Bacterial contamination, but Walhalla has a plan

Over the years, a section of the Walhalla watershed has been synonymous with pollution, but the city has a plan to rid the Cane Creek arm of Lake Keowee of bacterial contamination. Scott Parris, utilities director, refers to a study that the city will make, as Parris put it today, “to get a grip on the true condition of the system in the Cane Creek basin….” Through yearly samples of the Oconee County feeder streams into Lake Keowee, “FOLKS”—Friends of Lake Keowee–has kept an eye on water quality and has sent reports to the county and to South Carolina “DHEC.” But now comes word that, from the summer of 2017, samples taken on the Pickens County side of the lake reveal that the bacterial water quality in five of six streams monitored was “as bad as or worse than both Cane and the Little Eastatoe Creeks on the western (Oconee) shore.”