Tag: Bertha Goins

JENKINSVILLE – Fairfield councilwoman Bertha Goins plans to fight a defamation lawsuit filed by the Jenkinsville Water Company, an organization whose water quality she’s criticized in the past, her attorney said Tuesday.

“I don’t think there’s a direct statement that would rise to the level of necessitating a lawsuit by a public entity against a private individual,” said attorney Tommy Morgan, who is representing the Fairfield County councilwoman.

The JWC filed suit on March 4, seeking unspecified actual and punitive damages.

No court date has been set, though the parties have until September 30 to complete any pretrial mediation. Morgan said Goins plans to defend against the suit.

“It’s unfortunate that Ms. Goins is being singled out by a public entity such as the Jenkinsville Water Company for raising concerns that many individuals throughout the community have had as to the quality and safety of the drinking water,” Morgan said.

Government suing a citizen complaining about the government is inappropriate.

Jay Bender, Media Law Attorney

JWC attorney Jeff Goodwyn, an attorney representing the water company, said Goins’ statements that the water is “substandard” and that “there is sediment in the water” are untrue.

“The above-referenced statements are false, defamatory and impugne [sic] the good reputation Jenkinsville Water Co. has with respect to the quality of its water,” the suit states.

Goins also implied, according to the suit, that there is a “casual connection” between her husband’s medical conditions and JWC water.

“Defamatory statements have never been protected by the First Amendment,” Goodwyn said. “She said the water had caused her husband to be ill, which is not true. There’s no evidence at all of that.”

Morgan said Goins never specifically attributed her husband’s illness to Jenkinsville drinking water.

“She has questioned and wondered about that, but so have many other individuals,” Morgan said. “There’s never been an outright declaration that this is the sole cause of her husband’s illness.”

The suit also states that Goins would not allow representatives of the S.C. Department of Environmental Control (DHEC) to test her water.

“She no longer lets DHEC test her water for some reason,” Goodwyn said. “They identified themselves as DHEC workers coming to test her water. She didn’t say ‘next time, make sure you have proper identification.’ She just said ‘don’t test my water anymore.’”

Morgan said the DHEC official showed up unannounced and without identification, raising concerns about trespassing and personal safety.

“We all read in the news about people claiming to be police officers and trying to pull people over,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how the Jenkinsville Water Company knows what DHEC was or was not doing on Ms. Goins’ property.

“If DHEC would like to come out, we’d be more than happy to make the arrangements,” Morgan continued.

“A little bit of advance notice, a courtesy heads up, would probably go a long way.”

Jay Bender, a media law attorney specializing in First Amendment issues, but not part of the case, doesn’t think the suit has merit. He said criticizing government activity is constitutionally protected free speech.

“This was a special purpose district created by the General Assembly,” Bender said. “That makes it part of the government, and the government suing a citizen complaining about the government is inappropriate.”

The JWC calls itself a private entity in the litigation. However, in 2011 the S.C. Attorney General’s Office issued an opinion that the water company is a public body.

Additionally, during the early 1970s, the JWC received a series of startup loans and grants from state and federal sources.

The January 14, 1976 edition of the News and Herald (Winnsboro) includes a story about state lawmakers presenting $20,000 in grant money to the JWC. The story notes the JWC had also received a $130,000 loan and a $38,500 grant from the federal government.

And there were other government grants over the years, including a $240,000 grant from the Midlands Central Council of Governmnts JWC applied for on Aug. 19, 2014 to cover cleanup costs after JWC received a Notice of Violation from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) for high levels of radium in well 15 on Clowney Road. County Council facilitated that grant by signing off on it.

That makes the JWC a public body, Bender said.

“You can stand up on the Statehouse steps and say these guys don’t know what they’re doing, and their water tastes bad, smells bad and looks bad,” he said. “That’s protected.”

The lawsuit calls significant attention to state and national awards the agency says it has won, including awards for best tasting water in the state in 2017 and 2019.

In reality, only four or five of more than 240 eligible water providers actually entered the state water tasting contest sponsored by the S.C. Rural Water Association, a non-profit trade association to which the JWC belongs.

Amy Kinard, the association’s events and marketing coordinator, previously told The Voice that the association doesn’t require contest participants to authenticate the source of the water samples they submit.

“We give them the benefit of the doubt. We take them at their word. They’re members of our organization,” Kinard said. “Whoever wants to can bring their water samples [to the annual meeting] and they are judged on taste, clarity and a few other things.”

Morgan said results of a trade show contest aren’t as telling as government testing, which found multiple violations in recent years.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control has cited the JWC at least five times since 2010. Most recently, last July, DHEC cited the water company after tests detected radioactivity in water samples, agency documents state.

“You can ask my kids, and they think the best food in the world is chicken nuggets and fish sticks,” Morgan said. “Tasting water is nothing more than an opinion.”

He also questioned the authenticity of the JWC water samples.

“We can’t even be sure that the water that [the JWC] presented actually came from their water system,” he said. “There’s just no way to even verify the water came from the Jenkinsville water system.”

Goodwyn disputed any assertions that the JWC used water from another source.

“Jenkinsville Water Company didn’t do that,” he said.

Former Councilman Kamau Marcharia, in whose district the Town of Jenkinsville lies, said from the dias in 2014 (referring to JWC’s water), “I’ve heard that water is real bad and some peoples’ dogs have become extremely ill from drinking that water,” Marcharia said. “I haven’t heard anything about an individual being sick or having to go to the hospital, but I wouldn’t trust it.”

WINNSBORO – Bertha Goins lifted a miniature plastic bottle into the air, its brown contents sloshing inside.

Her message was crystal clear.

“Our water was off most of the day. When it came back on, from the Jenkinsville Water Company, this is what came out of the faucet,” Goins said at the Fairfield County Council meeting on Oct. 14.

“This has been going on for 20 years. Muddy water, contaminated water,” Goins continued. “When children came to drink this water, they don’t know to watch out for contaminants. They don’t know to watch out for bad water.”

Goins went on to say that in the past 20 years, boil water advisories had hardly ever been issued. She also said thousands of gallons of unmetered water have been sold.

Yet, she said, the S.C. Department of Environmental Control, or DHEC, hasn’t done enough to hold the JWC accountable.

“For some reason nobody’s concerned about thousands of people drinking contaminated water,” Goins said. “When this water comes through the line, it picks up everything.”

JWC president Greg Ginyard said in a phone interview with The Voice that he questioned whether the water Goins displayed at the council meeting actually came from her water lines.

“That water could’ve come from a creek or a barrel of water,” he said. 

Ginyard also said DHEC certified lab testers were brought in to test Goins’ water, but he said Goins ordered the testers off her property, saying they were trespassing.

“My thing is if your water is being tested by the lab that’s certified by DHEC, why would you stop them from testing the water?” Ginyard asked. “She told them that they were trespassing. She stopped it.”

In June, following reports of a boil water advisory after a water line break, Ginyard said Jenkinsville water is perfectly safe.

“There’s nothing wrong with our water,” Ginyard said. “The Jenkinsville Water Company is not giving anybody bad water. All our water is potable. We’re fine, we don’t have any problems.”

Public records The Voice obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act request show that DHEC has issued nine separate Notices of Violation to the JWC in the past five years.

Infractions range from not following proper sampling procedures to contaminated water samples, documents show.

The most serious violation came to light in June when DHEC reported that Gross Alpha radiation levels exceeded the legal limit of 15 pCi/L (picocuries per liter) on two occasions – October 2018 to December 2018 (34 pCi/L) and July 2018 to September 2018 (23 pCi/L).

In follow-up measurements taken during the July 2019 to September 2019 monitoring period, DHEC recorded a level of 10 pCi/L, records show.

But because the average of the past four measurements came in at 17 pCi/L, mainly due to the 34 pCi/L reading in late 2018, the JWC was issued a new Notice of Violation.

DHEC previously found elevated levels of Gross Alpha as well as Radium 226/228 during several monitoring periods in 2013 and 2014, according to violation notices issued in August 2014 and November 2014.

Gross Alpha levels ranged between 18.1 pCi/L and 24.7 pCi/L.

Radium 226/228 levels ranged from 5.3 pCi/L to 11.6 pCi/L. The state’s legal limit for Radium 226/228 is 5.0 pCi/L.

Also in 2014, the JWC was cited after total coliform levels exceeded the state’s legal limit. DHEC issued another violation in January 2015 after the agency said the JWC failed to issue a public notice within 30 days of the violation, documents show.

In response to The Voice’s public record request, DHEC also provided redacted complaints from Jenkinsville water customers.

Two complaints describe water that smelled like sewage. One was filed in 2014; the other in 2016.

In July 2015, another customer complained that the water had been brown for the past three to four months.

“I told [the customer] that they might have been flushing the area and that would cause anything in the pipes to come through,” a DHEC official wrote in her report.

One customer called to complain that they thought the JWC improperly charged a reconnection fee.

“Although they didn’t turn the water off, the disconnection was already in the system,” the complaint says. “[The caller] feels as if they are embezzling money.”

Several other customers wondered whether the boil water advisory the JWC issued in May had been lifted after a water line break.

“The water was off 24 hours, it is now restored. Can you all check if the water is safe to drink now?” the complaint said. “Remember this is the same shady water company that has all kind of drama.”