electrician in West Ashley, SC

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The city of Charleston is requiring a West Ashley restaurant to clean up grease and cooking oils that polluted a local pond.

Charleston officials say Rio Chico Mexican Restaurant on Magwood Drive discharged grease and cooking oils into their back parking lot. Running water collected the material and swept it into a storm drain, which then fed into a nearby pond on Ashley Crossing Drive.

Charleston Director of Stormwater Management Matthew Fountain says first they make sure the activity stops, and then they issue a notice of violation. Violators are given a seven-day window to clean up the issue before they come back and verify. If it doesn’t get fixed within seven days, typically a summons is issued, where the owner has to come to court.

Fountain says when they went to the site, they saw cooking oil and grease in the parking lot, and a “clear trail” of it running to a stormwater crate inlet. They followed that down to the pond, where they found floating sections of grease in the pond.

Christopher Jordan works with the Carolina Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, which helps mitigate human impacts on the environment through medical treatment, education and scientific research. He says he received a call about an injured osprey last week. When he got to the bird, he smelled the stench of cooking oil. Following that, more calls started coming in about other animals.

Lowcountry wildlife volunteers have spent the past several days rescuing affected animals.

“We got many affected turtles. We have an alligator affected,” Jordan said. “We retrieved two green herons and an osprey.”

The Carolina Wildlife Rehabilitation Center says they will continue to monitor the area as new birds could become oiled until the pond is cleaned up. They say they have a plan to rescue dozens of turtles that are also oiled.

Fountain says the issue is often a common misunderstanding.

“The storm drains, the curb inlets on your streets, those don’t go to a wastewater treatment plant. Those aren’t treated,” Fountain said. “Those are just direct discharging into the creeks or the marshes or the ponds of the area.”

Fountain says they see about 10 to 12 of these incidents a year.

“All these things are a wakeup call to us, to what we’re doing to the environment, and it will impact us in the long run,” wildlife volunteer Lynn Parker said.

Rio Chico has not yet responded to a request for comment.

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WEST ASHLEY, S.C. (WCSC) - Neighbors in a West Ashley community say they are frustrated and anxious after floodwater crept up to their homes, and a potential solution could be a few years away.

Bennett Barton and Rachel Brunette said Thursday’s rainstorms flooded both the road and their backyards, almost getting into their houses. They said as cars passed by, the wake would go up and slap against their front doors.

“This is my first house; I didn’t know what to expect,” Barton said. “I started panicking. I couldn’t leave to get sandbags or any preventative measures because the road was flooded, too.”

They said as cars passed by, the wake would go up and slap against their front doors.

“At one point, I even got pitchers and just was pouring them into my sink from my screened-in porch,” Barton said. Didn’t do anything, but it made me ease my mind a little bit.”

The Woodlands neighborhood is part of the Dupont Wappoo Watershed, which consists of around 1,000 acres of West Ashley surrounding the Citadel Mall.

The City of Charleston said they are spending $5 million on four out of the 10 scheduled projects to improve downstream water flow under Interstate 526. Once that is done, the city will be increasing the size of pipes and canals near the Woodlands neighborhood to get the water out faster.

“There’s not a lot of elevation change to make that water flow very quickly,” Charleston Director of Stormwater Management Matthew Fountain said, “so those very small ditches don’t work for how much pavement, how many buildings we have in the basin now.”

Brunette said it is not uncommon for her to have to check the weather radar before she leaves for work.

“So, when I’m away for the day, I have to be prepared that whether my windows are open, whether the dog is in or out, and like you said if the vehicle is in the right place in case it does flood,” Brunette said. “There’s been a couple of cars that have been flooded out. The landscaping, you can’t keep decent landscaping. It washes away.”

The city said they are optimistic construction on the projects will start in 2025, but until then, Barton said his anxiety will continue.

“If it had rained for two more hours or it was going into high tide, I think my living room would have been underwater,” Barton said. “Who knows how much that would have cost?”

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — A West Ashley pond needing to be cleaned after a nearby restaurant dumped oil into a storm drain is improving significantly, according to City of Charleston leaders.

“It was in very bad condition, but it is getting much, much more where we want to see it,” said Matt Fountain, Director of the Stormwater Management Department for the City of Charleston.

On Tuesday, the department met with the contractor hired by Rio Chico Mexican Restaurant for a status update.

“They’ve installed oil absorbent booms to make sure that they are not getting any additional spill that hasn’t been identified or there’s some other issue occurring, [and] replace the absorbing materials necessary,” Fountain said. “So, we’ll continue our inspection, probably on a weekly basis, to make sure all of that is happening.”

While the bulk of the work has already been handled, Fountain said a timeline of when normal conditions will return is a bit murky.

“The idea is to get the concentrations down to a low enough level so they are not causing any harm, and they can be handled by normal biodegradation. You just want the normal processes that would break down oil and the environment to do that,” he said.

The Carolina Wildlife Rehabilitation Center is now a temporary home to turtles and birds covered in thick layers of oil.

On Tuesday, more arrived.

“Ten turtles,” said Keenan Freitas, a staff rehabilitator with the center.

"Apparently, every time we get a transport in, they appear to be more and more oiled.”

Freitas said the facility is now caring for five birds and 45 turtles.

“Ideally, they go back into the pond, but we can’t do that,” he said. “They’re just going to be re-infected or contaminated. So that will be up to the state’s herpetologist where they want to put those turtles.”

When it comes to businesses putting anything in the storm drain that shouldn’t be there, city officials are offering a reminder:

“It’s always cheaper to do maintenance and do things correctly in the first place,” Fountain said. “Then they come back and try to hire a contractor and basically do emergency repair work. That’s a huge financial burden.”

The West Ashley defense came into Friday night’s game against Berkeley with one of the top defenses in the Lowcountry.

In three games, the Wildcats had given up just one touchdown.

The Wildcats did nothing to hurt their reputation against the Stags.

West Ashley running back William Washington rushed for 94 yards and scored one touchdown to lead the Wildcats past Berkeley, 26-0, Friday night before a rain-soaked crowd of about 2,000 at West Ashley High School.

The Wildcats (4-0) smothered the Stags (1-3) offense all night, allowing just 73 yards of total offense. West Ashley has given up just 13 points in their first four games of the season.

“The defense has played really well all season,” said West Ashley coach Donnie Kiefer. “We don’t have the offensive weapons we had last year, so we knew we were going to have to rely on our defense. I know Berkeley was missing a couple of their kids and that probably slowed them down, but I just really appreciate what our defensive kids have done all season.”

A year ago, the Wildcats were forced to use five or six players on both offense and defense. Kiefer was determined to add more depth throughout the program so player would not have to play both ways.

“We brought up some sophomores that maybe should be playing on junior varsity, but we need them to step up and they’ve done a good job,” Kiefer said. “It might hurt our junior varsity team, but those kids can help us right now.”

While West Ashley’s offense might not be as explosive as they have been in the past, the Wildcats controlled the line of scrimmage and were able to roll up more than 250 rushing yards. The Wildcats attempted just one pass.

“We’ve got to control the ball and shorten the game,” Kiefer said. “We don’t have a big offensive line, but those coaches have done a great job preparing them every week.”

Terry Grant got the scoring going late in the first half when he capped a 62-yard dive with a 1-yard TD run with 2:57 left in the quarter.

Washington’s 24-yard TD run gave the Wildcats a 13-0 advantage with 4:58 left before halftime.

Zamarie Campbell extended the Wildcats advantage to 19-0 on the first play of the fourth quarter. Jerrell Rivers’ 48-yard TD run gave the Wildcats a 26-0 lead with 6:35 left in the game.

One of the biggest ovations came on the ensuing kickoff when Wildcats’ place kicker Mary Kathryn Smoak kicked off and then made the tackle.

“The kids loved it, she works hard and does a great job for us,” Kiefer said.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A plan to build a standalone $40 million bicycle and pedestrian bridge across the Ashley River is one step closer to reality, and city leaders say the bridge will be a safer alternative for people to get around.

The City of Charleston’s Traffic and Transportation Committee voted Monday afternoon to authorize Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg to sign an agreement between the city and the South Carolina Department of Transportation. That agreement will go before full city council at Tuesday’s meeting.

“We are going to build, in the City of Charleston, connectivity between West Ashley and downtown that we’ve never had before,” Seekings said, “and it’s going to change the face of this community for the better.”

Seekings said the signed agreement will finalize grant applications for the 20-foot-wide bridge and allows the city to begin designing the structure.

He also said the city will own the bridge under the agreement and will work with DOT on the structure’s long-term maintenance once it’s built.

“In a city where we have mobility challenges, to be able to build a project like this cooperatively with dollars coming in from local to federal and everything in between levels, this is a no-brainer for us. This is something we should have done a long time ago.”

Nicole Farina works in downtown Charleston and drives across the bridge every day.

“It kind of like freaks me out when I see people walking by there, so it would definitely be a lot safer to walk across there,” Farina said. “I’m always really nervous about that. Even people bike down there, too.”

Seekings also said the current versions of the bridges are very dangerous for pedestrians.

“If you had to cross either the north or the south version of the bridges that go there, those are built for cars and cars only,” Seekings said. “There are very narrow walkways that I would not recommend people to use. There is no way to get across that river currently that is safe for bikes and pedestrians, and that’s really too bad.”

The city said they’re looking to finish construction by the end of 2026. They also said the bridge will be able to open in the middle, so larger boats can pass through.

Farina said she is excited for the bridge to be completed and looks forward to using it once complete.

“I love to take walks on my lunch break, but there’s really not too much walking-friendly areas where my office is, so that would be the perfect spot for me to go take a little stroll for like 30 minutes or something.”

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