Roughly 25 miles up the road from the Savannah River Site, about equidistant between Aiken in South Carolina and Augusta in Georgia, sits Aiken Technical College.

Founded in 1972, the public community college has about 1,800 students, many of whom focus on the coursework necessary for a career in health care.

This year, school leaders have been planning a new state-of-the-art building for its nursing program, one they hope to break ground on in early 2025. The college’s president, Forest Mahan, described the 36,000 square foot facility as a future focal point for the campus, one that will be visible from the highway. It will also allow administrators to expand the number of nursing students.

But the roughly $20 million building, school officials said, is only possible with a $9.95 million appropriation from state legislators, money that came as part of a massive settlement to the state of South Carolina from the U.S. Department of Energy over tons of plutonium brought to the Savannah River Site for processing after the end of the Cold War. 

For decades during the standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, workers at the massive Department of Energy reservation near the Georgia line produced plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons. But when the Iron Curtain fell and a swords-to-plowshares-style plutonium-recycling project proposed for the site fell through, the state sued the department to get the plutonium out.

After years of litigation, the two sides reached a $600 million settlement in 2020 for what the state’s attorney general described at the time as the single largest settlement in South Carolina’s history.

Now that money is starting to slowly move from legal documents to blueprints and design plans.

“It’s kind of like Christmas,” said Will Williams, president and chief executive of the Western SC Economic Development Partnership.

Now, roughly four years after the settlement was announced, community leaders say the money is being used in big ways and small to reshape the region. They expect the projects they’re funding to last, from new schools to new infrastructure for industrial parks and cyber corridors to wastewater treatment plants. If all goes as planned, the money would provide a sustained level of change in the way residents and SRS employees live, from the roads they drive on to the schools they attend to the rivers where they sunbathe.

In a place where the Savannah River Site already has a long history, the settlement is an unexpected addendum to the site’s legacy in the region.

“These projects would be like a monument in appreciation or an honor of what the Savannah River Site has meant to this region over the last 60 years,” Williams said.

In January 2022, the South Carolina legislature carved the settlement into chunks. 

Many of the higher-dollar projects have gone to the kinds of services residents expect from governments. The largest was a $110-million allocation for a new consolidated high school and career center for Williston and Blackville, about 25 miles northeast of the site. Roughly $30 million went to the City of Aiken to help solve long-running traffic woes along Whiskey Road, one of the region’s most troublesome spots. Without it, growth in the region could stall, leaders say. Another $30 million went toward a new career and technology center in Aiken and technology upgrades.

But the nearby communities also set aside money for the kind of benefits governments can offer that make life a little easier.

There was $20 million for the Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam Redevelopment, where many residents frolic at the widest parts of the Savannah River for water sports and leisure. The Army Corps of Engineers no longer wants to maintain the dam, so the settlement money could be used  to keep the water as a prime recreation area upriver.

There’s also a revitalization of the Smith Hazel park in Aiken, where city officials have been vocal about the need to improve the basketball courts, tennis courts and a walking track. Parents have been concerned about blindspots in the park, which in places block an entire field and make it difficult to keep an eye on very young children, who could run into a nearby road. Some of those barriers could be removed.

Regional leaders hope all of these improvements, plus regular allocations of funding from counties and the state, are helping to transform the region, even if residents don’t know exactly where the money is coming from.

“The community knows that park’s being revitalized, but they don’t know that this is a part of that funding,” said Allison Hamilton Molnar, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, a non-profit organization that shares information about the benefits of nuclear technologies and the Savannah River Site. “The average person probably doesn’t even know what [the settlement] is or why it’s important or that funds their education. They just know that the project is getting done. That’s what they care about.”

Altogether, roughly 40 projects received funding, according to the state legislation explaining the outlay. Many of the projects are in the design phase or ready to formally break ground. In Aiken County, about half the money has already been spent, county officials said.

Community officials saw the funding as a one-time infusion. The money, they said, was a chance to improve infrastructure and to make investments that will help the region grow in the future. Without it, they said, the projects would have come to fruition more slowly and taken years to find the necessary funding, especially in an area where elected officials aim to keep tax rates low.

“There’s general gratitude that this was a good thing for the community,” said Gary Bunker, the chairman of the Aiken County Council. “This is a good solid set of projects that will each incrementally help. I’m not going to say, ‘oh, my gosh, this one project is a total game changer.’ No, all the projects are incrementally going to help our economy and by helping our economy make us a better place. You do infrastructure, that helps the economy. You do education facilities, that helps the economy. You do stuff for health care, that helps the community. So this is all good stuff.”

Consider the Eastern Aiken County industrial park, a project that multiple leaders mentioned during interviews. Aiken is already home to a Bridgestone plant that manufactures Bridgestone and Firestone tires and employs roughly 1,700 people. With the new industrial park, a 1,900 acre piece of land could house two large super project sites — think: manufacturing centers. The settlement will allow for extending the basic utilities — water, sewer and electricity — to the rural part of the county that any business would need. South Carolina is already limited on the land it can offer for such sites, economic development officials said, so leaders believe the spot can quickly have broad appeal.

In addition, “this particular industrial park is a section of the county that’s been under-developed and has always felt like they were left out,” Williams said. “This will allow people in that area to have shorter drives. … This will allow that section of the county to feel like they have somebody’s been looking out for them.”

And there’s smaller set-asides as well. The settlement leaves money for improvements to the Bamberg County airport, which generally serves single-engine planes, workforce development training for the Edgefield County school district and renovating the former C.V. Bing High School for law enforcement and other town and county operations.

“The settlement money is a prime example that people can touch, see and feel about how important the Savannah River Site is to our community,” Hamilton Molnar said. “The day-to-day, they don’t see. The Savannah River Site has a huge economic impact on this region.”

And now that impact becomes slightly more visible. Along with the nursing facility, Aiken Technical College is also expanding the number of welding booths that will allow for more training thanks to the settlement money. Mahan pointed to welding as a high wage field that helps get the school’s students into the workforce, including at one of the county’s largest employers.

“There’s a very high demand for welders,” Mahan said. “Some of them get jobs, of course, at the River Site.”