By admin 
Worried about chemical pollution that had been found in the soil of a new elementary school, Brady Hill asked South Carolina’s environmental agency for records that would detail the threat children face when they romp on the playground during recess.
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But the price tag for seeing those records was something few people could afford. It would cost him $2.4 million for the records, the S.C. Department of Environmental Services said. And he’d have to make a $605,000 deposit for the agency to even process his Freedom of Information Act request.
Hill was stunned.
“What went through my mind was ‘What the hell?’ ‘’ Hill said. “I was surprised. But then I said this is them telling me no, without telling me no.”
The S.C. Department of Environmental Services response is believed to be one of the highest amounts ever proposed to pay for an open records request in South Carolina —- and it drew blistering criticism from an array of sources.
Some said the agency was trying to hide information about a growing problem with forever chemical pollution that it doesn’t want to deal with in eastern South Carolina. Other critics said department staffers were not competent enough to properly respond to a Freedom of Information Act request.
“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’’ said state Rep. Joseph Bustos, a Charleston area Republican critical of the agency’s efforts to control forever chemical pollution in South Carolina. “It’s an effort to dissuade them from … getting information. If somebody can’t afford to pay, they (DES) are clearly trying to stop it.’’
Brad Turley, a Chesterfield County landowner who has had extensive dealings with DES over its environmental protection policies, said the response may be more basic than an effort to hide information.
More likely, it’s an example of an agency that is too rooted in procedure that doesn’t stress that employees use common sense, he said. Had department staff members thought about it, they would have realized that sending Hill notice that the cost to fulfill his request would be $2.4 million is ridiculous, Turley said. Either way, the agency’s bureaucracy has failed children, he said.
“Their management team is letting down a bunch of children and they are playing financial games that are absurd,’’ Turley said. “You are not taking care of kids. You play this financial game of $2.4 million for public information? The absurdity of this is surreal.’’
Hill submitted the open records request to find out why the environmental department said the playground was safe, even though the agency had found measurable levels of forever chemical pollution in the soil at Black Creek Elementary School in Darlington County.
Forever chemicals are contaminants of growing concern across the country and in South Carolina. They can cause an array of ailments, ranging from certain types of cancer to thyroid problems in those who are exposed. Exposure is largely through ingestion, but exposure to polluted soil also can carry hazards.
Hill, a 42-year-old septic tank installer who is running for Darlington County Council, asked for emails, test results of forever chemicals, a risk assessment the agency used to determine the site was safe, soil sample analysis reports and modeling data. The emails he was seeking included correspondence between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Environmental Services.
He asked the agency to let him know if the cost would exceed $100. Information Hill sought included data on forever chemicals known as PFOA and PFOS that have been found on the Black Creek Elementary School property.
The department told him his request would generate more than 3 million emails, which drove up the cost of complying with the request. The agency suggested he refine his request. Hill said he was looking only for information during the past six months on the school property.
Hill said he believes the agency knows it was mistaken. A staff member called him at 6:30 p .m. Friday, a time after agency business hours, to tell him she would look into the matter.
In an email Monday to The State, the department said it will not charge $2.4 million. It was only trying to explain that to respond, it would require releasing more than three million documents, according to an email from spokeswoman Laura Renwick.
The agency is now working to fulfill an updated open records request, she said. Renwick did not provide a cost estimate. The department called the July 5 open records request “extremely broad, including every agency email containing the words PFAS and PFOS, rather than exclusively targeting the topic of interest.’’
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In response, Hill said Monday that his request was clear that all he wanted was information about the elementary school, which is not overly broad.
“They’re trying to cover their tracks,’’ Hill said. “Stuff pertaining to the school was all I was asking for. I was pretty specific.’’
At issue is the discovery earlier this year of forever chemicals in the soil at Black Creek Elementary School, which opened in 2025 with about 700 students.
Contractors built the school on land that had once been used as a sludge disposal site by an industry that for decades sent the waste material to area farmers for use as fertilizer. This past spring, after the school opened, a group of local residents and The State newspaper found out about the land’s previous use for sludge disposal by the Galey and Lord textile plant.
The site is among some 300 farm fields in the area that the state approved for use by Galey and Lord for sludge disposal, only to learn years later that the sludge was contaminated with forever chemicals. A handful of fields approved by the state environmental agency for sludge spreading beginning in the 1990s later showed high levels of forever chemicals in the dirt, according to government tests and research by Yale University.
That has left farmers and landowners wanting to know more about the potentially widespread pollution from Galey and Lord, a now abandoned property in Society Hill that is a federal Superfund cleanup site.
Officials with the Department of Environmental Services revealed last month that forever chemicals had been found in the soil at Black Creek Elementary, but said the department and the EPA had done risk assessments that determined the pollution was not of immediate concern.
The highest levels for PFOA were 1,200 parts per trillion. The highest levels for PFOS were 7,100 parts per trillion, the agency reported at the time.. Hill is seeking more information.
The agency suggested the school district take steps, such as putting grass, mulch or other material on the school playgrounds to “further reduce any potential exposure.’’
Jay Bender, an attorney and expert on the state’s open records law, said the Department of Environmental Services didn’t need to charge anything.
Under the state’s Freedom of Information Act, any agency can waive fees to provide public information if it is in the public interest, Bender said in an email.
“I would think that disclosing information that might be relevant to the health and safety of school children at a specific school would be in the public interest and available at no charge,’’ Bender said in an email to The State.
The problem, he said, is that the law also allows agencies to charge for the time it takes to redact certain parts of FOIA responses. Agencies, he said, often use this section of the law to avoid providing information, he said.
“Public bodies have embraced this charge as a method to impose financial barriers to the disclosure of public records,’’ Bender said in an email. “Even with public bodies gleefully asserting proposed charges that seem to bear no relationship to reality, I have not heard of a $2.5 million demand for retrieval of public records.
“The open records law is quite clear that the assertion of exemptions from mandatory disclosure is discretionary with the public body. In other words, very little information is required to be redacted.’’
Criticism about the environmental department’s responses to the public isn’t the first the agency has encountered this year. In March, the agency threatened to sue a local farmer for putting up signs with the department’s logo on it about an upcoming public meeting.
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