Building Our City | Green Diamond project revived

Developers want city to annex Congaree River property

By CLIF LeBLANC and DAWN HINSHAW - cleblanc@thestate.com dhinshaw@thestate.com

Developers who for a decade have pushed to build a $1 billion community south of the capital city have launched a third attempt — this time by leapfrogging a river and trying to be annexed into the city of Cayce.

Columbia Venture petitioned Cayce within the last week to annex 3,000 acres in Richland County.

Cayce Mayor Avery Wilkerson said Thursday the city is poised to do just that.

A scaled-back version of the controversial Green Diamond development gained new life Nov. 2 when a federal judge clarified an earlier decision to open more land to development in the “city within a city.”

The project has been attractive to some officials because it offered golf course homes, shopping and high-tech businesses to replace farmland prone to flooding.

But detractors worried about the risks of investing in flood-prone lowlands, the cost of bolstering levees and how a diverted Congaree River might flood homes in Cayce.

A lawsuit by Columbia Venture over how much of the property can be developed has not been resolved.

Wilkerson predicted Thursday the council unanimously will accept the request to enlarge Cayce by about one-third.

“My job is to provide for economic development for the city,” said Wilkerson, a longtime backer of the Green Diamond proposal in Richland County. “It sounds like a good way to expand our city and control our own destiny.”

Wilkerson said the developers have not laid out a full plan for the property and he has not pressed them for one. The annexation faces its first vote Dec. 17 and could become final as early as Dec. 27.

Efforts Thursday to reach executives of Columbia Venture and its partner, Burroughs & Chapin Co. of Myrtle Beach, were unsuccessful.

But Green Diamond opponents quickly attacked the annexation plan.

Blan Holman, an attorney representing Cayce residents who oppose the project, said Wilkerson has turned his back on them.

“The mayor, who’s supposed to be looking out for their interests, has apparently struck some kind of deal with developers across the river,” said Holman, a lawyer at North Carolina’s Southern Environmental Law Center.

Wilkerson said he is looking out for his city. “It’s totally the opposite.”

Cayce businessman Chris Kueny, a longtime Green Diamond opponent, said the developers are shopping for a friendly government.

“Now, because Richland County would not let them do anything in there, they found a jurisdiction that would,” Kueny said.

Columbia officials also did not accept an alternate development Columbia Venture proposed a year ago.

The plan has been stalled in part because of a half-dozen changes since 1999 in a federal flood map, which restricts where structures can be built.

In November 2005, federal Judge Margaret Seymour threw out a flood map devised in 2001 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That map placed 70 percent of Green Diamond’s 4,500 acres in the floodway, where construction is banned.

After two years of legal wrangling, Seymour wrote a clarification earlier this month that reinstated a 1995 map. That opened more of Columbia Venture’s land to development.

“It’s kind of like ‘Chuckie,’ the movie,” said Richland Councilwoman Kit Smith, a longtime critic. “They thought he was dead, and he keeps coming back.”

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Wilkerson said the developers have offered general descriptions of their plans for the property — a mixture of residential and commercial projects and greenways.

He and two supporters of the plan told a Wednesday night gathering of Riverland Park residents that new levees would be built 500 feet farther inland from the older levees, said Kueny, who attended.

People in that neighborhood, which is prone to flooding, worry that new Columbia-side levees would divert water into their homes during a major flood.

“All the science says it will raise the water levels and force water on our side of the river,” said Kueny, whose riverfront yard floods during heavy rains.

The effectiveness of levees has been thrown into question because of climate change and the destructiveness of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, said David Conrad, a water resources specialist with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, D.C.

“Katrina was a wake-up call for many communities, because it recognized that levees are not fail-safe,” Conrad said.

Wilkerson said he has not pressed Columbia Venture for details or discussed who would build and maintain water and sewer lines or how police and fire service would work.

He said the city’s zoning standards will be the primary method for controlling construction of the huge development.

The mayor said he hopes tax revenues from the project will pay for infrastructure. But its residents might have to pay user fees.

Developers said in 1999 that improving existing levees would cost between $6 million and $12 million.

Wilkerson added that developers have proposed using man-made wetlands to treat sewage rather than forcing costly expansions of Cayce’s sewer treatment facilities.

Former Cayce Mayor Archie Moore said he wonders how the city will provide services across the river. But mostly, Moore said, he is concerned developers will not relent in their plans to build in flood-prone areas.

“The science of hydrology has not changed,” Moore said. “It only changes when the money changes.

“Growth is a good thing sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes it brings more problems than benefits.”

He said he does not like what he has heard so far.

“I think it’s a bad idea, notwithstanding the political ramifications of jumping the county line.”

Using a public river as a connector to annex adjoining property is well established in the law, said Howard Duvall, director of the S.C. Municipal Association. For example, he said, Charleston annexed Daniel Island by crossing the Cooper River.

Bob Hughes, of Columbia Venture, told the Cayce-West Columbia News, “Our overall vision is to create an environment in which citizens and guests can live, work, play and shop while enjoying the beauty of nature.”

Hughes did not return telephone messages Thursday.

A DISPUTED HISTORY

The public first learned of the ambitious Green Diamond plan in 1999 after Burroughs & Chapin spent $11 million for the land along the Congaree River.

It was to include a high-technology park, a convention center and a hotel.

A month later, FEMA released a map that put much of the property in the floodway, where the highest and fastest water is expected to flow during a major flood. Development in a floodway is much more severely restricted than in a flood plain.

Six months later, FEMA released a new map, based on a Burroughs & Chapin study, that cleared the way for the company to upgrade levees and develop more property.

Richland County and others appealed the lines.

Another map in 2001 affirmed the previous flood lines. Columbia Venture later sued FEMA, and Seymour threw out that map in 2005.

After talks with Richland County fell through, Columbia Venture approached the city of Columbia in December 2006.

It asked the city to buy or lease up to 1,500 acres near the city’s sewer plant there.

The developers argued Columbia could convert the land into a manmade wetland where wastewater would be cleansed through cattails and other plants.

Columbia Venture argued the city could make money from the deal by selling environmental tax credits. The city also would save millions because it would not have to upgrade its wastewater plant, developers said.

But city staffers disagreed. With the city facing a price tag of $80 million or more for wetlands projects, talks stalled.

Staff writer Gina Smith contributed.