HistoryThe year was 1967. The war in Vietnam continued to dominate the headlines. A towering young man still going by the name of Lew Alcindor was leading UCLA to the NCAA basketball championship. At the box office, The Graduate and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? were claiming Academy Awards. And the cost of mailing a first-class letter was still only a nickel. Closer to home, non-stop travel between Georgetown and the Waccamaw Neck finally became reality with the opening of the elevated L.H. Siau four-lane bridge spanning the Black, Pee Dee and Waccamaw rivers, replacing a two-lane sway bridge built in 1935 to accommodate passing watercraft. Headed by unheralded coach Bobby Roberts, the Clemson University basketball team knocked off nation-
ally ranked North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest, not to mention manhandling Frank McGuire's highly regarded Gamecocks twice in the same season. And newly crowned Miss America, Debra Dene Barnes of Kansas, headed the Georgetown Christmas
Parade.
It also was the year that the South Carolina General Assembly gave birth to the Georgetown County Water and Sewer District (GCWSD) through Act No. 733 issued into law on June 22, 1967 and signed by then-Governor Robert E. McNair.
The impetus for creating the District came from four of the most influential leaders in the county: Tom Davis, publisher of the
Georgetown Times; Jim Moody of Andrews Bank and Trust; Colonel Joseph E. McCaffrey of International Paper; and Louis Parsons, who several years earlier had been instrumental in forming the Rural Community Water District that served a
small section of the county.
Their shared vision was to develop a consolidated system that would bring reliable water and sanitary sewer service to unincorporated communities throughout the county - communities where many people pumped their own water from backyard wells and where family members often stood in line to occupy the outdoor outhouse. "We were in dire need of healthy drinking water," says Parsons today.
Recent newcomers to Georgetown County today would hardly have recognize the landscape back then. The Waccamaw Neck was largely undeveloped forest land. Litchfield-by-the-Sea was a recreation retreat with a campground and a miniature railroad for International Paper employees. There were no strip shopping centers, expansive golf courses or sprawling subdivisions with paved streets, swimming pools and clubhouses. Even downtown Georgetown was considered off the beaten path. The only industry in town was International Paper. And the site whereGeorgetown Steel Corporation sits today was occupied by a sawmill.
With the enabling legislation enacted, the four founders were joined by D.B. Pendergrass of Murrells Inlet on the District's first board of directors. They had high hopes but little else. Because like all young babes, the District came into this world naked. It held no assets, claimed no customers, owned no facilities and employed no staff. For nearly six years, the District lay dormant.
But in 1973, the infant was awakened by accelerating concerns over the growing number of private water systems that were sprouting up to serve individual areas and by calls from community leaders throughout the county for a single interconnected
system.
"We all wanted a safe supply of drinking water for our communities. In fact, we were in the process of putting together a grant
request to create our own water system at the time," recalls Abie Ladson, a leader in the rural Plantersville community in the
western sector of the county. "All of us in the community got together and decided it
was best to have a single, centralized agency."
With the support of the local legislative delegation, the initial legislation creating the District was amended and a new board was named. But while the District had been rechartered and its board reconstituted, it remained powerless and penniless. Because
it held no assets, it could not qualify for federal loans or private financing to acquire and consolidate the existing private systemsor to construct new facilities. "There wasn't a soul to loan us any money," recalls
Georgetown attorney Arthur Flowers who sat on the new board. With no offices, board members gathered for meetings wherever they could find an empty room. "We didn't even have a phone until the county finally let us use one of
theirs," says Parsons, the lone member from the initial board to volunteer for a second tour of duty. It's no exaggeration, says Flowers, that during those early days, the District essentially existed only on the papers Parsons carried in his briefcase.
With a loan from the American Bank and Trust Company in Orangeburg, the District purchased the Pawleys Island water system from Carolina Water Company for $250,000. The private water company had pieced together the system from a patchwork of low pressure wells and undersized service
lines. "It was in terrible shape. We had to replace everything. What we really bought was the customer base," says Parsons. With the Pawleys Island system as collateral, it then acquired the private system
serving North and South Litchfield. After rebuilding it and interconnecting the two systems, the District could claim almost 1,000 customers on its books when it
approached the federal Farmers Home Administration for money to upgrade existing facilities and expand its service area. In reality, the number of year-round customers
totaled closer to 100 as the bulk of its customer base consisted of summer vacation homes.
Bolstered by federal loans and grants from the Farmers Home Administration, the District moved inland, building a new distribution system to serve
the mostly minority Parkersville community west of Highway 17. Soon, other mainland communities, such as Plantersville, Rose
Hill and Red Hill, came knocking on its door for service. And the District responded, most often abandoning existing, undersized
distribution lines and building an entirely new interconnected network.
To supervise and inspect the
new construction, the District hired its first full-time employee, Andy Thompson, in 1975. But it wasn't until a year later that the
District found office quarters when the county allocated it a small area on the first floor of the County Courthouse. Flowers
donated the District a desk and a manual typewriter from his law offices.
Even with an influx of construction loans and grants from
the Farmers Home Administration to expand the system, the District was often strapped for cash. "At the beginning of each meeting, we'd sit down and decide who we could pay and who
would have to wait," says Parsons. "We were on a shoestring and it kept breaking," adds Flowers.
As the 1980s approached, more and more communities throughout the county were calling on the District to provide them with upgraded, interconnected water and sewer
services. "It was like we had a tiger by the tail and we were afraid to let it go," says Parsons. With an expanding customer base and staff, the District opened its first customer
service office in a former tractor dealership west of the City of Georgetown in 1981. By that time, it was supplying water and sewer services to customers and communities scat-
tered throughout the county, from Murrells Inlet on the north, to Pennyroyal Road onthe south, to Plantersville on the west.
