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LADSON, S.C. (WCSC) - The Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments held a public open house Tuesday in Ladson to provide new updates and hear from members of the community on the Lowcountry Rapid Transit.

Located at the Lowcountry Rapid Transit lines end, the new location for the proposed park and ride will be at the Exchange Park Fairgrounds in Ladson.

The more than 21-mile transit plan is to connect downtown Charleston to the Exchange Park Fairgrounds, where parking for 280 cars will be available.

The Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments says the location of the park and ride system will be a quick and convenient station for those traveling from surrounding areas to downtown.

“This park and ride will continue to be a critical piece, whether this was the middle line will continue to Summerville or even beyond, folks will still have to drive to this location and park to get on the dedicated guideway,” Lowcountry Rapid Transit Project Manager, Sharon Hollis, says. “But we can get them off of Highway 26, and onto the system to perhaps maybe alleviate some congestion that way.”

The park and ride location was adjusted from the northern end line of downtown Summerville to Exchange Park.

With transit lines ending in Ladson in the current plan, some community members are asking for the routes to be extended to Summerville.

“This needs to go all the way to Summerville, this system has to work,” Best Friends of Lowcountry Transit Executive Director, William Hamilton, says. “There are 300,000 or 400,000 more people coming to our area, there is no possible way, nor is there anything close to the funds necessary to build the necessary roads.

“Congestion will become intolerable unless there are significant efforts made to take some of the burden off of the road system,” he adds.

Hollis says a lot of factors would play into an extension, including funding and demand from those in the area who would use it.

“As we start to build, transit demand from Summerville to this location, we’ll start to have the ability to do that more permanent infrastructure to put the buses and dedicated lane,” she says. “It’s a step process, and we’re just we’re a little further behind than that one.”

Back in March, the Lowcountry Rapid Transit System Project was awarded $100 million in President Biden’s 2024 budget.

“This is the very core of our community; this should remove some of the burden that is on our existing roads, but people need to understand this does not mean that the congestion we have now will disappear,” Hamilton says.

The requested federal funding represents 60% of the project cost, or about $375 million. The anticipated local funding from Charleston County represents 40% of the project cost, or about $250 million.

The Lowcountry Rapid Transit is currently at the halfway mark of the 12-year process with construction expected to begin in 2026.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

A major foreign defense manufacturer has been operating in Charleston County for more than six months, but it has disclosed very little about the nature of its work since the facility first opened for business.

Elbit Systems America — a subsidiary of Israeli-owned Elbit Systems Inc., which has 10 sites in the U.S. mostly located on the East Coast — officially started operations in Ladson in May. As a whole, the company supplies up to 85% of land-based military equipment to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Elbit has recently seen growing demand from the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) for its “solutions,” according to a Dec. 18 press release. The company’s American subsidiary also offers products and services related to commercial aviation, homeland security monitoring and night vision technology.

The S.C. manufacturing facility stands at the end of Sightline Drive, a short road just off Ladson’s Palmetto Commerce Parkway. The building is buffered from the parkway by a line of trees, equipped with a traffic light. In other words, it doesn’t stand out as a defense manufacturing plant. And yet, Elbit’s Ground Combat Vehicle Assembly and Integration Center of Excellence is exactly what it sounds like — a plant that builds truck-mounted artillery systems and command post support vehicles.

Longtime Charlestonians might remember General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) — known before a buyout as Force Protection, Inc. — as a defense plant also in the Ladson-area industrial zone. The company, once a major Charleston manufacturer, supplied millions of dollars of contracted equipment to the U.S. Department of Defense and foreign armed forces, profiting from high demand for Iraq and Afghanistan war-era battlefield vehicles. GDLS spokesperson Robin Porter told the Charleston City Paper the plant was sold to Pegasus Steel, LLC., a company first established in South Africa in 1994.

Elbit America planned to invest approximately $31 million into its project, including construction costs, according to its Charleston County contract, which the City Paper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Elbit’s facility uses 135,000 square feet of a 175,500-square-foot building. The remainder of the space is currently available for rent. The $31 million also accounted for machinery and site design, consisting of “36-foot cast-in-place, tilt walls … [and] 14 overhead cranes used to add armor to military vehicles,” wrote Choate Construction, the group contracted to build the plant.

Charleston County first became involved in Elbit’s relocation project in 2019, when it entered negotiations with Elbit under the company’s requested code name, “Project Thunder.” Code names are a common statewide practice of assigning a made-up project name to keep relocation deals anonymous. Charleston County Council described Project Thunder as a “leading global source of innovative, technology-based systems for diverse defense, homeland security, and commercial applications.” Elbit America would use this name to “begin its tax incentives process.”

In September 2021, the S.C. Coordinating Council for Economic Development authorized Charleston County to use a $700,000 set-aside grant to assist Elbit in business operations. The county and the state’s Department of Commerce also created an “attractive package” for the project. Incentives included a fee in lieu of tax credits, known as a “FILOT,” and Special Source Revenue Credit (SSRC), two tax-lowering incentives regularly applied to major businesses.

The Elbit site qualified for FILOT, which is available to companies that invest at least $2.5 million. The FILOT can save 40% or more in property taxes. FILOT savings are even greater when, as applies to Elbit, a business is designated inside an industrial park.

The SSRC incentive is taken from FILOT revenue: Counties “award credits to taxpayers to be applied against their property taxes.” Essentially, companies get more tax credits from the tax credits they already have. Dollars saved provide a competitive advantage to relocated businesses, but at a price. A 2019 fiscal year report disclosed that companies’ extra revenue diverted $423 million from public schools across the state, disproportionately low-income schools with mostly Black and brown students.

Elbit publicly announced its 135,000-square-foot Ladson site in November 2021. Project Thunder was not revealed as Elbit until a March 2022 “public hearing prior to final action.” This was several months after the county’s economic development director had committed to granting the subsidiary tax incentives.

In earlier council discussions, county officials projected that Project Thunder would bring 302 full-time jobs to the area “during annual operation,” but Elbit America Communications Specialist Amy Hartley told the City Paper on Dec. 6 that the site had only around 50 full-time workers.

Hartley declined a City Paper request to tour Elbit’s Ladson plant “given heightened security concerns.” In recent weeks, there have been pro-Palestine demonstrations outside some of its locations. A security guard, however, said the South Carolina plant hasn’t had any recent issues.

Another statement from Hartley explicitly mentioned the site’s contract with the U.S. Army to manufacture Command Post Integrated Infrastructure trucks, despite recent press releases indicating that its main operation was fulfilling contracts from the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) to build an automated vehicle mounted with an artillery system called a howitzer.

Elbit advertises the South Carolina-built howitzer vehicle as having “high firepower and long-range lethality.” The IDF reportedly has used the vehicle to launch white phosphorus artillery strikes in “densely populated areas of Gaza,” which Human Rights Watch says “violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life.”

In March 2019, Elbit America received $125 million from IMOD to build “automatic self-propelled howitzer gun systems” for the IDF over a 12-year period, and the group secured a $200 million “further to” the 2019 contract one year later. In November 2023, Elbit announced that it was increasing deliveries to IMOD from various sites, including U.S. subsidiaries, to support the IDF’s invasion of Gaza.

That same month, a United States Field Artillery Association news release reported that, while the Ladson site is continuing production and delivery of U.S. Army vehicles, “Elbit America has recently started production of the Sigma-Next Generation Howitzer at their Charleston, South Carolina facility and will begin deliveries to the Israeli Defense Force in 2025.”

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LADSON, S.C. (WCSC) - The Charleston County School District is one step closer to getting a new elementary school in Ladson.

The Charleston County School District’s Audit and Finance Committee approved funding for a new Ladson Elementary School Tuesday afternoon. The Charleston County Board of Trustees will have a final vote on the building next week.

The project is just now in the beginning stages, but the new Ladson Elementary School will cost over $47 million for materials and labor to build the school that will hold 900 students.

Ladson Elementary School is currently located at 3321 Ladson Rd., with the current building being completed back in 1976.

“I think the biggest thing is always to make sure they’ve got enough bids to find the best price,” parent Joy Brown says. “It is a huge ticket item, but it’s expensive to build a school.”

The existing Ladson Elementary School has seen steady growth over the last four years according to data from the South Carolina Department of Education 45-day school headcount numbers.

This year the school has 893 students compared to 843 students back in 2020.

Going even further back to 2012, Ladson Elementary had 801 students.

As the Charleston County School District continues to grow with more people moving to the area, Brown says it’s important for the district to spend money in the right places.

“I think for me as a parent, I feel like it’s important to have the right amount of schools,” Brown says. “School size matters, class size matters. You can’t have tons of kids packed into one school; Charleston’s a high growth area.”

The committee also approved over $66 million for 12 projects throughout the district ranging from renovations, replacements, and new buildings. Some projects of note include:

“I think it’s important for people to realize this money has been allocated specifically for schools,” Brown says. “We just want to make sure that it is efficiently used when you’re looking at growth.”

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

LADSON, S.C. (WCBD) – Are you frustrated with traffic backups in Ladson? One resident has what they feel would be a simple fix to help alleviate a major intersection.

The traffic pattern and potholes at the intersection of Lincolnville and Ladson roads have been a source of frustration for many drivers in the Ladson area. The area sees backups during the morning and afternoon rush hours often.

One News 2 viewer who drives through the intersection daily believes a turn lane could make all the difference.

Karen Fonkert said that with so many neighborhoods on Lincolnville Road – and even more being built – backups in Ladson are only getting worse. Especially at the Lincolnville/Ladson Road intersection. She said what is normally an eight-minute commute with no traffic, is often much longer.

“Usually, it’s about a 20-minute wait, just at the light. It backs way up, about a half mile, normally. And so if there’s an accident anywhere along there, it’s even worse,” said Fonkert.

As it stands now, cars move left to leave space for those turning right. But instead of a right turn lane, cars have to traverse a mess of dirt and potholes where the road drops off.

In fact, Fonkert said she once saw a truck break its axle when its tire fell into a pothole. But she says some new pavement could solve the problem.

“What I really think would help, and a lot of people have said this too, if there were a right turn lane. That would allow traffic to keep going through, and it maybe wouldn’t back up so far back on Lincolnville Road,” she said.

The roadway is maintained by the state. News 2 asked officials with the South Carolina Department of Transportation if they would be willing to look into paving a legitimate turn lane – but unfortunately, they only came up with this response:

“There are not any upcoming projects planned for this intersection.” They encouraged any concerned residents to reach out to their customer service center.

If this intersection drives you crazy, you can let SCDOT know. And if there’s any other roadway issue, you’d like for us to look into, send an email to mfee@wcbd.com.

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - More than six months after a woman was crushed to death at a Ladson business, officials with the South Carolina Occupation Safety and Health Administration have shared their investigative findings on what they believe the business failed to do.

Jessica Birkmire, 53, died at Pegasus Steel in Ladson on Jan. 12 after a large, steel door closed on her, crushing her arm and head, according to the Charleston County Coroner.

OSHA’s investigative report says Birkmire was preparing to unload materials at a large bay door when she reached through a small gap to click the ‘open’ button. She instead clicked the ‘close’ button, and the door shut on Birkmire.

OSHA details how Pegasus Steel did not conduct a ‘job hazard analysis,’ and despite making references to these job inspections, they provided no documentation to prove these risk assessments had been completed.

They say their inspection revealed conditions they believe to be in violation of state health and safety laws, specifically Code 41-15-210, which states “each employer shall furnish to his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.”

The report states this is a ‘serious’ violation.

OSHA’s report goes on to say there is, however, a memo from management sent out last summer that explains how employees were not authorized to walk through the bay doors, according to the report. During investigative interviews, OSHA found employees were routinely walking through these doors, and the report states no disciplinary action was taken.

The Chief Human Resources Officer for Pegasus Steel said in an interview with OSHA officials that Birkmire broke safety codes at the business when she reached through the bay door. The report also details how Birkmire was “headstrong” and that management had told her in the past to “not place her body in places that can hurt her.”

OSHA says the company also should have had sensors in place to detect objects in the door’s path.

OSHA provided Pegasus Steel with tips on how to keep the door from closing on people again including installing sensors. The business is also now ordered to pay a penalty of $3,500.

Officials said in the report they’re currently working on relocating those control buttons that Birkmire pushed. The business did not respond to a request for comment.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.