“Stop Pioneer Now” claims victory

Rare is it that a citizen’s group fighting City Hall can claim victory. But that’s the stance the coalition “Stop Pioneer Now” takes in its almost three-year battle with Pioneer Rural Water District. The coalition of water district customers resisted their supplier’s project to build a treatment plant inside a residential area on Lake Hartwell. They fought and won, even though PRWD bought the property and made plans to build the plant not far from where it sought to draw water from the lake. Since that time, the Pioneer board has abandoned plans for a plant on the Tugaloo Heights Road and, instead, started a new process to acquire other property a couple of miles away inside the county’s Golden Corner Commerce Park. But whether PRWD should go thru with the project at all is something that neither STOP Pioneer’s Glen McPheeters, nor the coalition itself, will become active in. “With the relocation of all planned and permitted Pioneer water treatment plant facilities to much more appropriate locations and the zoning of Pioneer’s 14 acres on Tugaloo Heights Road as Lake Residential, it is fair to declare our work as the Stop Pioneer Now Coalition to be complete,” according to last week’s announcement by the coalition.