Augusta among the most polluted metropolitan areas for air quality, and the city’s position on that list has only worsened over each of past three years.

Data collected from 2018-2020 and published in April of this year put Augusta at #25 most polluted for year-round particle pollution (aka soot). That was a worsening from #28 on the Association’s 2021 list and from #36 in 2020.

The Association’s annual air quality report card, “State of the Air,” measures the effects of particle pollution and ozone pollution (aka smog) on citizens living in U.S. metropolitan areas.

“This area already suffers from relic heavy metal toxicity, which this plant could exacerbate,” the Riverkeeper said in its comments submitted to GaEPD. “Much of the relic contamination still sits in the soil and waterways around the area, waiting on taxpayer funds to remediate messes created from other industrial endeavors.”

South Augusta in particular, where the new Aurubis plant would be located, has seen a greater share of bad air.

Not far from the industrial corridor is the now abandoned and predominantly African American Hyde Park neighborhood.

The city of Augusta was forced to relocate the neighborhood several years ago after dangerous chemicals found in the ground water there were linked to higher-than-normal incidence rates for certain cancers and birth defects.

No mention of Hyde Park was made in the comments submitted to GaEPD by the Savannah Riverkeeper, but the Riverkeeper did point out the area’s large Black population and said that Aurubis’ new facility comes with “clear environmental justice implications.”