Residents in Rosemont File Complaint About Port Expansion
posted 11/13/09
5:17 pm
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Charleston, SC -
The fight over the port’s expansion heads to the Department of Justice after people in the Rosemont Community say they have been left out of the planning process.
Nancy Button is in the middle of the fight of her life. She is one of 300 people who call the Rosemont community home. Button says their neighborhood is threatened by the port’s plan to expand.
“We’re going to have to live with the noise, the pollution and the traffic,” Button explained.
Folks who are against the port access road say the access ramp will come down and cut into their backyards. The road will send between 7,000 and 11,000 trucks through the neighborhood.
Button wants the State’s Ports Authority and the Department of Transportation to ease some of that inconvenience.
“We’re asking them to investigate the issuances of the permits and the impact study,” John Martin, the neighborhood’s attorney, says. “The port and the DOT have been unresponsive in treating Rosemont like the other affected communities.”
Those other communities are in North Charleston and a part of the LAMC group. The State’s Ports Authority has given LAMC $4 million to help offset the expansion’s affects.
Martin says Rosemont has not gotten a dime.
Meanwhile, Nancy Button still wonders what is going to the neighborhood where she was born and raised.
“What are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go? You can’t come in here and take our community,” she said. “It’s not right and it’s not fair.”
Construction is planned to begin in 2010.
The State’s Ports Authority says Rosemont was included in the process, but refused to take part. Nancy Button disagrees and says the neighborhood was not invited to all of the talks.
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