Physical Therapy in Charleston, SC

Tim Keane, who abruptly departed his general manager role for the City of Calgary’s planning department after fewer than six weeks on the job, has returned to South Carolina to work for the City of Charleston’s local government.

A May 23 press release from the City of Charleston confirmed Keane’s appointment as the municipality’s new head of planning, permitting and engineering section. Keane previously worked for the coastal city from 1999 to 2015, according to his recently deleted LinkedIn page.

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“With a career spanning over 16 years with the city prior to 2015, Keane has since lent his expertise to guiding municipalities across North America in their city planning initiatives,” Charleston’s release stated. “This section will house stormwater, planning and preservation, Housing & Community Development, as well as the Engineering, Permit Center, and Building Inspections divisions.”

Keane was hired by the City of Calgary in February as the general manager of planning and development services. He started his role in mid-April, but abruptly departed just a month into the job, citing familial and personal circumstances.

Earlier this week, the city told Postmedia Keane’s sudden resignation was “unexpected” and that to respect his privacy, it would not be sharing any details surrounding his departure.

“We do wish him and his family well,” the statement read. “The well-being of our employees and their families is essential in our common purpose of making life better every day.”

During his brief time in Calgary, Keane helped oversee the marathon public hearing on blanket rezoning, and delivered administration’s “what we heard” report.

Prior to coming to Calgary, he also worked for the cities of Atlanta, Georgia; and Boise, Idaho, in similar capacities.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Truck drivers and ship crews are working double time to get their deliveries back on schedule after a software issue caused the Port of Charleston to shut down for nearly two days.

The very technology that helps manage one of the busiest ports in the nation is now being blamed for its crippling closure Sunday night which lasted until around 11 a.m. Tuesday.

The short shutdown may not seem like a big deal, but its impact can’t be understated. Nearly $100 billion passes through the Port of Charleston each year, according to the South Carolina Ports Authority’s own numbers. That means the shutdown may have cost anywhere from $200-$500 million.

Shutdowns because of technology failures are not unique to the ports but do highlight the significant drawbacks facing organizations that heavily rely on technology.

LaQuinta Yates is the dean of business technology at Trident Technical College. She says new technology is always going to play a role in business.

“Technology offers significant benefits to business. It can increase efficiency, cost savings as well as improve data management,” Yates said. “Of course, it can also have some negative aspects to it. Those things include security risks, dependency and complexity with integration.”

Hackers have disrupted the healthy energy sectors across the nation and software malfunctions have now been linked to the injury of hundreds of patients who were using insulin pumps.

Perhaps the most significant example of tech causing problems is when a ground stop was issued over a busy holiday travel season in Jan. of last year. The Federal Aviation Administration blamed that problem on a corrupted data file.

The Consortium for Information & Software Quality estimates poor software cost the U.S. economy more than $2 trillion in 2020.

Yates says businesses need to have a game plan for when software breaks down.

“There are also incident response plans. I think that’s really what we are talking about here - is having a response plan so when these things do go down, what are we going to do to mitigate the damage as quickly as possible?” Yates said. “A lot of time people think it has to be a cyberattack. It doesn’t have to be a cyberattack. It could be as simple as the software is not compatible with what you have and you upgrade and it all of a sudden doesn’t work with what you had before and so when those things happen it’s going to cause a company to lose money.”

Authorities at the ports say the issue at the ports was not a cybersecurity problem. Yates says that is a key distinction that customers and employees should take note of because it means their personal data was not compromised.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A new hotel is in Charleston’s future at the former Days Inn site, and some nearby businesses are making new plans so they can still stay in the area.

The former Days Inn hotel at 155 Meeting St. has been around since the 1900s and hasn’t been hosting since around the time when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, according to the city of Charleston.

The city says it is also the last motor court-style site on the peninsula, meaning it’s currently a courtyard-style motel where cars can pull up directly to their room. Once it’s demolished and construction begins, folks can now see buildings as high as six stories, which include a Four Seasons hotel.

City of Charleston Director of Planning, Preservation and Sustainability Robert Summerfield says this site can be comparable to current sites on the peninsula.

“Charleston Place, The Dewberry,” Summerfield said. “...It’s going to be very much that high-end spot.”

It’s also going to include condos, restaurants and retail. But this Days Inn site is also home to one of Toast! All Day’s locations. Their management says with this demolition, it means they have to leave, but they won’t be going far. Just a few blocks down is another restaurant, Eli’s Table, where they will be combining. Toast during the day and back to Eli’s at night.

“I believe they’ve been working with the new landowner on how exactly that would all work,” Summerfield said. “...Since they began the plans for the hotel.”

And since the Days Inn has been out of commission, the site has been home to paid public parking. Summerfield says the applicant, Morris Adjmi Architects, have been very diligent about addressing the parking for their guests, residents and patrons for their space.

“They will have an internal parking structure that will actually have some below-grade elements as well as internal garage access,” Summerfield said.

He adds that it can compare to what the Gailliard Center’s parking garage looks like.

Morris Adjmi Architects has not responded to a request for comment on exactly when demolition and construction will begin. But Summerfield says all their entitlements are in and it’s up to them when all of these plans will move forward.

“At this point, it really is up to the team to get together what we call their construction drawings, or the permit package, to submit that for our permitting department,” Summerfield said. “So, they can actually start pulling permits and begin the actual work.”

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

WILLIAMSBURG COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - The Charleston Water System has warned a sludge recycling facility in Williamsburg County that it will cut ties if the facility fails to fix issues discovered by inspectors last month.

This comes after a Live 5 follow up investigation revealed numerous infractions spotted by South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control inspectors during an April 8 site visit at Williamsburg Recycling.

CWS is one of the facility’s main clients, delivering on average two truckloads per weekday of biosolids or human waste byproduct from Plum Island.

It costs the waste management agency $1,550 less to send this material to the facility as opposed to a landfill.

In the inspection reports, DHEC rated the business overall “non-compliant” and found its stormwater management program to be “unsatisfactory” as detailed in a letter sent to Williamsburg Recycling on April 17 and provided to CWS by Live 5 News.

In direct response, CWS has reduced its deliveries to one truck a day ‘effective immediately’ and will terminate the agreement if the issues noted by DHEC are not fixed within 90 days.

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The contract, which expires in 2026, stipulates that the business is supposed to inform CWS if it is not in good standing with its permits.

“In each case, you failed to notify CWS immediately on the Facility’s non-compliance status,” Chief Operating Officer Baker Mordecai wrote in the May 24 letter to Williamsburg Recycling owner Suzanne Conway.

The agency reports it must have written proof from DHEC within 90 days that the noted deficiencies have been fixed in order to maintain the contract agreement.

Previously, the facility has been found in violation of its permits 16 out of 27 site visits over the last three years.

Neighbors have also long complained about the odors emitted from the facility, which does have an odor abatement plan but has been found in violation by DHEC inspectors.

Williamsburg Recycling is currently appealing the results of the April 8 inspection. It’s also been facing foreclosure by Touchmark National Bank for not making payments on a $2.1 million loan.

The loan is the subject of a suit filed by Williamsburg Recycling against SCDHEC in March, claiming the agency’s actions had made it difficult to conduct business and pay the loan back.

Conway provided the following statement:

Williamsburg Recycling has responded to DHEC about the inaccuracies in the inspection reports. We do not agree that Williamsburg Recycling is non-compliant with its permit or that its compliance with the stormwater permit is unsatisfactory. While we understand Charleston Water System’s concerns based on DHEC’s reports, we dispute the statements made in those reports.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Like thousands of others moving to the Charleston region every year, Rick Siebold left his New Jersey home in search of paradise.

“When it came time to get away from the snow, I decided I’d make the move,” he said.

Now he spends much of his retirement fishing, walking, and enjoying the same things that make Charleston one of the top tourist destinations and the fastest-growing cities in the country: its beautifully preserved historic districts, sunny skies, and access to water.

Yet, Siebold is also well aware Charleston’s water comes with a major tradeoff, street flooding.

“It gets deep in some places, you have to leave your car and take your shoes off,” he said.

According to Scott Harris, a geology professor at the College of Charleston, nuisance flooding has always been a part of Charleston’s geography, but it’s gotten worse in the past few decades due to two simultaneous issues.

The water is rising and the land is sinking.

“We have land issues, and we have ocean issues,” he said. “And some of that land sinks more than others.”

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Ground compaction, or subsidence, is a natural process underway across the entire East Coast, but research out of Virginia Tech found Charleston is one of the fastest sinking cities in the country, with an average rate of around 4 millimeters a year or an inch every six to seven years.

It sounds small on its own, but as the water rises around it, Charleston’s Chief Resiliency Officer Dale Morris says it compounds the impact of the area’s other geological concerns.

“Sea level rise is going to make that even worse going forward,” he said.

Charleston has experienced 13 inches of sea level rise in the past 100 years and Morris said the city expects the water to rise another foot by 2050. With large portions of the peninsula less than eight feet below sea level, every inch counts.

“We have this really complex challenge of how do we stay here,” he said.

The best way to understand the city’s future risk is to look at its past. Significant portions of Charleston’s peninsula didn’t exist when settlers arrived more than 300 years ago.

After building up much of the high ground, those settlements expanded over the centuries and where they couldn’t find suitable land, Low Country Hazards Center Director Norman Levine said they made their own.

“All of the marsh and water features that are on the peninsula had to be filled in,” he said. “It all built up within the city then it started to move out into the suburbs, further and further with the development pressures.”

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Now, Levine said, those fill areas are some of the fastest sinking spots in the city and the most vulnerable when the tide comes in or rains pour down.

“Water wants to go where water was before,” he said.

The city’s medical district, built entirely on fill, is of particular concern.

“[The buildings] are rooted in the deeper material so they’re very stable,” Harris said. “But the land is sinking around them.”

In 2023, Charleston saw 75 flood events. By 2045, NOAA predicts Charleston will see 180.

Morris said the city has worked to improve drainage in those vulnerable districts and the Low Country Hazard Center has developed tools to help locals track and predict daily flood threats. Levine said by looking at precipitation and tidal data, the Chucktown Floods portal can predict which streets might close by the end of the day.

“We have to plan our travels around our tides. That happens a lot here,” Harris said. “Every morning when I wake up before I come into work I turn on my apps, I look at Waze, I look at Google Maps just to see what’s going on in case I’m gonna have a ten-minute drive in to work or a three-hour drive in to work.”

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Ultimately, Morris said the city is going to need a more permanent solution to manage the near daily threat of high water. The Charleston Peninsula Coastal Storm Risk Management Study determined a $1.3 billion, 12-foot storm surge wall could be the most cost-effective, long-term solution.

“So that it can help us manage storm surge and hopefully help us manage tides too,” he said.

As for Siebold, he said he believes his new home needs to do what it takes to keep people safe, but he said he chose to live by the water and understands the risks.

“Everybody seems to be prepared,” he said. “There’s no perfect place to live.”

If the city is going to do something as dramatic as building a sea wall, he said it has to be done without passing the cost onto taxpayers and without destroying what makes Charleston unique.

“It’s gotta be right,” he said. “It’s quite an undertaking.”

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