M Focus on: Public Works
Aiken, S.C., honored for stormwater project
By BETH ANNE BRINK-COX | The Municipal
Remember playing in the woods and coming across a little pool? It seemed almost magical, because they came and went. The cool, flower-child thing to do if you found a stream or any other small body of water was to wash your hair in it, and never mind how cold it was. Where did those bodies come from, especially if they weren’t anywhere near a river or lake? Melted snow? That would have been a logical conclusion in the spring, but it was much more likely to be stormwater, and flower children wouldn’t have thought of it as damaging. But it can be, and Aiken, S.C., has been working diligently to deal with it before Hitchcock Woods is damaged any further. Stormwater runoff had caused serious erosion: woods, trees and land destroyed; precious ground washing away after every rain; and sedimentation traveling downstream, killing bottomland hardwood trees and destroying wetlands. This led to multiple problems, such as environmental damage, pollution and safety issues. George Grinton, a colorful character everyone knows in Aiken — you can’t forget someone who plays the bagpipes — has worked in city government for many years as 18 THE MUNICIPAL | JULY 2022
the engineering and utilities director, retired in 2017 and then came back to get involved again. “I reconfigured the Downtown Alley to make it more user friendly. This will be my last project.” And a huge project it is. He explained, “Aiken has been wrestling with this issue since the 1950s. See, in 1833, the first train passed through Aiken; at the time, the Charleston-Hamburg Track was 136 miles long, the longest in the world then. River locomotives were not powerful enough to pull up and down significant inclines, and they stalled, at first. The solution was an engine house with a boiler, and cantilevering
ABOVE: Cranes construct a vault that will capture stormwater underground and slowly release it. (Photo provided by the city of Aiken)
the trains from the lower section with rope: one section being raised and the other lowered, you know, locomotives at the bottom and the top. Aiken occurred because it was a sort of bottleneck!” In 1835, Aiken was incorporated and became a winter colony for the wealthy Northeastern families because of the climate. They brought horses, as well as every other comfort imaginable. “Hitchcock Woods was so named because Tommy Hitchcock owned a significant section. The foundation is for pedestrian and equestrian use; it’s a voluntary organization that survives on donations earmarked for preserving the woods,” Grinton said. Hitchcock Woods is a beautiful, peaceful place, and part of the plan was always to restore the ravaged beauty in every way possible. In the early days, the system in place worked pretty well, but as population
