Phillips Community Association presents SELC with Distinguished Service Award - Southern Environmental Law Center

This fall, SELC received the Distinguished Service Award from the Phillips Community Association. Presented by community leader Richard Habersham at a family day cookout, the award follows SELC’s work representing Phillips community residents challenging Charleston County’s plans to expand Highway 41 through their neighborhood.

“It’s an honor to work with members of the Phillips Community, to learn their history, and to play a small part in helping to protect their community,” says Chris DeScherer, director of SELC’s South Carolina office.

Last year, Charleston County put forward a plan to widen the highway along the roughly five-mile stretch passing through the Phillips community. Settled along Horlbeck Creek in the 1870s by freedmen, the historic neighborhood faced the threat of road expansion that would worsen air quality and flooding for residents. SELC worked alongside nine other local groups to present alternatives to the plan, which raised many environmental concerns, including the negative impacts of developing on untouched wetlands.

“The Charleston area is under so much pressure to expand, but development should not come at the expense of historic communities that were here long before the Lowcountry was affected by sprawling development patterns and the desire for four-lane highways,” adds DeScherer. “The residents in Phillips just wanted to be treated fairly and to offer other options and solutions, and we’re proud to work with them on that.”

The significant progress we’ve seen on this Highway 41 project in just over a year would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of Richard, Johnathan, Fred, Elijah, and so many other advocates in the Phillips Community.

Jenny Brennan, SELC Science and Policy Associate

Highway 41 is a major thoroughfare that connects areas in Mt. Pleasant, the formerly rural Charleston suburb where the Phillips Community lies, to Highway 17 and another growing county nearby.

During an August 24 County Council meeting, the Phillips community was designated as a historic district. The designation recognizes the need for preservation of the historically Black settlement dating back to the late 1800s. Even so, it wasn’t until a Mount Pleasant Town Council decision on September 14 of this year that officials finally shelved the bad plan.

source: https://www.southernenvironment.org/news/phillips-community-association-presents-selc-with-distinguished-service-award/

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