COLUMBIA, SC (WBTW) – An estimate of the total cost of the South Carolina flooding last month is still weeks away, but the SC House committee that writes the state budget met Thursday at the Statehouse to start getting some numbers.
“These are some estimates, so we’re talking about around $37 million for that Emergency Management and the National Guard portion,” state Adjutant General Bob Livingston told the House Ways and Means committee. “This is not the roads or all that, the big-dollar tickets; this is kind of the little-dollar stuff.”
He says the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, will pay 75 percent of that cost and the state will have to pay the rest.
SC DOT Secretary Christy Hall told the committee she won’t have a cost estimate until around Thanksgiving on how much damage was done to the state’s roads and bridges. She said they’re also trying to estimate how much latent damage there might be. That’s damage you can’t see now but will show up later.
“When you have a roadway or a segment of roadway that’s been flooded and submerged for a period of time and then the water recedes and we put traffic on it, over time, we believe that that roadway will start to age a little faster than we thought it would,” she told lawmakers.
Ways and Means chairman Rep. Brian White, R-Anderson, says whatever the cost ends up being to the state, he doesn’t want to pay for it by taking money away from the state’s other needs.
“We still have the same problem that was facing us last session that’s still facing us today, that we’re in need of more money to fix our roads. Other agencies, DSS needs money. We saw Director Alford go out and say, ‘We need more money to protect the children and the vulnerable adults in this state.’ Those needs are still there and we just have to work through how we’re going to fund those needs,” he said after the meeting.
The committee plans to meet again in December. Lawmakers go back into session in January.
