Mount Pleasant Magazine May/June 2018

53 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.BestOfMP.com feature HWY 41 HWY 41 HWY 17 HWY 17 Phillips Community Mount Pleasant his body. Work isn’t expected to begin until 2022. Under the National Environmental Policy Act, an extensive review must be completed before any dirt can be turned. Among the issues that will be studied is the effect the project will have on the people who live in the Phillips Community. Some of them are residents of Mount Pleasant, while others are located in unincorporated areas of Charleston County. State Sen. Larry Grooms, who represents parts of Charleston and Berkeley counties and chairs the Senate Transportation Committee, encouraged members of the Phillips Community to work with Mount Pleasant and Charleston County to come up with the best possible plan for Highway 41. He said, however, that he doesn’t think the three-lane option will fly. “I can’t see any scenario under which that would happen,” said Grooms. “From what I know of traffic counts, that project would fail from day one. The Federal Highway Administration will not cough up any money for it.” “If we’re going to spend scarce tax dollars to fix the problem, we need to fix the problem,” he added. “And the problem is congestion. You have to have lane capacity.” Nevertheless, both Grooms and Mount Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie agreed that the project won’t be defined until the NEPA process is completed. Haynie said he would support “the most community-friendly design we can get that provides the capacity that actually makes it a true fix for the traffic volume.” “The bottom line is that none of us have the final say in the design of the road,” he added. “The cultural and natural resources have to be evaluated in the NEPA process. It is my stated goal and the goal of the town to protect our cultural communities, whether it’s Scanlonville, 10 Mile or Phillips.” Though Phillips is a mostly African-American community and, according to Habersham, 90 percent of its residents can trace their ancestry back to the post-Civil War era, he insisted that the final design of Highway 41 is not a black versus white issue. “White families live in the Phillips Community, and they’re just as adamant as we are,” he said. “It’s not a racial thing. It’s a quality of life thing. This area fits the people who live here.” John Wright, left, and Richard Habersham discuss how a wider Highway 41 will affect the residents of the Phillips Community.