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30 Service above Self While I was rather pleased with the impact I was having at the national level, I was just as focused on issues that were important to my constituents and the citizens of South Carolina. Lake Marion Regional Water Agency Two weeks after I was elected, Bill DeLoach pulled together a group of state agency heads, many of whom I had worked with for almost two decades. For the most part these were folks who had been supportive of my candidacy, and some had helped me develop the platform on which I campaigned. Bill thought it would be good for me to hear from them as to how I could best go about keeping the many promises I had made in the heat of campaigning. Much to my surprise, Bill had kept copious notes and had compiled a list which he shared with the group in advance of the meeting. There was substantial agreement among them that if I were going to keep my promises, I would have to find a cure for the infrastructure problems that were prevalent throughout the district, most especially along the I-95 corridor. Following that meeting, I met with Robert “Bob” Royall, who was heading Governor Carroll Campbell’s Commerce Department. Bob had supported my political efforts over the years, and was an “honoree” at one of the “Roasts and Toasts” that I hosted for several years. He had retired as president of C&S National Bank of South Carolina, on whose board I had served as a member of the audit committee and chair of the Communities Reinvestment Act (CRA) Committee. Bob had his staff put together a powerful and persuasive presentation that was a real eye-opener for me. Their presentation was a real blessing and reinforced the recommendations of the ad hoc committee of agency heads I had met with earlier. Everything kept coming back to one thing: potable water. The meeting with Bob Royall and his staff convinced me that a regional water system near Santee made a lot of sense. They also made it clear that I was going to need significant cooperation from local elected officials and community leaders along the I-95 corridor. The price tag for a water-treatment plant on Lake Marion had been placed at $150 million, which made it all the more necessary to go regional in order to make the case for that amount of funding. 266 Treading and Toiling I began by hosting a meeting at Camp Daniels with all the possible stakeholders I could identify throughout Orangeburg, Sumter, Clarendon, Calhoun, Dorchester, and Colleton Counties. The attendance was great, but the idea did not have unanimous support. My work was cut out for me. There were a few doubters and some who were just plain ornery. I was not too sure whether or not it was because of continued animosity over the creation of the majority minority district or the opposition to infrastructure investments in several rural communities. I had become aware of this opposition while working in the governor ’s office, when I came across a memorandum that had been sent to the state’s leadership by economic development specialists who had been hired to help recruit industry to the state. That memorandum listed ten counties—all but one of which was on the I-95 corridor—that should be avoided when courting prospects. All these counties had majority black populations. The theory was that black people were more prone than white people to join unions, and the lack of organized labor was one of their recruiting tools. No matter the reason, I was determined to get my project authorized and funded. Getting elected president of the freshman class for the second session of the One Hundred Third Congress brought me to the attention of quite a few people who probably would not have noticed me otherwise; two of them were Norm Mineta and Jim Oberstar, the number one and number two ranking Democrats on what was then the Public Works Committee. Both were very helpful to my efforts, and those relationships paid off handsomely. There were many hits and misses and quite a few ups and downs, but the Lake Marion Regional Water Agency became a reality. The Honda Accord Honda decided to erect a facility that would manufacture four-wheel all-terrain vehicles in South Carolina. The Florence/Pee Dee area was in contention for the facility, and “the powers that be” made an all-out effort...

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