Mobile Home Sales in Congoree, SC

Columbia river enthusiasts may need to reroute their recreation plans this summer as work begins to remove 40,000 tons of toxic coal tar from a stretch of the Congaree River.

The work is expected the take three years but could take up to five. In the meantime, recreationists hoping to access the river may need to switch up their routines. But not necessarily by much.

“There will be varying impacts depending on what folks are trying to do,” said Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler. But the river will still be open to the public.

The most significant impact is the closure of the popular Senate Street boat launch downtown and a nearby parking lot. For at least the next three years, that area will be fenced off and closed to the public while Dominion Energy bases its cleanup efforts from the site.

The site is on private land owned by the Guignard family, but Stangler said it’s frequently used by anglers who cast from the riverbank.

People will still be able to launch kayaks or other vessels from access points upstream and downstream, Stangler added.

Crews will build coffer dams roughly 240-300 feet into the river from the Columbia banks. Anyone hoping to float or boat down the Congaree upstream from the Blossom Street bridge will have to navigate around the temporary structures. The first of those dams is expected to be finished this summer, said Dominion spokesperson Matt Long.

The Army Corps of Engineers has only permitted work in the river between May 1 and Oct. 31 to avoid affecting the spawning season for shortnose sturgeon. Crews may also need to pause work throughout the summer if heavy storms raise the water to an unsafe level, according to project documents.

Dominion will still be able to make progress on the project in the off-season but will have limited access to the riverbed. By the project’s completion, tentatively anticipated in 2025, about 70% of the coal tar would be removed. The remaining 30% is in deep areas where there’s a low chance for humans to come in contact with it and in areas already covered by sediment from the 2015 flood, according to the project overview.

Dump trucks full of the coal tar will also soon begin traveling up and down Senate Street to transport the toxic material.

It’s taken years to move the cleanup efforts forward. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers green-lit the project in February after years of back-and-forth with regulators, Dominion Energy and community members.

The coal tar drained into the river from a manufactured gas plant that operated on Huger Street between 1900 and 1950. The company burned coal to produce gas. Burning all of that coal created the tar-like byproduct, which drained into the Congaree.

In 2010, a kayaker stumbled into a clump of the toxic sludge and noticed a burning sensation on his legs. South Carolina’s public health agency later assessed the material and determined it created a public health threat. The tar hasn’t impacted water quality, but the material is toxic to human skin.

Dominion Energy, which purchased the former S.C. Electric & Gas Co. three years ago, is responsible for the cleanup because SCE&G owned the land where the former gas plant was located.

This story was originally published May 25, 2022, 1:50 PM.

I like boardwalks. Those that take you through protected natural areas. Several come to mind. The lovely boardwalk at Woods Bay takes you 1,150 feet through a cypress-tupelo swamp. Edisto Gardens’ 2,600-foot boardwalk also takes you through a cypress-tupelo swamp while flirting with the Edisto River of redbreast fame. My favorite is the 2.6-mile boardwalk at Congaree National Park. You can walk Congaree’s trail of sturdy posts and planks in 60 to 80 minutes. Why hurry? Take your time. You’ll walk something rare—North America’s largest remaining tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest. You’ll see American beech trees, bald cypress, and water tupelo. You’ll crane your neck. What a tall canopy. Don’t miss the ruins of an old moonshine still. See redhead woodpeckers, deer, and myriad bird species. See rich brown muck, switchcane, and cypress knees standing like meerkats on alert.And fellow humans.What struck me on this cold sunny day were the numerous visitors from across the United States. When you go to these woods note the license plates in the parking lot. I spent a few minutes talking with a young couple from California. They intend to move to South Carolina. Curious, I asked why. “We have five children aged 2 to 10. We don’t want them to grow up in California.” Make of it what you will, but it seems they’re escaping change. Had a ghost stood nearby, his hat askew, he could have told them how change threatened Congaree Swamp as it was known but trees can’t move. You move people to protect them. That is, help them feel and see the need to preserve our remaining unique nature areas. Harry R.E. Hampton (July 8, 1897-1980) did just that. He set out to save what remained of a green cathedral. In the 1890s, loggers felled some bald cypress monarchs whose water-soaked logs sunk in revenge rather than float downriver to sawmills. The oft-flooded swamp, too spongy for road building caused frustrated loggers to abandon operations. Only nature has touched Congaree since. Nature set what would be the country’s 57^th national park and South Carolina’s first along the Congaree River’s north bank some 20 miles southeast of Columbia. There, the interplay of sunlight, minerals, and water sustains a 22,200-acre biome—the country’s largest contiguous tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest. It’s a must see, a bucket list item.Jim Goller is the executive director of the Harry Hampton Wildlife Fund. When asked about the Fund and why it’s named for Harry, he tells people, “The HWF was formed in 1981, not long after Harry’s death in 1980. I consider Harry Hampton one of South Carolina’s first true conservationists.” Indeed, he is. Hampton grew up in Columbia and Charleston when state governing of wildlife consisted only of rudimentary law enforcement. As a youth, Hampton explored, hunted, and fished a then-undeveloped South Carolina. When he was a news reporter for The State newspaper, Hampton’s conservation interests culminated in 1931 with a massive publicity campaign to organize a game and fish association, instigate natural resources legislation, and form a state game commission. The resulting association later became the South Carolina Wildlife Federation.While he was Federation president, Hampton’s constant hounding of the legislature influenced game and fish laws as well as the formation of the State Wildlife Department and Commission in 1952. Ultimately it evolved into the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. A visionary, Hampton’s 20-year battle to preserve the Congaree River bottom ended in success with the Congaree’s establishment as a National Natural Monument in October 18, 1976. Significant Designations kept coming: International Biosphere Reserve—June 30, 1983. Wilderness—October 24, 1988. Globally Important Bird Area—July 26, 2001, and the crown jewel, National Park—November 10, 2003.In years to come, I hope the many visitors take a moment to learn about Harry Hampton and the HHWF. As Robert Frost wrote, “Whose woods these are I think I know.” They’re Harry’s, yours and mine.Learn more about Congaree National Park. Learn more about the Harry Hampton Wildlife Fund.

Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.

Back in the day, the hero of a TV western series solved problems after sending his card: “Have Gun, Will Travel.”

Nowadays, the folks at Congaree Golf Club and the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism provide solutions with a similar theme: “Have Golf Course, Will Host on Short Notice.”

Just look at what unfolds this week: The PGA Tour’s CJ Cup in South Carolina will be played at the Congaree course in rural Jasper County rather than the planned stop in Korea.

Sound familiar? Remember how the Palmetto Championship at Congaree came together at the 11^th hour and took place on the same course in June of last year?

The scenarios take on the appearance of one of those matches made in heaven, almost as fairy tale. Opportunity knocked, the stars aligned and they all lived happily ever after.

Consider this: Golf tournaments, especially big ones, require long lead-ins. The organizations know years in advance where their events will be played and plan accordingly. U.S. Open at Pinehurst in 2047, anyone?

Then along came the COVID pandemic and the PGA Tour scrambled to replace the 2021 RBC Canadian Open, canceled due to travel restrictions. Opportunity knocked and Congaree and the South Carolina PRT answered.

A one-time deal, officials agreed regarding the Palmetto Championship at Congaree, which the state paid $6 million to sponsor and simultaneously spread the gospel of South Carolina golf to television audiences throughout the world.

“We had 72 days to put everything together,” Congaree director of golf Bruce Davidson said.

Sixteen months later, it’s déjà vu.

Pandemic concerns forced officials to abandon plans to return the CJ Cup to its roots in Korea. They needed a site _ and right now. Another one-shot deal. Another opportunity. Another answer. Moth to the flame.

The PGA Tour loves Congaree — for more reasons than a golf course built to stage championships. The club’s Global Golf Initiative fits with the Tour’s charity endeavors and is a model to “grow the game.”

Tour officials became aware of Congaree during the club’s quest to secure the 2026 Presidents Cup. That competition went elsewhere, but Congaree’s presentation made a lasting impression.

“We always had Congaree in our mind because it’s a special place to come to,” Tour executive Ty Votaw, now retired, said prior to the 2021 Palmetto Championship at Congaree.

Tyler Dennis, president of the PGA Tour, echoed the same thought Wednesday during a State of South Carolina’s Golf Celebration press conference at the Governor’s Mansion.

“Congaree did such a phenomenal job with the Palmetto Championship that we thought it made perfect sense to ask” the club to host the CJ Cup on short notice, Dennis said. “We thought about places, the time of year and kept coming back to Congaree.”

The club accepted, and Duane Parrish, director of the state’s PRT, raised his hand, too. South Carolina will kick in $5 million to be the presenting sponsor and, Parrish said, “the state will receive television exposure worth $54 million.”

The tournament represents another “big deal” for golf in the state, Parrish said. He pointed to the game’s $3.3 billion economic impact in South Carolina in 2021.

The sponsors “clearly wanted to create a great event on an iconic golf course in the right place,” tournament director Andre Silva said. “Congaree was a very easy decision for them.”

Obvious differences: weather and quality of field.

The Palmetto Championship came in June the week prior to the U.S. Open and attracted few big names. The CJ Cup in South Carolina will be in October and a world-class field will compete.

“The process began in May,” Congaree director of golf Bruce Davidson said. “The PGA called and the sponsors (from Korea) had to come and be comfortable with the setup. The state wanted to be involved, too.

“By June, we knew the tournament would be here, but the contracts and details had to be worked out before we could make an announcement.”

Dennis thought about the incongruity of how the stars aligned and said, “A lot of people would never think we would have a PGA Tour event in Jasper County, and here we are again.”

Moth to the flame.

Thursday-Sunday: 3-6 p.m., Golf Channel

Daily grounds tickets are available at www.cjcupsouthcarolina.com.

PGA Tour

RBC Heritage Classic, Harbour town Golf Links, Hilton Head Island, annually 1969-present

Palmetto Champion at Congaree, Congaree Golf Club, Ridgeland, 2021

The CJ Cup in South Carolina, Congaree Golf Club, Ridgeland, 2022

PGA of America

Ryder Cup, The Ocean Course, Kiawah Island, 1991

PGA Championship, The Ocean Course, Kiawah Island, 2012

PGA Championship, The Ocean Course, Kiawah Island 2021

This story was originally published October 15, 2022, 8:40 AM.

The CJ Cup in South Carolina, a PGA Tour limited-field event, features 15 of the top 20 players in the World Golf Rankings who are competing at Congaree Golf Club. It’s airing on the Golf Channel from 3-6 p.m. daily through Sunday.

Here’s what to know about Congaree:

The Congaree course is located off of Interstate 95 in rural Jasper County in Ridgeland, South Carolina. It’s more than 90 minutes west of Charleston and about an hour north of Savannah, Georgia, and about two hours from Columbia.

It is a private club, and the mission has never been about prestige for themselves. The billionaire businessmen who founded the club wanted to use the golf course in a positive way.

The Congaree Foundation’s top program is the Congaree Global Golf Initiative, a week-long training camp each summer. The program identifies aspiring golf with talent but not necessarily the resources for college golf. Participants get access to elite instructors and the high-quality facilities.

Among other projects is the Sergeant Jasper Golf Club that the club bought in 2021 to provide a home for area high school golf teams.

No. Congaree is a private club that has had only two official members, its founders Dan Friedkin and Bob McNair, the latter a University of South Carolina graduate. McNair, who also owned the NFL’s Houston Texans, died in 2018, leaving the club with one member.

Rather than members, Congaree has approximately 250 “ambassadors,” prominent individual who promote the club while lending time and money to the cause.

No. All 78 players in the field will compete over 72 holes for shares of a $10.5 million purse. The winner earns $1.89 million and $1.134 million goes to second place.

Bruce Davidson, director of golf for The Friedkin Group, and colleague John McNeely had the job of finding a large property for a firm, fast golf course. They first saw the property in 2013 and liked the look of sand.

Davidson said the land reminded him of Pinehurst No. 2 and Pine Valley. Others have linked the property to Royal Melbourne in the Australian sand belt.

“We thought, ‘No, it can’t be. We can’t be this lucky,’ ” Davidson said. “I don’t know what happened hundreds of millions of years ago, but the sea was probably there and left the deposit of sand.”

Congaree, the exclusive private golf club with a membership model built around philanthropy, recently added a second course. Sort of…

Congaree’s firm and fast Tom Fazio design quickly gained national acclaim when it opened in 2017. The club has garnered even more widespread attention as it hosts the PGA TOUR’s CJ Cup in South Carolina’s low country, about 40 miles northwest of Hilton Head Island.

Congaree: A First Look At The Golf Club Built By Billionaires On A Model Of PhilanthropyBy Erik Matuszewski

Congaree’s mission is to offer educational, vocational and golf instruction opportunities to underprivileged and deserving youth through its Congaree Foundation. The club’s invited ambassadors (rather than members) are encouraged to not just make a financial contribution to the charitable Congaree Foundation, but take an active role in interacting with and mentoring kids who come through the Congaree Global Golf Initiative and earn college scholarships – many of whom have gone on to play golf at the collegiate level.

But another, separate effort from the club’s Congaree Foundation is the acquisition and subsequent rehabilitation of Sergeant Jasper Golf Club, a 9-hole layout nearby in Jasper County that was on the verge of being turned into housing; a trailer park, actually.

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ByAmy DaniseEditor

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The course is the only one open to the public in South Carolina’s poorest county, with almost a quarter of residents living below the poverty level.

Congaree’s vision for Sergeant Jasper really has nothing to do with its course and club directly. Instead, it’s an effort to keep golf as an affordable and accessible community amenity – providing opportunity for locals to play (and learn) at a course that costs $8 to walk nine holes. The 18-hole rate, with cart, is only $25 and juniors can play for free. The Congaree Foundation helps to subsidize the cost of golf for the community, not unlike a municipal golf facility.

Sergeant Jasper is charming in its own way, but needs a lot of love after years of deteriorating conditions. And thanks to the Congaree Foundation and a group of PGA TOUR pros, among them Congaree Ambassador Lucas Glover, who has helped spearhead a #RechargeTheSarge campaign, Sergeant Jasper is slowly being transformed after being saved. The club’s director of golf, Tom Craft, also oversees day-to-day operations at “The Sarge,” which is about 20 minutes away from Congaree’s 3,200-acre property but can feel like a world removed.

“When we took it over, you would have hardly known it was a golf course,” Craft says. “They had one employee for everything and he didn’t know anything about grass. But he was responsible for everything, so he’d be on the mower answering the phone calls.”

Today, much of the grounds work at Sergeant Jasper is being done by a former course superintendent whose career included 20 years at Johnson City Country Club in Tennessee – an A.W. Tillinghast design. “This is kind of his retirement, his swan song,” says Craft.

On the drive from Congaree to Sergeant Jasper, you’ll pass the courthouse at which the legal work was completed to acquire the public course. The old-school Southern feel is straight out of a John Grisham novel. And while the course itself is a far cry from the manicured conditions at Congaree – many teeing areas are bare and patchy, greens are wooly, and overgrown trees infringe on playing corridors – the Sarge is a fun layout that, for what it is, is perfect in many ways. There’s lots of sand, mature trees, holes with variety and undeniable charm if you’re looking with proper perspective.

In addition to the efforts at Sergeant Jasper, the Congaree Foundation is running golf programs at the local high school, where the student body is over 95% black and the average household income is less than $20,000. They’ve put in a makeshift range and practice area at the school that can be used during gym classes, helping further expose locals to golf.

When Congaree hosted the PGA TOUR’s Palmetto Championship in 2021, one of the participants (who tied for 35^th) was Bryson Nimmer, a Jasper County native who was given a sponsor’s invitation to the tournament. Nimmer grew up playing the Sarge and went on to earn one of the top spots on the Clemson golf team before turning pro.

“The greens are really small, so if you can hit the greens, you’re a player,” Craft said of Sergeant Jasper. “He played nicer places after that, but he grew up out here.”

The bigger-picture question with Congaree and Sergeant Jasper is whether this is an approach that might be followed elsewhere?

Could other private clubs step in and make a difference when it comes to preserving endangered golf in their local communities?

One of the unmistakable takeaways from a visit to Congaree is the love that its ambassadors and invited guests have for the game. The effort at Sergeant Jasper is a recognition not only of the community impact that golf can have, but the beauty that can be found in the game’s many forms – from high-end private clubs to $8 public courses.