SC’s newly organized environmental agency shows off new logo

Myra Reece, left, the interim director of the new Department of Environmental Services, watches the unveiling of the agency sign on Monday, July 1, 2024. (Abraham Kenmore/SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA — With a short countdown and a flourish, the sign for the newly organized Department of Environmental Services was unveiled Monday outside the agency’s existing home in downtown Columbia. 

It’s an offshoot of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, which officially split in two July 1 as per a state law passed last year. The other agency is the Department of Public Health, which held a news conference on its launch last week.

“Public health and the environment will continue to be linked, regardless of restructuring,” Myra Reece, interim director of the environmental agency, said at the unveiling. The separate agencies “now have opportunities to focus solely on the unique, critical missions of each.”

Reece has been director of DHEC’s environmental side since 2016.

Environmental Services has over 1,200 employees throughout the state. The department has five bureaus: Air quality, coastal management, land and waste management, regional and laboratory services, and water.

Besides continuing the environmental work conducted by DHEC, Environmental Services is also taking over programs that have been overseen by the Department of Natural Resources. Those are water management and aquatic invasive species. 

Environmental permits issued before the split are still valid, and the new department will update them as they come due for renewal, according to a press release from the department. 

For more information on either of the two new agencies, residents can visit the new websites at des.sc.gov for environmental issues and dph.sc.gov for health.

State legislators have discussed splitting the Department of Health and Environmental Control for years before the division was finalized last year. Another proposal to merge several health-related agencies died this year in the state Legislature. 

Updating the signage for the two newly arranged agencies is estimated to cost $930,000. That includes changing the signs at 80 locations that average 20 signs each, as well as about 1,500 environmental signs for public notification such as swimming advisories. The average cost of each new sign is about $300, according to estimates from the state Revenue and Fiscal Affairs Office.

So far, the public health agency has spent less than $1,300 on building signs, while the environmental agency has spent about $2,600, according to an agency spokeswoman, who noted the process has just started.

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