Governor wants SC to plant 3 million pine trees to fight flooding. Will it work? Sammy Fretwell, The State (Columbia, S.C.)
Apr. 22 Gov. Henry McMaster and his floodwater commission are touting an effort to plant more than 3 million pine trees they hope will soak up stormwater as more intense rainfall drenches South Carolina and increases flooding.
Some environmentalists and scientists who follow forestry and development issues say the initiative isn t a bad idea, but the state also needs bolder efforts to address flooding, including development controls and efforts to slow the release of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
John Gossett grew up in a small farmhouse on Shiloh Church Road bordering the Camp Croft World War II training site, where his dad was an engineer and mom was a post command driver.
At 83, the retired Army colonel still recalls vividly as a child watching from his bedroom window where many of the estimated 250,000 soldiers who trained there during World War II used live artillery fire. That hill there and all the way back to Pauline was maneuver areas, where troops moved and ran tactics, he said, pointing past the fence line that contains his cattle. Course, we haven t had any worry about it. Soon as the war was over, we went right back (to) farming.