Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 21, 1992                   TAG: 9203240118
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HOLLY HILL, S.C.                                LENGTH: Medium

BURNING ISSUE IS MORE A MATTER OF CONTRASTS

And so are the attitudes toward burning hazardous waste.

In Botetourt County, hundreds of citizens organized to fight a plan by Tarmac/Roanoke Cement Co. to burn hazardous waste as a fuel in its cement process. The group also hired a lawyer to help in the battle.

But in this rural community between Charleston and Columbia, nobody protested when two cement plants within two miles of each other started burning hazardous waste four years ago.

In fact, when the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control advertised in the local newspapers for comments on the waste-burning proposals, it received one response: from one of the cement plants asking for copies of any comments the department received.

Why such a contrast?

Perhaps a comparison of the two regions will explain.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a report saying that poor areas and areas heavily populated by blacks or other minorities often are targeted for controversial or potentially harmful industries.

A drive down almost any road in this community that shares its land with the Four Holes Swamp will quickly tell you it fits the EPA profile. The people here are mostly poor. Most live in trailers, run-down shacks and modest brick ranch houses perched on cinder blocks above the wet ground.

Many drive old cars and wear clothes that went out of style 15 years ago. It isn't unusual to find goats grazing in yards or porches piled with old belongings, or newly-pulled heaps of turnips at the edge of fields. There are few of the $200,000 homes common to subdivisions in southern Botetourt County.

"They're usually more concerned about whether their dirt roads are going to be scraped," said Gary Smoak, the County Administrator for Orangeburg County, where Holly Hill is.

People here are too consumed with earning a living to pay attention to environmental issues, he said. "As a general rule, that sort of thing doesn't excite the public around here."

The average household income in Orangeburg County for 1980, the latest year income statistics are available, was $11,500 a year, although Smoak said near Holly Hill the average is probably even less. The area also is about 60 percent black.

Botetourt County is less than 5 percent black, and its average household income in 1980 was $17,000. More significant, however, is its independence from the cement industry. Many of Botetourt's residents work in Roanoke and have no ties to Tarmac.

Around Holly Hill, the cement industry is the dominant employer.

As explained by Bill McIntosh, an environmentalist at the Citizens Local Environmental Action Network in Columbia, "That area of the state is not exactly a hotbed of environmentalism or anything else."