Upper Savannah Land Trust (USLT) Secretary Rick Green can trace the beginnings of USLT back to October 7, 1999, as the organization celebrates its 25th anniversary having protected more than 58,000 acres of land in western South Carolina with conservation easements.

“I brought my calendar (day planner) from 1999,” Green showed with a smile to those who helped celebrate the anniversary at USLT’s 2025 Annual Meeting held May 9 at Dorn Mill in McCormick.

“I can go to October 7th, 1999, and I have a meeting with (conservationist) Jimmy Sanders at 8:30 in the morning,” said Green, who is Government Services Director at the Upper Savannah Council of Governments (USCOG).

“That’s when Jimmy Sanders came to my office (at USCOG) and said, ‘we’ve got some landowners who are interested in talking about the creation of a land trust.’

“I didn’t know much about land trusts at the time. So I had to do my homework. Then we came back on October the 25th, 1999. Jimmy Sanders and a larger group talked about the creation of a land trust for our part of South Carolina. That wasn’t anything we had in our seven-county region. And in 2000, we had our first official land trust meeting.”

Upper Savannah Land Trust was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization on Oct. 1, 2000. USLT’s mission is to encourage and support conservation of natural and scenic lands, farms, forests, waterways, and open spaces.

The first USLT conservation easement of 33 acres was granted by the Tolbert family of Ninety Six in January 2001. Since then, private landowners have granted conservation easement protection over hundreds of land parcels, as small as a few acres and as large as hundreds or thousands of acres across Abbeville, Aiken, Anderson, Edgefield, Greenwood, Laurens, McCormick, Newberry, Oconee and Saluda counties. Today the Land Trust counts 138 easement projects, covering 58,301 acres, much of it working farms and forests.

“We’ve had many, many Annual Meetings over those 25 years,” said Green, who has been USLT’s secretary since the beginning. “Some of them were at specific sites where we have Land Trust conservation easements. I remember going to Viewpoint Farm and having (long-time USLT member) Peggy Adams pull up with Subway subs in the back of the car for our Annual Meeting.”

The quarter century celebration began with a field trip to Parks Mill and the Spider Lilies on Stevens Creek east of Plum Branch in McCormick County. The preserve consists of 15 acres of pine and hardwood forest, with 200 yards of frontage on Stevens Creek, where a large population of the Rocky Shoals Spider Lilies are emerging from the creek.

Near the creek, deep in the woods, is an old turbine-powered grist mill which is being restored. The Parks Mill site has been protected through the joint efforts of the SC Native Plant Society, Naturaland Trust, and USLT.

The group reconvened at the Dorn Mill Cotton Ginnery where Mary Tobin of the McCormick County Historical Commission told stories of the goldmining, farming, and family legacies intertwined into the Dorn Mill complex.

Tobin spoke of Dorn Mill’s important place in McCormick history even as a train breezed down the adjacent tracks, blowing its horn several times over her speech.

The Dorn Mill Complex was an important industrial site for early 20th century McCormick. It began in 1899 as the McCormick Cotton Oil Company, built to house a cotton-seed oil mill and two steam engines.

The Dorn brothers would take ownership of the site and converted the oil mill into a grist mill and added a sawmill, reflecting the transition from cotton to corn to timber. Closed in the 1940s, the old cotton gin is now home to the McCormick Farmer’s Market and Festival of Trees.

USLT Assistant Director Becky Brown crafted two large posters on USLT’s history as part of the celebration, including Land Trust photos and Index-Journal articles.

USLT Executive Director Wade Harrison gave a presentation on the history and heritage of the South Carolina Piedmont told through historical prose and original poetry.

Harrison opened his presentation with some of his own original poetry, asking the approximately 70 in attendance to join him to “sing praises for the traces of old farm roads, the fields where now the pine tree grows, the whippoorwills and daffodils, and gravesites marked with rough field stones,… the farmhouse ruins, old brick piles, roads that wind for red-clay miles, on ground where pines are grown in lines, bereft of soil that plows defiled.

“Our fathers’ fields were not their own, the Cherokee once called them home, and in later years, the profiteers of agriculture weren’t alone…”

Harrison described the area through the writing of explorer William Bartram, who rode on horseback through what is now McCormick County in 1775 and published Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida in 1791; and also of Confederate surgeon and educator Dr. John Henry Logan, who published the History of the Upper Country South Carolina in 1859.

Harrison talked about deadly battles involving American Patriots, British Loyalists, and Cherokee Indians throughout the Piedmont before and during the Revolutionary War, in contrast to the beauty described by Bartram, Dr. Logan and others when there were natural meadows of wildflowers, canebrakes and buffalos.

Toward the end of the presentation, Harrison stressed that we are fortunate to still have some of the natural wonders of the frontier, like the spider lilies, and that “we should protect our lands and waters today not only to save what’s still there or to restore it when we can, but simply to honor the memory of what we’ve lost.”

Reaching the Region has been a major focus for the Upper Savannah COG Aging Program’s staff as it educates the public about services available.

Just last week, staff spoke to the Women’s Catholic Club at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Greenwood and attended Senior Celebration Day at Red Bank Baptist Church in Saluda.

“Seniors access our services by reaching out to our office,” USCOG Aging Division Director Peggy Merritt said. “To ensure that the community is aware of the types of services we provide, we welcome opportunities to attend all types of community events. If you would like staff to attend your community or church event, please contact Christy Stroud at cstroud@uppersavannah.com.”

Upper Savannah Information and Referral Specialist Langley Richardson attended both events last week.

“I am pleased with the turnout of both events,” she said. “We are always happy to attend any community events, whether big or small. We enjoy connecting with the residents of each county. And also connecting with community members and partners.

“We are all working together to help provide resources and support. Our goal is to bring services and people together,” Richardson added.

Services available include group dining, home-delivered meals, transportation, home care, personal care, respite care, legal services, family caregiver support, Medicare counseling, Ombudsman services and more for eligible seniors.

There are several more upcoming events which staff will attend, including outreach at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Greenwood April 24, a visit to the Laurens Senior Center April 29, participation in Senior Day at the state fairgrounds in Columbia May 1, GLEAMNS Community Action Day at Piedmont Technical College May 16, a caregiver event at New Journey Church in Greenwood May 19, a visit to Renaissance Senior Living in Due West June 26, and Veteran’s Appreciation Day at the Greenwood County Veteran’s Office July 16.

The investigation process of abuse, neglect and exploitation of vulnerable adults was the lead topic at the Long Term Care Ombudsman Workshop Wednesday hosted by the Upper Savannah Regional Long Term Care Ombudsman Program.

The Workshop was held at the Greenwood Genetic Center. Attendees consisted of staff from nursing homes, community residential care facilities (assisted living), and DDSN facilities in the Upper Savannah Region.

Upper Savannah Regional Long Term Care Ombudsman Ericca Livingston and Long Term Care Ombudsman Ashley Capps conducted the workshop with assistance from Upper Savannah Area Agency on Aging staff.

Attendees received an overview of the services of the Upper Savannah Aging & Disability Resource Center (ADRC/AAA), the Upper Savannah Regional Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, and were provided presentations by Lieutenant Sabrina Fellers of the Vulnerable Adults Investigations Unit (VAIU) of SC SLED;  Ann Dalton, DDSN Director of Quality Management; Miles Rawl, Outreach Coordinator of the Vulnerable Adults and Medicaid Provider Fraud Unit (VAMPF) of the SC Attorney General’s Office; John Frampton, Chief Investigator of the VAMP Unit; and DeMorrie Evans, Transitions Program Coordinator of the SC Department of Mental Health (DMH).

One of the main takeaways from the event was the importance of timely reporting of alleged or suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation of vulnerable adults to the appropriate entities. Appropriate entities include the Ombudsman’s office, SC SLED VAIU, VAMPF of the SC Attorney General’s Office, or in case of emergency local law enforcement.

“The SC Omnibus Adult Protection Act is the law in South Carolina for the reporting of alleged or suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation of our vulnerable adults”, Livingston said. “It’s good for facilities to have training on it so they have a full understanding of the appropriate entities to contact. Failure to report can potentially result in criminal penalties and prison time.”

“Residents of long term care facilities have rights. One is the right to be free from abuse, neglect, and exploitation,” Livingston said.

Livingston was pleased with the information presented. Capps echoed her sentiments.

“I am pleased with the conference because I feel that it improved the efficiency of the investigation process,” Capps said. “It raised awareness of the needs and issues related to case investigations, quality of care, resident rights, and the reporting of abuse, neglect, and exploitation in order to improve the quality of care and life of residents who reside in DDSN operated facilities and residences.”

Fellers said abuse, neglect and exploitation can come in many forms such as moving somebody’s walker so they cannot get out of their recliner, chemically restraining them (with medicines perhaps to make them sleep) to make your job easier, not providing clean clothes and/or bed sheets, etc., and certainly the all-too-common stealing of their pain medicine including fentanyl for personal use.

If these or other forms of abuse, neglect and exploitation are observed, “call and report it. Let us know,” Fellers said.

Rawl and Frampton also discussed forms of abuse, neglect and exploitation, citing some examples that occurred in South Carolina. One care provider spent a vulnerable adults life savings of approximately $310,000 for extravagant personal use. One was posting pictures of vulnerable adults on social media. Two others were stealing pain patches for their personal use. Another left his senior care facility unattended for extended periods of time and generally neglected the facility as a whole, leaving it filthy and unsafe.

“It was worse than any dog pound you could find anywhere in the state,” Frampton said.

All of these and similar incidents are investigated, prosecuted when appropriate, with some resulting in prison time.

Several Community Development Block Grant projects are progressing throughout the Upper Savannah Region, including three streetscape projects which will be completed in the coming
months. Also, another project was awarded in December 2024.

Upper Savannah Community Development staff wrote successful grant applications to the S.C. Department of Commerce and are administering the projects.

The Waller Avenue Streetscape in the City of Greenwood is scheduled to be completed in late March. The $750,000 project is correcting broken, pieced, and misaligned sections of sidewalk, unsecure fencing, root overgrowth, ADA accessibility concerns, poorly patched sections of road, worn curbing, and lack of parking stall signage.

Funds have been used to install wider sidewalks and other upgrades along Waller Avenue where there are several businesses. So far, crews have demolished old sidewalks and are putting in fresh new concrete with scored patterns and brick pavers. New planter boxes are going up on both sides of the street.

Also, with help from the Commissioners of Public Works, new water, gas, and electric lines have been installed. Crews are replacing old brick pavers in the road with fresh new pavers.

The Town of McCormick Streetscape is scheduled for completion in June. The $750,000 project includes improvements to West Augusta Street in front of Town Hall, adding sidewalks, curbing, a speed table, and a Veterans Memorial.

Additional improvements have been made to the parking area behind Town Hall and the Fire Department, with new parking, an alternative entrance and exit, and an underground retention pond. The Town committed an additional $215,637 towards completion of the project. There will be an additional 23 parking spaces.

The Town of Saluda Streetscape is scheduled for completion in March. The $721,212 in CDBG funding focuses on downtown beautification at North Main and West Church streets.

Improvements will encourage foot traffic, potentially stimulating business opportunities within the available storefronts. The project includes a $102,562 local match for total cost of $823,774.

More recently, Saluda County was awarded funds to renovate the new Saluda County Library location at 307 W. Butler Ave. The current library located behind the Courthouse consists of approximately 2,000 square feet of space, whereas the new location consists of approximately 6,900 square feet.

Improvements to the new location will include interior construction, parking improvements, ADA accessibility, and a new HVAC system. The larger facility will allow more educational materials, resources, and space for free library-hosted activities and programs. The project is in start-up phase.

Other CDBG projects have been completed or are near completion. The Clinton-Joanna Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrade Phase I was completed in December 2024.

The Greenwood County Mathews Mill Sewer Phase II upgrade affecting approximately 303 customers on Georgia Street, Bolt Avenue, Bond Avenue, Stevens Avenue, and Cross Street is scheduled for completion around Feb. 27.

Other projects in start-up phases include Clinton-Joanna WWTP Upgrade Phase II and Greenwood County DSS Building Improvements.

The Booker T. Washington Sewer Upgrade on Central Avenue, North Hospital Street, Brewer Avenue, and New Street in the City of Greenwood is currently under construction and will bring improvement for approximately 119 residents.

The City of Abbeville Chestnut Street Park improvements are going out to bid in February. The Town of Ridge Spring Sewer Rehab will go out to bid once right of way acquisition is complete.