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EDGEFIELD, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - A tank full of bad gas left a woman in Edgefield County stuck with a $1,600 bill after her car broke down.

Some Edgefield residents stopped by a local gas station for their normal fill-up but didn’t realize the gas they put in their cars was bad.

“I was getting a traction control light. I was getting a check engine light. I could push the pedal all the way down to the floor, and RPMs just kind of stayed in right under 1000 and wouldn’t give it any more power than that,” said Brittany Jolicoeur, Edgefield resident.

The South Carolina Department of Agriculture tested it and showed the gas had water or sediment.

She says it caused her new truck to break down.

“It was kind of scary. I had both of my kids in the car. They were freaking out. They didn’t know what was going on. Obviously, I was upset,” she said.

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She works in an auto parts store, and she found out her car wasn’t the only one.

“Several of my mechanics were coming in telling me they’re replacing fuel pumps. They’re having to flush systems. They’re dropping gas tanks. They are doing all of these things due to the bad fuel that everybody got from the same fuel station,” said Jolicoeur.

She says insurance told her they wouldn’t cover the costs.

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She says the station bagged the pump, and she saw changes being made. The gas station owner is paying for her damage.

After a three-week battle with pumping bad gas, it makes her question every time she fills up.

“I’m scared to get gas anywhere because I even said to the insurance company, you know, I was quite upset. This is my main means of transportation and when they started speaking on negligence I said, ‘what am I supposed to do? Test the gas before I put it on my vehicle,” she asked.

We spoke with the owner of this gas station, and he says he recently bought this station, and once he heard of the problem, he fixed it. The Department of Agriculture was on site Tuesday and they confirmed fixes have been made.

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COLUMBIA – Gov. Henry McMaster and administration officials announced a long-awaited plan to respond to the impact of climate change on a growing population. Released June 29, the plan focuses on beefing up the state’s data collection efforts and conserving the state’s natural defenses against rising seas and stronger storms.

The hefty report, which runs 746 pages and contains more than 50 recommendations, focuses on better data collection efforts, mitigating flooding by conserving natural environments like swamps and forests and encouraging local governments to introduce regulations that reduce risky development in flood-prone areas.

The new effort is the direct work of the state’s Office of Resilience, a cabinet agency that was created in 2021. Building resilience to increasingly strong storms is an ambitious goal for a new agency. The question remains: what will change for communities most affected by hurricanes?

A new focus on anticipating storm impacts is one of them.

“This work and our history is very tied to hurricanes,” said Carissa Cochrane, the communications director for the South Carolina Office of Resilience. The predecessor of her current office was a temporary agency that went by another name — the South Carolina Disaster Recovery Office — which was formed in 2015 during the aftermath of Hurricane Joaquin.

Cochrane said the term “resilience” came to the forefront in the years the temporary agency was responding to Joaquin and later on hurricanes Matthew and Florence. In addressing hurricane recovery, she said, the state realized it needed to do a better job at collecting data, anticipating flood waters, increasing community awareness and safeguarding protective area that already exist.

They also were intentional about defining what resilience means for South Carolina.

“We define resilience as the ability of communities, economies and ecosystems to anticipate, absorb, recover and thrive when presented with environmental changes and natural hazards,” said Cochrane.

One of the visible changes that coastal communities can expect as a result of the plan is a new flood hazard signage program. This will provide road signs that point out the high water mark in places with high storm surge. The height of the sign will be the height of high water mark, said Cochrane, and will help increase public awareness of hazard areas.

Another visible outcome will be the conservation of undeveloped natural areas, like coastal wetlands and forests, that already provide flood protection and mitigation.

The resilience office plans to hold public meetings within the state’s eight watersheds to get local input on which areas should be prioritized for conservation and other resilience planning decisions. At the beginning of 2023, the office received a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Federation to hold a series of public meetings in the Salkehatchie River Basin. Cochrane said that could be a model to replicate in the state’s seven other watersheds.

Coastal communities will not see these new flood signs or conserved areas pop up any time this year. Those projects will take time to roll out.

But state officials and the governor insisted that plan will provide an immediate benefit for this year’s hurricane season: a much expanded effort to collect better data on flooding and flooded communities.

“Our state has a lot of water,” McMaster told the press. Mostly, that’s a good thing, he said. “But we will have a problem if we don’t take the steps to find out what water we have, where we have it, when we have it.”

The state’s resilience plan is backed up some $200 million in funding McMaster secured from the legislature in this year’s budget negotiations for resiliency efforts.

The office also hopes to move quickly to drastically increase the number of weather stations and river and groundwater monitors around the state. The move will improve understanding of water patterns and how they’re changing, as well as improve the state’s ability to adapt and predict, said Alex Butler, the Office’s Resilience Planning Director, who led the creation of the report.

For instance, recent studies have shown that not only are South Carolina’s tides rising with climate change, the state’s coast is sinking, Butler said. But there aren’t any on-the-ground sensors measuring the phenomenon. It was discovered through remote sensing, which is often done with aerial or satellite observation, he said. The office hopes to change that, and fast.

Finally, the state hopes to use education, outreach and encouragement to local communities to introduce more stringent building regulations to ensure more homes and businesses aren’t built in risky areas. Butler said the office also hopes to create a “pre-disaster buyout” program that would offer cash to homeowners in flood-prone regions to move out before catastrophes. The current program only buys out homeowners after storms.

The resilience office intends to take the new plan on a statewide “road show” in the coming months to coordinate with local officials and watershed districts, Butler said.

The strategy offers another view of McMaster’s approach to climate change, which none of the speakers mentioned directly during the announcement.

McMaster has focused on adapting the state to climate change with a strong emphasis on conservation, while efforts to stem carbon emissions are not directly mentioned. Yet, McMaster has become a national leader on promoting electric vehicles and hosted a recent energy summit in Columbia that featured significant discussion of nuclear technology.

The resilience report itself contains myriad references to climate change and climate science.

“Here in South Carolina under the governor’s leadership, we’ve been able to dispel that you have to choose between economic and environmental sustainability,” Tom Mullikin, the former chairman of the S.C. Floodwater Commission and who has been deeply involved in shaping the state’s resilience policy, said June 29.

South Carolina is the second to last state on the Eastern Seaboard to adopt a resilience plan. But Ben Duncan, the state’s chief resilience officer, stressed that they have been working on many of the initiatives outlined in the report since the office was founded in 2020.

“Every state has taken this differently. I wouldn’t say we’re late to the party, but … certainly there’s no time to lose,” Butler said.

Hurricane Wire is a pop-up newsletter during hurricane season that delivers anyone who lives on the East Coast all the information they need to know as storms brew in the Atlantic and beyond.

If a town's population falls below fifty, they are no longer allowed to keep town status in South Carolina.

COPE, S.C. — The town of Cope received word that they may no longer be able to maintain status as a town due to lack of population.

South Carolina Secretary of State Mark Hammond sent a letter to the Cope Mayor Janet Joy on October 4th saying the census showed the town’s population fell below fifty. That’s the minimum number of residents for a place to be called a town.

But Joy disputed that and provided the secretary of state with a list that shows it has sixty one residents as part of an appeal letter. So now, the secretary of state’s office is checking with the South Carolina Revenue and Fiscal Affairs office about the addresses provided by the mayor.

Meanwhile, Orangeburg County Administrator Harold Young says if the appeal does not go through, it won’t be a strain on the county.

"Well the fortunate part about it is Cope is not one of our larger towns,” said Young. “So they don't have a whole lot of stuff the county would have to deal with."

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Young says millage for property taxes would have to be added to the cope residents and says that taxes for cope residents would have to change if they are found to not be a town.

"As far as the county is concerned,” said Young. “We will still support that community just like we have done all the other seventeen municipalities over the years. it's just that somethings the county would have to take over. If the appeal is not approved then they would lose their ability to tax. So we would have to change the millage rate for the town limits to incorporate that in the county millage and not the town millage."

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The Office for the Secretary of State expects the address verification to be completed before the end of the week. If it’s correct, they may get to stay a town after all.

The 2020 census reported the town's population as 37, a decline of 77 from the 2010 census.

The small population was not much of an issue until Oct. 4, when S.C. Secretary of State Mark Hammond sent Mayor Janet Joye a letter warning her that the town would be disincorporated since the population fell below 50.

Hammond’s notice followed a letter his office received from the S.C. Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office. The letter notes the town's “certificate of municipality must be automatically forfeited and void” as part of the state's 1962 disincorporation law.

The law states “when following its incorporation a municipality’s population has decreased to less than fifty inhabitants, the certificate of the municipality must be automatically forfeited and void.”

Because the law does not specify how the population should be measured or the process used to forfeit the incorporation, the town immediately challenged the census count and the threat of disincorporation by conducting a face-to-face count of individuals living inside the city limits.

This effort resulted in a population count of 61 people, above the 50 required to remain incorporated.

The Secretary of State's office confirmed Oct. 18 that it received updated information from the town and has begun the process of verifying the addresses provided with Revenue and Fiscal Affairs to determine if the individuals do in fact live within the town limits.

As of Oct. 23, the office was still awaiting verification that the addresses provided are within the town limits of Cope, according to the office's general counsel and Public Information Director Shannon Wiley.

Once that information is received, Joye will provide an affidavit that affirms the information on the residents living at those addresses is correct.

The Secretary of State's Office is holding off on officially disincorporating the town until population numbers are verified.

Mayoral candidate William Workman IV says he fully expects to maintain the town's status.

“We don't want to be taken over by the county,” Workman said. “We prefer to take care of our own business.”

Joye could not be reached for comment.

Cope resident and Cope Baptist Church pastor Anthony Day said he is happy the town will remain incorporated.

“Not being unincorporated is a good thing. As a town, I think it helps us out a little bit, but if it does ever eventually become unincorporated, we will have to cross that bridge when we get there,” Day said.

He does not feel like he is lacking for services despite Cope's size.

“The town does a great job of keeping the small town vibe,” Day continued. “I think that is what a lot of these residents enjoy. The small town vibe of Cope. I think that is why people still live here. You don't deal with the city traffic. You don't deal with the city problems.”

“You deal with the small town,” Day continued. “Everybody knows everybody and when things take place, your neighbors are there to help you as well.”

“The fire department is only, what, a half a mile from the actual town itself,” Day said. “We have a great volunteer fire department – very fast to react when things are taking place.”

“On paper it may look like we are slowly fading away, but in real life we are here,” Day said.

Senator acts

The threat of disincorporation caught the attention of Sen. Vernon Stephens, D-Bowman.

Stephens sent the Secretary of State's office a letter on Oct. 13 informing them about the town's efforts to rectify the situation.

Stephens said he felt like he needed to get involved because he represents the town and was informed of the state law.

He spoke with town council members, Orangeburg County administration, the Lower Savannah Council of Governments, the Municipal Association of South Carolina and the Orangeburg County Voter Registration and Elections Office and all seemed to be OK with the town still being in existence.

“It was my responsibility to initiate and try to rectify the situation,” Stephens said.

Stephens said he hand-delivered the letter to the Secretary of State's office.

“The lack of individuals goes back to the census and individuals not filling out the census,” Stephens said. “We have a substantial undercount in Orangeburg County and most rural counties have such.”

Stephens is confident the face-to-face count is accurate and will save the Town of Cope.

“We made sure all our i’s were dotted and t’s crossed,” Stephens said. He asked the Secretary of State to expedite a decision on the matter.

“Time is of the essence as it is the season for setting millage rates and for preparing for elections,” Stephens wrote.

Unchartered territory

Cope is in some relatively unchartered territory if it does in fact become disincorporated.

Wiley said she could not answer questions related to what will happen to services the town provides for its residents, what will happen with the taxes collected, or what role the state will play in helping the town.

“There is little to no statutory guidance on this,” Wiley sad. “Also, the Secretary of State’s Office does not have the statutory authority to ‘wind up’ a town or dispose of its assets or liabilities.”

Cope is not alone in seeing its incorporation status threatened.

Jenkinsville in Fairfield County has a population of 40. There were 46 living in the town during the 2010 census. The town also got a letter of warning about its incorporation status.

Cope and Jenkinsville may not be the only towns to have their incorporation status in jeopardy over the coming decades.

Population trends show the state's urban areas are growing while its rural areas are hemorrhaging population.

Currently, South Carolina has about 271 towns and cities and 14 have less than 100 people.

Govan in Bamberg County is the fifth least-populated town in the state with only 56 people, according to the 2020 census. The town's population at the 2010 census was 65.

In Govan’s 2021 election, Wilma Edmonds received all 12 cast votes. There were no other candidates running for the position and no write-in votes.

The other council members also each received 12 votes and none was opposed.

Edmonds could not be reached for comment.

According to the Secretary of State's office, Cope and Jenkinsville will be the first towns in decades to be forced to surrender their incorporation because the population dropped below 50.

“Our office does not have records indicating that a town in Orangeburg, Calhoun or Bamberg counties has had its charter forfeited and voided due to a drop in population,” Wiley said. “The towns that have lost their municipal charter based on a population decrease have been in other counties (McCormick, Aiken, Darlington, Marion and Allendale).”

Cope's governing body

Cope's five-member town council currently meets quarterly and deals with business such as organizing an annual Christmas parade.

Otherwise, its responsibilities are few.

Workman IV says the town has enough of a tax base to provide for its residents despite its small size.

“We keep the town clean, we cut the grass,” he said. “We keep the parks up, the basketball court and the tennis courts up.”

The town receives its electricity from Dominion Energy, its water from the Orangeburg Department of Public Utilities and its gas from Bamberg. Police protection is from the Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office and the S.C. Highway Patrol, and fire protection is from the Orangeburg County Fire District.

The town also has Internet access with AT&T.

The town has used state funds to help build parks and a walking trail.

The state provides funding for towns and cities through the Local Government Fund, but that funding is based on population or the local share of taxes collected on specific businesses.

Cope is expected to receive less than $1,000 from the state as part of the Local Government Fund.

Joye has been mayor since 1992 but did not file for re-election this year. Workman IV is the only one to file for the seat.

Marlene, Workman's wife, has filed for re-election to town council. Workman's son, Billy Workman V, has also filed for election to council.

Two of the other council seats are filled by husband and wife Darren and Jean-Marie Jump.

The couple also did not file for re-election but are running as write-in candidates.

If all the seats are not filled, a special election will be held to fill the vacant seats, according to Orangeburg County Voter Registration and Elections Director Aurora Smalls.

Cope

The Town of Cope used to be more populated back in the day.

According to the historical census population data, the town had 280 residents in 1940. This was the high-water mark, population-wise.

In addition to a small population, Cope is also small in size. The town is only half a square mile.

The Town of Cope was named for Jacob Martin Cope, who sold a portion of his land in the 1890s to be used for the town and train depot.

The Manchester and August Railroad was established in 1894 (the same year the town was established) and the tracks were later used by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

The railroad brought commerce and people to Cope.

In a few years, the town had two churches, general stores such as the Vallentines Store, a grist mill and a cotton gin, according to historical archives.

The town stopped being a railroad stop in the 1960s.

Today, Cope has no retail businesses aside from a small post office.

The rail line running through town carries only coal for Dominion Energy's power plant and many of the buildings in the center of town are empty reminders of what Cope once had — a bank, a general store and a phone company.

That layer of green powder blanketing your car signals the annual springtime onslaught of pollen in the Upstate and the allergies it triggers.

The pollen count was high on Wednesday and is forecast to be high at least through Sunday, according to pollen.com, a North Carolina health information and research company.

Trees are the current culprit sending out pollen as part of their annual reproductive cycle.

And as spring unfolds, it's keeping allergists occupied.

“We have been very busy,” said Dr. Emil Sarmiento of the Allergic Disease and Asthma Center in Greenville.

“It started really strong in February, and then the rain came and ... brought down the pollen count,” he said.

“But once the weather settled, the pollen count went up," he added. "And all that water was good for the trees, which start pollinating. We’re getting the vengeance of the trees now.”

Mold spores have also been a problem because of all the rain in recent months, he said.

So if you’ve got the tell-tale runny nose, itchy eyes, sneezing and other symptoms associated with seasonal allergies, what can you do?

Sarmiento offers these helpful tips:

1. Do what you can to avoid the pollen.

“Pollen counts are highest between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.,” he said. “So you should postpone your outdoor activities until after 5 p.m. or before 10 a.m.”

2. Stay clean

Because pollen sticks to the hair, eye lashes, clothes and skin, shower and wash your hair after coming in from outdoors and wash clothes with hot water making sure to machine dry them and not hang them outside, he said.

3. Stay covered

Wear a mask and/or sunglasses or goggles and gloves while gardening or mowing the lawn, he said, and close the windows in your home and car to keep the pollen out.

4. Take your medicine.

“There’s a lot of over-the-counter medication ... that's available now, like Xyzal, and the generic, Levocetirizine,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour antihistamine. Some people may get sleepy ... so I tell people to take it at night.”

Nasal sprays like Flonase and Nasonex, and their generic counterparts, can help congestion and inflammation and are now affordable over-the-counter options as well, he said.

“But don’t overuse it,” he said. “If it says to take it once a day, take it once a day."

There are new eye drops on the market as well, such as Pazeo, that will calm itchy eyes, he said.

5. Get evaluated

If you still have symptoms in spite of taking those medicines, Sarmiento advises seeing a doctor for an allergy evaluation to learn what substance or substances are triggering your allergies. Allergy shots are available for those people as well as pills for some allergens, he said.

And there are newer medications on the market for a subset of patients whose symptoms aren’t controlled by high-dose steroids and inhalers, he said. Those drugs reduce symptoms by affecting the body’s immune response to allergens.

The Upstate is in for several more months of troublesome pollen that will plague allergy sufferers.

“For people with allergic asthma, tree pollen is an important trigger,” he said. “We now have tree pollen until mid-May and then grass pollen.”

And of course, ragweed season starts in late summer.

For the daily pollen count, go to pollen.com.