Steel mill, ensnared in lawsuits, polluted SC town as Romney's firm made millions in profits

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"Everybody talked about the red dust, The Stuff," said Marilyn Burkhardt, who owned a seven-room bed and breakfast with her husband before leaving town in 2000.



Paul Skoko stands outside his rust-stained house in Georgetown, S.C., in this photograph taken on Friday, Aug. 10, 2012. He was one of a group of local residents who brought a pollution suit against GS Industries, operator of a nearby steel mill, back in 1998 when the company was owned by the company Mitt Romney co-founded, Bain Capital. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith).


GEORGETOWN, S.C. (AP) — The rusty stains on Shirley Carter’s home are a permanent reminder of her fight with the local steel mill, just down U.S. Highway 17 near the boat docks. No matter how many cans of industrial-strength acid she went through, the red tint on her property never seemed to go away.

In 1998, Carter and her neighbors sued Georgetown Steel, then owned by the company Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney co-founded, Bain Capital. They sought millions in cleanup costs and accused the mill’s owners of leaving their historic Southern neighborhood looking like it had been hit by a “chemical bomb.”

State officials determined the mill was largely to blame for the pollution. As the lawsuit dragged on for years, the steel mill filed for bankruptcy and the plant ultimately settled with the residents . . . In the end, Bain walked away with more than $30 million in profits. Carter got $800 . . .

As a presidential candidate, Romney has pledged to roll back environmental regulations as a way to spur growth. Under President Barack Obama, he recently quipped, “a regulator would have shut down the Wright Brothers for their ‘dust pollution.’”

But the story of Georgetown Steel shows how Romney’s company thrived under conditions that largely allowed the emissions to continue for years, leaving locals to clean up the mess after Bain left town.


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