DES faces questions over $2.4 million ‘records fee’

A South Carolina man trying to learn more about possible chemical contamination near a local elementary school said he was shocked when the state agency in charge of the records quoted him a bill few could ever pay: $2.4 million, plus a $605,000 deposit just to begin the search. DES officials say that figure was a preliminary estimate generated using standard FOIA rates that accounted for the staff time it would take to produce and review 3 million documents.

Brady Hill, a 42-year-old septic tank installer from Society Hill who is also running for a seat on Darlington County Council, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services after learning that soil at Black Creek Elementary School was concluded to be safe but had tested positive for PFAS — a class of long-lasting industrial compounds commonly known as “forever chemicals” that have been linked to cancer, thyroid disease, and other health problems.

DES officials stated that “most people are exposed to PFAS from items they contact every day. PFAS are found at some level in most sources of drinking water and are used in a wide variety of consumer products. They are also present in foods and packaging, fabrics treated with stain repellents, and even household dust. We have extensive resources and information about PFAS and ways humans can reduce their exposure to these chemicals available at des.sc.gov/PFAS and this information is also included in our Black Creek Elementary School Soil Investigation webpage.” https://des.sc.gov/…/pfas-soil-investigation-black…

Hill wanted to see the paperwork behind the agency’s conclusion that the school’s playground was safe: internal emails, lab results, a risk assessment, soil analyses, and modeling data, including correspondence between the state agency and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. He capped his own budget in the request, asking to be notified if costs would top $100.

Instead, Hill says the agency told him fulfilling the request would require researching and producing more than 3 million emails — and priced the job at $2.4 million. “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 estimate was reported to be among the largest ever quoted for a public records request in South Carolina, and it triggered sharp criticism. Some have accused the agency of stonewalling on a contamination problem it would rather not confront in the eastern part of the state; some said the response simply reflected a staff ill-equipped to handle the request properly. Others, familiar with extensive record searches, sympathized with the work involved in the request.

Laura Renwick, DES Communications Director, told the News & Press, “The email we sent wasn’t an invoice, it was a preliminary estimate that we include in the standard email we send to FOIA customers that explains what the scope of their documents request will be based on the search terms they provided. This email affords the customer the opportunity to understand the scope of their request and to revise their search terms, if they so choose to, to be more specific to the information they are interested in.”

“They’re trying to cover their tracks,” he said. “All I was asking for was stuff pertaining to the school. I was pretty clear.”

The agency described Hill’s original July 5 request as “extremely broad,” saying it swept in every internal email containing the terms PFAS or PFOS rather than sticking to just the school site itself. Hill disputes that characterization.

DES officials said their Director of Public Affairs called the customer within about two hours of him receiving the standard explanation email late in the afternoon on Friday, July 17. “Our Director of Public Affairs called to clarify that his initial search terms would yield millions of unrelated emails,” stated Laura Renwick, “and she worked with him to refine those terms. The customer thanked our Director of Public Affairs during their phone conversation for helping explain the search terms issue and noted that he appreciated her assistance.”

The department is now processing a narrowed version of the request — Hill says he’s asking only for records from the past six months tied specifically to the school property. Mrs. Renwick stated, “Our Director of Public Affairs has let the customer know that his refined search parameters would generate a substantially smaller amount of documents that are specific to his topic of interest, and that we will provide the revised documents request free of charge due to the initial confusion he felt over the preliminary cost estimate and scope of work provided in the explanation email.”

Black Creek Elementary opened in 2025 and enrolls roughly 700 students. The land beneath it has a complicated history: like much of the farmland in Darlington County, it once served as one of many receptacles for industrial sludge generated by the Galey & Lord textile plant, material that was spread across the property decades ago and marketed to nearby farmers as fertilizer.

The Galey & Lord facility, located in Society Hill, is now abandoned and sits on the federal Superfund list of contaminated sites requiring cleanup. Regulators approved roughly 300 fields in the surrounding area for the same sludge-disposal practice starting in the 1990s, unaware at the time that the material carried forever-chemical contamination. Testing conducted since then — by government scientists and separately by researchers at Yale University — has found elevated PFAS levels in the soil of several of those fields.

Word of the property’s history reached the public this past spring, when a group of local residents pieced together the connection to the old Galey & Lord sludge operation.

Once the Darlington County School District was made aware of the link, the school district worked with the Department of Environmental Services (DES) to have the land tested. The DES testing, in conjunction with the EPA testing, determined that there were forever chemicals in the school’s soil — PFOA at levels up to 1,200 parts per trillion, and PFOS as high as 7,100 parts per trillion.

Both the state agency and the EPA, however, said their risk assessments found no immediate danger to students or staff, and no concerning levels of metals, pesticides, or PCBs elsewhere on the property. They determined the school property was safe for students and staff. As a precaution, the agency suggested the school district cover the playground with grass, mulch, or similar material to further limit any possible exposure. The district has said they seeded the area and the grass is growing. DES also suggested common sense hygiene habits such as washing hands with soap and water.

Hill and others say that reassurance is exactly why they want to see the underlying data for themselves — and why the price tag on getting it mattered so much.

South Carolina’s public records law allows agencies to waive fees entirely when disclosure serves the public interest — a standard that open-government advocates say is squarely met when the records concern children’s health and safety at a specific school. The law also lets agencies bill requesters for time spent redacting sensitive material, a provision proponents support and critics say is sometimes used less to protect privacy than to make requests prohibitively expensive.