Sign on the side of Horry County highway/Ryan Naquin
If you've traveled down Highway 17 Bypass or Highway 544 in Horry County, you've probably seen the "No Out of State Garbage" signs asking drivers to visit a website.
In light of recent stories about flow control in Horry County, we wanted to know who's behind the signs.
The website explains how the group is opposed to SC House Bill 4721 and Senate Bill 514. If passed into law, both bills would overturn the Flow Control ordinance that mandates all waste collected inside the county be dumped at the Solid Waste Authority landfill in the county.
Who exactly is running and funding the group is not clear. The "Who We Are" page fails to give contact information, but it does say the group is based in Myrtle Beach.
"We've had people call and blame the website on us," said SWA Manager Mike Bessant. "But we don't have any knowledge of who it is."
"They obviously want to remain anonymous," said President of the Horry and Georgetown County Sierra Club Bo Ives.
According to the website, "If this bill passes, out of state garbage will flow from other states into Horry County by trains, barges, and trucks. Big Garbage is saying that very little waste will come from out of state, and that the proportion of out of state waste coming into SC is shrinking.
Don't be Misled - The amount of waste that is generated varies with the ups and downs of the economy. When the economy gears back up an ever greater percentage of out-of-state waste will be buried in South Carolina because we will be the low cost provider."
But according to Bessant, the House bill has been amended to remove language that would give other states unrestricted access to dump their garbage in Horry County.
The website also tells readers "Don't let the Waste Industry fool you too! The waste industry and their cadre of paid minons (sic) have done a good job of pulling the wool over the eyes of many SC House members."
"We do not want South Carolina to become a dumping ground for states to our North because they cannot dispose of their own garbage," says the page. "We are working with other like minded groups to expose this sneak attack by the waste companies. Find the links to other groups fighting Big Garbage on our Support page."
The other groups on their support page include the Sierra Club, The South Carolina League of Women Voters, and Conservation Voters of South Carolina .
Each of the three groups all said they did not give the company permission to link to their website or use their copyrighted logos. By Friday afternoon, those logos had been removed, but links to the organizations remained on the site.
"We were concerned when we saw our logo on the page, because we don't give that out to just anyone," said Ives. "But we looked over it, and we agreed with all the issues on the site."
But the President of the Horry County League of Women Voters, Elizabeth Weems, said her organization does not agree with the website.
"We are monitoring the issues about flow control," said Weems. "But we neither support nor oppose the bills, and the taking of our logos was unauthorized."
We have tried to contact the group through an email we retrieved by searching for the creator of the website. We have not received a reply at this time.
We tried look up the owner of the domain name by using Whois, a tool that gives the ownership information of a domain name, much like looking up a deed to a house.
We found out the website is using an identity protection service. That's similar to using a P.O. Box instead of your home address.
The site is hosted by a company named dreamhost.com. The company can host thousands of different websites on one IP address, making it nearly impossible to track down the actual owner without dreamhost.com disclosing that information.
