♪ [This Week in South Carolina opening music] ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

Over this past year, many students and workers across the state were forced to go online, but that wasn't an option for everyone, since some 650 thousand South Carolinians don't have broadband access.

Nanette Edwards, Director of the Office of Regulatory Staff joins us to talk about the state's broadband efforts, but first Brent Rewis, Deputy Secretary of Intermodal Planning at SCDOT joins us for a different infrastructure update.

Brent thanks for joining us.

>> Glad to be here.

Thanks for having me.

<Gavin> So, Brent the fifth year of phasing in the 12 cent per gallon gas tax is about to take place on July first.

Kind of give a little bit of a recap of where we've come from over the past few years in terms of what's been accomplished so far, maybe some the money that's been spent on these projects across the state.

<Brent Rewis> Yeah sure, if you recall, back in 2017, the gas tax was increased for a total of 12 cent to be phased in over six years.

We're currently in year four, like you mentioned and we're going into year five, right now.

At the onset of that gas tax increase, we implemented a 10 year plan, not only to identify the goals and where the money was going to be spent, but also to measure and to see how we were doing in the future so we can see how we were progressing over that ten year span of time.

With that and the addition of the gas tax, we were able to increase our budget or projects going out to construction, almost three fold.

Prior to the gas tax increase, we probably had around a million dollars going out to contracts.

Right now, we're at 3.2 billion going out contracts, right now.

<Gavin> One billion to three billion, essentially.

<Brent> Yes, one billion to three billion.

Yes.

The four main investment categories of that ten year plan were resurfacing, bridges, safety and interstates.

From a resurfacing standpoint and actually in all those categories, we're essentially doubling those programs, from a resurfacing standpoint.

Ultimately, once the whole six years is implemented in, we'll be spending over 700 million dollars annually, on the resurfacing program.

The commission just last month, approved 642 million to be approved for the fifth year of that resurfacing program.

We anticipate being able to get close to a thousand miles resurfaced in South Carolina with that funding.

I believe it's actually 977 miles.

So, we're aggressively addressing the resurfacing of our roadways in South Carolina.

There are four major categories or four systems that we're looking to address for that resurfacing, the neighborhood streets, farm to market, your major roads or your primary routes and of course your interstates.

Now, how we're approaching this, we're putting the money where folks are traveling.

As you may know, we have the fourth largest road system in the nation with 42 thousand miles that we own and maintain.

From a major roads component, we're spending an annual of 230 million a year on that system.

That carries 95 hundred miles of that 42 thousand that I just mentioned, but from a traffic standpoint, it's close to 50 percent of the traffic on those major roads.

So, that is the highest level investment as far as the systems are concerned.

The next one will be interstate pavements.

We're spending 150 million a year, annually on that.

While it's only 850 miles approximately, it carries 30% of the state's traffic, and then you have the other two the secondary routes, which is a combination of your neighborhood streets and your farm to market that we're combined spending roughly about a hundred 82 million a year on.

But that only carries a little over 20% of the state's traffic.

The second component or the second category of that ten year plan is the bridge program.

We're spending 160 million a year annually on that program.

Our goal at the onset was to complete 165 bridges.

We're on target to meet that.

We're right at a little over 40% with 199 of those bridges either gone to completion - excuse me - that have gone to contract and 134 of those have actually been completed.

The next category is our railroad safety program.

Unfortunately, South Carolina has the highest fatality rate in the nation.

We've done some analysis and we determined that 30% - excuse me - 5% of our roadways carry 30% of our fatalities and have serious injuries.

Further investigation of that also determined that the majority of those injuries or fatalities were due to road departures.

So, we're taking a strategic method as far as addressing those, focusing on that 5% and trying to address those road departures by adding additional paint, reflectors, rumble strips, adding paved shoulders and last but not least, addressing the clear zones and reclaiming that right of way.

<Gavin> And then - Go ahead, Brent.

Interstates are I think what you were touching on.

<Brent> The interstates, yeah and the interstates we have a very aggressive interstate state program.

It is comprised of the two different components.

The first one being the bottlenecks or the system, to system interchanges that we have throughout the state.

The first one has actually already been completed.

It was the I-85, 385 interchange in the Greenville area.

It costs so little over 300 hundred million.

The second one was here locally in the Midlands, Carolina Crossroads, also known as malfunction junction.

So it's at the, we estimate it's going to cost around 1.7 billion to complete that project.

The first phase of this five phase project was actually awarded last week for a little bit over 200 million and that's improved a little bit of the I-26 and the Colonial Life Boulevard.

Then the last segment is in the Low Country.

That's the 526, I-26 interchange to include the widening of I-526.

That project is currently under development and we anticipate that project costing somewhere between four to six billion dollars.

The second component of the interstate program will be the rural roads.

>> So, your number one priority, don't want to cut you off there >> The one priority from a rural standpoint is closing the gap between Columbia and Charleston.

And that's a 2.2 billion dollar issue, right now.

Currently, we have construction on I-26 in Berkeley county.

We anticipate the next phase in that Berkeley County region from Jedburg to SC-27, which is near the new Volvo interchange to go to construction, next year and then we're also in the process of designing.

We're approaching it on both ends of designing I-26 from the Sandy Run exit back towards Orangeburg.

And then last but not least from a interstate standpoint and probably what I get the most questions on was I-95.

So, we've identified the first 33 miles from Georgia to US-17 that needs to be developed.

That's going to run a little over 900 million for that project.

<Gavin> I know the Secretary Christy Hall said that we haven't really addressed congestion, yet.

Will these interstate projects, will they help alleviate some of those concerns once they're completed, which I know it's going to take some time to do?

>> Yes.

They will help with that, but it is not going to solve the overall congestion issues in your urban and rural areas, specifically your urban.

Right now, we rely on our planning partners, our metropolitan planning organizations and our councils of governments to help us determine what projects need to move forward and they also help in ranking those projects.

That being said, we've got amongst the NPOs and cogs, we've got 21 different of those entities.

They only get a 138 million dollars, annually.

That has been static for a while, stagnant for a while now.

We've done a recent study that basically said that there's a big gap and that's our biggest funding gap.

And we recommend additional hundred billion dollars going towards that.

So, right now no, it's not going to address that.

But again, we're going to need additional funding, but we just can't keep moving towards widenings all the time.

A widening project in a rural area is going to cost somewhere between eight to ten million dollars a mile.

Well, that money doesn't go very far.

So we've got to be strategic and look at congestion mitigation strategies to help address that versus just widening projects and that starts at a county and municipal level all the way up to us because it starts with the land use and things of that nature.

>> Brent, we have about three minutes left I want to talk about a few things including how the gas tax was affected last year with the pandemic and seeing a reduction in travel.

Then at the same time, y'all saw some influx of federal funds there to help with some things, too.

Kind of give us an overview of how the pandemic has affected SCDOT and all these roads projects at this point.

<Brent> Okay.

Well, from a construction standpoint we didn't stop during the pandemic While we did see a decrease in gas and things of that nature, we did see a increase in vehicles, people acquiring vehicles which is another source of revenue for us.

So at the end of the day, it ended up a wash for us.

It didn't impact us like some of the other states in the nation.

So from that standpoint, we've been moving forward and plugging along.

<Gavin> So when it comes to construction, you said you didn't stop, but has it been more difficult to find workers were there any labor issues or looking at inflation do you fear that costs might be taking up, might be putting some pressure on what the cost of these projects were originally slated for?

>> No I don't think we're seeing that right now.

The - from a construction standpoint, while yes, there was the initial hurdles to get through the policies and procedures of that nature, but during the pandemic we also saw less traffic.

So we were able to open up those construction times for them so they're able to get more work done.

<Gavin> With about a minute left there, Brent, I want to ask you about just how bridges are doing in our state.

You see some things out of Memphis where you see a crack in a big bridge span.

We had an issue with the Wando River Bridge, a few years ago How do you -Can you assure people that our bridges are safe?

I know there's some that are having issues.

We've talked about those.

But what's the bridge program look like in this state.

How are you guys addressing these concerns?

<Brent> Well, we go out and evaluate these bridges on a yearly basis and for some reason there's a load restriction that we need to slow down, not allow heavy vehicles to go across.

We will go and post those bridges.

Again, we've got a bridge replacement program in place and we're evaluating them but if at any time we deem it a safety issue, we would post such bridges and close it and deem it an emergency and get moving forward on it.

>> Gotcha.

Yeah, that's good information on your website as well as all this other information about all these ongoing projects people can find an SCDOT.org Brent Rewis, we have to leave it there.

He's a Deputy Secretary for Intermodal Planning at SCDOT.

Thanks, Brent.

>> Alright, thank you.

>> And joining us now is Nanette Edwards.

She is the Executive Director of the Office of Regulatory Staff.

We're here to talk about broadband investments in the state.

Nanette, thanks for joining us.

<Nanette> Thank you for having me.

So Nanette, millions of dollars have flowed into this state.

We're talking about federal money.

We're talking about state money to boost broadband efforts in our state.

ORS is overseeing this money.

I want to get your thoughts on just what this amount of investment means for our state and what it's looking like right now.

<Nanette> Well, actually there's several pots of money as you mentioned.

So, starting in 2020, our South Carolina General Assembly utilized 50 million in CARES funded funding and of that 50 million, we used or set aside 29.7 million almost 30 million in broadband infrastructure funding.

Now, because the CARES deadline was so short, we had to be done by December of 2020 December 30th, 2020, we had more funding than we had applicants.

We had 14 companies participate.

We were able to expend 17 million and for that 17 million, we accomplished passing over 18 thousand homes and businesses.

And that was done in a very short time frame, really between July and December.

So, that's one set of state, well federal funding that we've already expended.

Where we are now is we're currently in a state funding process, this is 30 million of South Carolina State funds and it came from the South Carolina Department of Commerce.

And we have had as of May 14th, we had 85 applications filed and covering 22 counties and if we had the money, it's basically a request for totaling about 68 eight million.

So we have more applications than we have money.

It's the exact opposite situation that we had last year.

We will by the end of June, early July, we will have selected those applications that can move forward with the 30 million in state funding and in addition to that there is also what's known as the World Digital Opportunity Fund.

This is the Federal Communication's Commission did an award last year, of some 121 million in federal funding to companies here in South Carolina.

Now that process can take up to six to ten, six to ten years to fully build out those construction projects, but that's an additional 121 million in federal funding that has been designated by the FCC.

So those projects were awarded I want to say the fourth quarter of 2020.

In addition to that, there's the National Telecommunications Information Administration or NTIA and they currently have a federal grant program that you can apply for between now and August 17th and that's about 288 million, nationally.

So, there are opportunities out there for broadband providers to apply for funds.

One here in South Carolina at the state level and actually one right now at the federal level.

<Gavin> Yes, so we're talking about something like 168 million dollars in available funds or funds that are already being expended when it comes to broadband in this state and more to come, which we'll talk about.

But I want you to walk us kind of through how we got to where we are right now.

Obviously the pandemic spurred all of this, but even as of last year when we start talking about this money coming to the state, there wasn't a broadband plan for the state employees.

Tell us is there one now?

Is there a strategy going forward when it comes to how we develop these projects and how they're assigned how they're awarded?

Or is it just really the private industry driving where these things go, at this point?

<Nanette> Well in this case, the short answer to you, is there a South Carolina broadband plan, state plan?

There is not one that's current.

There was a broadband plan made many, many years ago.

There has not been a South Carolina broadband office.

Now, pending before the General Assembly now is the proposal to create a broadband office and to the point where you're going at, is you need to have a map, because you need to know where you are in order to know where you're not and what we did, percented to last year Act 142 also directed ORS to create a broadband map.

And that we did that process.

The map is live on our website.

And that is to your point where you need, whereas these different pots of money become available, state and federal.

You need to drill down and see, "Okay, well these are "the counties that are still very sparse."

It's costly and expensive to deploy broadband in certain rural areas.

And so these are the areas that have not had that investment.

And with regard to the South Carolina Department of Commerce funds there is to the point that you brought up, there's 14 eligible counties and 15 adjacent counties.

How are these counties chosen?

The counties were chosen based upon the fact that there is a school district that is at 86% of the poverty level or greater in that county.

And so you have counties like Allendale, Barnwell, Bamberg, Hampton, just to name a few.

And then you have the adjacent counties where up to seven million dollars of the 30 could be spent.

>> And so you were talking about that right now, that rural broadband grant program, which is going through commerce, which you guys are partnered with.

You mentioned the response.

So, there's an overwhelming amount of response to this as well, but it also seems like there's a lot of counties that weren't applicants for, at the same time.

Is it hard to kind of make sure this is going to be evenly distributed even though you're saying there's some waiting going on, when it comes to how these projects are divvied up?

<Nanette> That's a fair question.

So, 14 eligible counties 15 adjacent counties And so the bulk of the funds, the intention was to put the bulk of the 30 million in those 14 eligible counties.

What - we had applications for all but one county , Dillon.

Now there were some counties like Orangeburg.

Orangeburg County drew multiple applications.

So, as we're going through, we do have a scoring process, points are awarded, for example, we look at - do you - are you going to have a pricing point for low income communities?

So there is a pricing, not just of a level of pricing where you can get points but there's also points for the type and speed of broadband service that you're going to be offering.

Community involvement, that's another section of the application where you can draw points.

So, the process that we're actually undergoing, right at this minute is we're going through all 85 applications and scoring the applications.

And we've already been meeting with commerce to go through those applications so that we can then basically move forward with who the awardees are under this grant program.

I would like to say that we're very appreciative to all 20 companies for participating and we are actually very excited because some of these applications are really gear towards very rural areas of our state.

>> And when it comes to these different providers coming to the table here, what about when it comes to affordability is that going to be an issue, too when it comes to the cost of people being able to join these broadband networks?

Or is that not considered when it comes to weighing these applicants?

<Nanette> Oh, no.

It is definitely part of the point scoring process is how much, is what, what's the price point that they're offering or willing to offer?

That is included.

I would also just for your viewership mention that the Federal Communications Commission has a program for emergency broadband benefits and that is actually ongoing right now, not just for anyone who currently doesn't have broadband due to the cost of the docking, but they have access and that's a 50 dollar per month discount per household.

<Gavin> Nanette, one of the big projects that we saw come out of this, we've three minutes left, I want to talk about a few things including this one project out of Allendale, the Allendale Broadband Pilot Project, which includes several partners including ETV to bring wireless broadband access to a thousand households.

Can you talk to us about that?

and if that's something that we can see replicated going forward, especially when we talk about additional federal funding coming down?

>> That was a fantastic project.

First off, it would not have happened without SCETV, because we used South Carolina ETV's towers.

There was one at USC Salkehatchie and also at the school district and with the Allendale school superintendent, Dr Gilmore, her assistants, USC, as well as SCETV, Dominion bringing the power and PRTC bringing the fiber.

And I'm not even naming all the partners.

There - it took a a large group to get this done in that time frame.

But you're exactly correct in the sense.

ETV owns several towers throughout the state of South Carolina.

And what was made available is public Wi-Fi, as well as what's known as a private LTE wireless.

It's where you can get wireless broadband through - the FCC made a band of spectrum available and it actually did not become available until January of 2020.

So this is a unique project that would - that enables the residents of Allendale, to as many as a thousand to access broadband wirelessly.

I do think that there are areas of our state where these ETV towers are located and there is no service, broadband service currently available.

And yes, subject to being able to get fiber to those towers, this project could be replicated in several other areas of our state.

<Gavin> Really encouraging news to see that happening and so quickly too.

With about a minute, Nanette, I want to ask you about the American rescue plan.

We're talking about 2.5 billion dollars coming to South Carolina alone.

That's my understanding that the legislature has to decide where that money goes essentially.

So that could be going, a good chunk to broadband and if that's the case, do you see us closing this gap finally?

Maybe if we're talking about 650 thousand South Carolinians without internet access to high speed broadband.

Do you feel like we're getting closer?

Are we going to be able to accomplish this if we do get more money from this federal program?

<Nanette> We definitely whether it's that federal program or another, I would say we estimate that - and this is a rough estimate, but we're estimating that to get fiber to all the unserved locations in South Carolina would be about 1.4 billion dollar project.

Now that number is based upon the end of 2020 data and as we move forward with all the projects we mentioned to you, obviously there's these pots of money that are becoming available.

I would say that if you saw an investment of somewhere around 500 million, you would see a substantial impact to our state in the remaining unserved areas.

So, to answer your question out of 2.5 billion somewhere around 500 million is definitely a number that would have a substantial impact in South Carolina.

>> Gotcha.

Well, we'll have to wait and see what they end up doing there too, but get to know about that number and great to hear about all the progress being made with rural broadband in the state.

That's Nanette Edwards.

She's the Office of Regulatory Staff Executive Director.

Thanks Nanette.

>> Thank you.

>> To stay up to date throughout the week check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast I host multiple times each week.

You can find on SouthCarolinapublicradio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

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