Ophthalmologist near Pineville, SC

In a special meeting Monday that lasted less than five minutes, the Pineville Town Council narrowly approved a controversial plan for a new electric substation near a large subdivision.

The council voted 3-2 to back a city plan to buy about an acre at the intersection of Miller Road and Greenway Drive for the substation and gave city staff approval to negotiate for the land in question as well as condemn it if needed. The property is owned by the family that runs Miller’s Flea Market on the land.

Town leaders say the substation is critical to keeping up with demand for utilities in the growing Charlotte-area community and that the site in question was the most feasible option out multiple sites considered.

But residents of the nearby McCollough neighborhood have expressed concerns since they first heard of Pineville’s plan in December, saying they think it could drag down their property values and negatively impact health, safety and local businesses. At a public meeting in January, some residents questioned why town leadership hadn’t considered future infrastructure needs more when deciding on development deals.

Mayor Pro Tem Ed Samaha and Council member Danielle Moore voted against the measures Monday. Council members Amelia Stinson-Wesley and Chris McDonough voted for them.

That left Mayor David Phillips to cast two tie-breaking “yes” votes.

“It was, in my opinion, just the smartest decision to make at this particular time,” he told The Charlotte Observer after the meeting. “It’s not anything that I’m happy about, but, you know, sometimes you have to make decisions that are best for the town.”

As residents filed out of the brief meeting at the Pineville Town Hall, some shouted their displeasure at town leaders.

“We can’t wait for the next election,” one person said.

Plans for the new substation site came out in December, when the town sent out a news release saying it was working to buy about an acre at the intersection of Miller Road and Greenway Drive for a new substation to accommodate growth in the area and “serve as a back-up source to an existing substation.” The town picked the site because it was the “most economical and least obtrusive to the community.” The substation would be enclosed by a brick wall with plants around the outside, the release said.

That release immediately sparked a reaction among neighbors, who expressed concerns about the potential impacts on their health, safety and property values and launched a petition in opposition to the plan.

More than 100 people attended a January public meeting about the proposal.

McCollough resident Jarred Muraco said at Monday’s vote he got involved in the opposition in December.

“I just don’t think it’s the best use of anybody’s time or money to do this,” he said.

Muraco questioned whether town leaders have been honest about the funding for the project and said he shares some of the concerns about health impacts and property values other residents brought up.

“The health concern is an issue. It’s unsightly,” he said.

Some residents have said they’re worried electromagnetic fields from the substation could lead to health problems, particularly in children or elderly people. Town leaders have pushed back on those claims in meetings on the plan.

Experts say there’s not a clear-cut connection between exposure to electromagnetic fields and health issues.

“The possible link between electromagnetic fields and cancer has been a subject of controversy for several decades,” the American Cancer Society says, because “it’s not clear exactly how electromagnetic fields, a form of low-energy, non-ionizing radiation, could increase cancer risk.”

While the World Health Organization “classifies extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans,”the Environmental Protection Agency notes that “scientific studies have not consistently shown whether exposure to any source of EMF increases cancer risk.”

McCollough resident Sean Price said the situation has him questioning how the town’s electric fund is managed.

“They are the stewards of this community as elected officials with the obligation to serve their community,” he said. “I hope they will look in the mirror and use the alternative solution that the people of this community demand.”

I-Chin Lin, another McCullough resident who first shared her thoughts on the project with the Observer in December, said Monday’s vote left her “disappointed.”

“They did not do their due diligence,” she said. “And now they are asking us residents to pay for their oversight. This is unacceptable.”

The town picked its top choice from 10 locations, town manager Ryan Spitzer and David Lucore, Pineville’s electric services manager and a systems manager for ElectriCities of North Carolina, said at the January meeting.

Complications with the other sites included proximity to floodplains and wetlands and distance from usable transmission lines.

“There’s not a whole lot of options,” Lucore said at the time.

Pineville Electric, which provides electric services in the town, is a public provider that’s part of ElectriCities, which provides services to member organizations. Public power providers differ from utility companies such as Duke Energy because they are part of local governments and often part of membership organizations such as ElectriCities.

Time is of the essence for the project, according to town leaders, because growth in Pineville means the town’s current electric grid is close to being overtaxed, which could lead to power outages. Pineville’s population grew from 7,479 to 10,602 from 2010 to 2020, according to Census data. The town’s 2022 population estimate, the most recent Census data available, puts Pineville at 10,886 residents.

The new substation project would need to be completed by the end of 2025 to avoid issues, Lucore said in January.

Multiple residents at the January meeting questioned why more consideration wasn’t given to one of the other 10 sites. That site is near the one approved Monday but further from the subdivision. It would cost about $1 million more than the currently chosen site, Lucore said previously, an expense that could be passed on to consumers through higher rates. But some at the meeting said they’d be willing to take on a slightly higher electric bill to pay that higher cost.

Both parcels in question are owned by the Miller family. Spitzer indicated at the January meeting that the Millers, through their attorney, have been resistant to sell either plot. But members of the family in attendance at that meeting and their representatives spoke up to say they’d be more open to selling the other land than the controversial site.

Spitzer said after Monday’s vote that the town attorney will file paperwork to send letters to the affected property owners, and they’ll have at least 30 days to respond. Asked whether he thought the town could still negotiate a deal for the land rather than condemn it, Spitzer said “that’s always the favorable outcome.”

Phillips said that town staff have been working to put together a plan “for a couple of years” but ultimately a decision had to be made.

“We’re on a pretty solid timeline that we have to meet,” he said.

Phillips added that he campaigned on fiscal responsibility and feels that the site that was chosen is the most economical for the town.

“At the end of the day, we have a budget we need to follow, and we need to try to have funding available for other stuff we need to do,” he said.

Despite the vocal opposition to the plan, not every resident at Monday’s meeting disagreed with the vote.

Laura Stout and Debby Brown said they’ve both lived close to Pineville’s existing substation for years and never had any issues.

“It’s a hard situation to deal with. But you have to do the lesser of the two evils, I guess,” Brown said.

Stout said she’s attended Town Council meetings for years as the community has grown, and she wishes elected officials had done more to prepare for the challenges that come with development and growth.

“The rapid growth in Pineville has been something that has concerned me and many residents for many years. And we have raised that alarm for many years with the previous council that things needed to slow down because we didn’t have the infrastructure in place to handle it,” she said. “And now that has caught up to us. And if something is not done, we’re going to lose power, and obviously nobody wants that.”

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This story was originally published March 25, 2024, 9:30 PM.

Mary Ramsey is the local government accountability reporter for The Charlotte Observer. A native of the Carolinas, she studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and has also worked in Phoenix, Arizona and Louisville, Kentucky.

“We are still waiting on her to come home,” Robert Jenkins Jr. told Dateline.

Robert’s mother, Ruth Jenkins, has been missing for a year and a half. The 76-year-old was last seen on July 16, 2022.

Robert told Dateline that their family is from Pineville, South Carolina. “Pineville is a very slow” and quiet town, he said.

The slow pace didn’t stop Ruth from making life interesting for her children. “We had this family thing that we would do,” Robert remembered. “We [would] all do impromptu, funny type of songs with makeshift instruments, you know, like pencils and books and stuff. We were just very spontaneous like that.”

Robert, who’s the eldest of five, told Dateline his mother is very loving. “She’s very outgoing, very funny, she has a lot of humor,” he said. “Very Christian, God-fearing woman.”

Robert said he last spoke to his mother on July 15, 2022. He and his wife had flown from Texas, where they live, to visit Ruth. Ruth lives with one of her sons, Rastrado, who was out of town that weekend.

“I had made a trip there just to check on her,” Robert said, adding that his mother needed help with her finances. “So I went there with a plan, you know, check on her finances and just get her checked out and everything like that.”

Robert said that he learned during that trip that his mother had been suffering from dementia. “That kind of explained some of the things that she did,” he said. “Some of the repetitiveness, the memory… with different things.”

Robert said that on Friday, July 15, he was helping his mother set up medications at her house, when her dog accidentally ran out of the home. “She had realized that the dog had got out and, like, ran away,” he said. “She was bothered by that. She was pretty upset… so that evening is how this event started.”

“My brother had called me and let me know that my mother, being so concerned, she had driven to herself to the next town called Monck’s Corner,” Robert said. “Apparently she went to check, like, shelters or something like that.”

Robert told Dateline that his mother eventually ended up at Walmart. “But when she came back out, she couldn’t access her car,” he said. "Turns out, there was another car that is identically the same car as her car.”

A family member then went to pick up Ruth at the Walmart, took her car keys, and brought her home. “The 16th -- that morning -- she got up looking for her keys,” Robert said. “She started on her regular walking route… during that route, she met some of the people in the community and she asked for them to, like, ‘Hey, could you, uh, could you help me? Could you pray with me so I can help find my keys?'”

Robert told Dateline that a neighbor’s Ring camera captured his mother walking around 11 a.m. He said Ruth asked the neighbor if they had found her keys, as well. “The person was talking to my mother through the Ring camera letting her, you know, ‘I don’t have your keys, ma’am.’”

Then Ruth walked inside a different neighbor’s house. “They were startled that she was in the house. And that, uh, seemed very unlike her, because my mother just wouldn’t go into somebody’s house. So I imagine that was maybe the panic and the dementia,” Robert said. “All I know is that she wound up leaving there and that’s when they didn’t see her again.”

In fact, that was the last time Ruth was seen at all.

Robert and his wife had been staying in Charleston while they were visiting and were at lunch when he got a call from Rastrado telling him that he believed their mother was missing. “So we took him seriously,” Robert said, adding that they immediately made the one-hour trip back to Pineville.

“Police were already there, and they got our statements,” he said. The next day, there was “a massive amount of people that turned out to help look. It was the volunteer fire department, police department, family, people in the -- in the community. It was a massive, massive search on foot. So this search continued that heavy for about two to three days.”

But there was no sign of Ruth.

The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Ruth’s disappearance. According to their release, Ruth was last seen “on 7/16 at approximately 2PM. She was last seen walking in the 1800 block of Highway 45 in the Pineville area of Berkeley County.”

The release also noted that Ruth has dementia and is known to wander.

Dateline reached out to the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office Department for an update on the case but has yet to receive a response.

Robert told Dateline that he’s holding out hope that his mother is still out there somewhere. “We pray and we hope that she is,” he said. “We love her, and we can’t wait to see her again.”

On November 27, 2022, Ruth’s 77th birthday, the family held a balloon release in her honor. “It was pretty… it was beautiful,” he said.

Ruth is between 5’4” and 5’6” tall and weighs around 125 lbs. She wears glasses and was last seen wearing jeans and a white T-shirt.

Anyone with information about Ruth’s disappearance is asked to call the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office at 843-719-4412.

Kyani Reid

You can now travel from the North Carolina-South Carolina state line toward Uptown using the Little Sugar Creek Greenway.

Driving the news: A new stretch of the greenway spanning nearly three miles from Pineville to the South Carolina state line is officially open.

Why it matters: The project gives residents lots of space to explore the outdoors. It also provides an alternate means of travel for cyclists and runners looking to avoid congested streets.

Details: The new section runs from the President James K. Polk State Historic Site (12031 Lancaster Hwy in Pineville) to Gilroy Drive in Lancaster County, S.C.

Public access points with parking include the Polk site and Pineville Lake Park/Belle Johnston Center 330 Lake Dr. and 12021 Lancaster Hwy. There are a few parking spots at the Gilroy Drive trailhead in South Carolina.

Of note: You can park just north of the new segment at 9800 Leitner Dr. in Pineville.

Bonus: The new section is far from entirely flat. If you’re looking for a decent incline, you’ll find a few spots as you get closer to South Carolina.

What’s next: Expect to see more greenways throughout the region.

Go deeper: How to bike from Elizabeth to Pineville on Charlotte’s greenways

Note: We first published this story in March 2023. We updated it June 1, 2023.

FORT MILL, S.C. — A proposed substation for an empty space in Pineville is causing a stir across the state line.

A company wants to build the substation right in the backyard of a Fort Mill neighborhood, between Miller Road and Greenway Drive. Homeowners told Channel 9 they had no warning and feel that their voices aren’t being heard.

Pink markers mark where that substation would start. A majority of it would take up a parking lot at the nearby Miller’s Flea Market.

9 INVESTIGATES: Power Grid Security

The owner of the flea market said he’s against the project and they’ll have to use eminent domain to get this land. He’s not alone in his opposition.

“We’ve built a little slice of paradise back here,” homeowner Gui Batista said.

Batista and his wife live in the McCullough neighborhood, a community that’s partly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina. Their house is in an unincorporated part of Fort Mill.

“As you can imagine, very, very close,” he said.

But just past their back fence is Pineville, a town that wants to build a substation just feet from Batista’s backyard.

“We just found out about it 48 hours ago,” Bastista said.

ALSO READ: Deputies investigating after car crashes into nuclear station in South Carolina

David Lucore is with ElectriCities of North Carolina, which is recommending the substation location.

“It’s got to be out of a flood plain, not in a wetland. There needs to be no environmental concerns, it needs to be fairly flat and affordable,” he explained.

Lucore said the Pineville spot meets all of that. The plan would be to buy about an acre of the parking lot from the Miller’s Flea Market. The market would be on one side of the substation and the neighborhood would be on the other.

“This is impacting us more than anyone else,” Batista said.

Batista and other neighbors have several concerns about the potential impact to property values, health, and safety, especially in light of recent threats towards substations across the country.

“This is where we hang out for the majority of our time in the summers, and I don’t want to worry about a stray bullet hitting my daughter’s room,” Batista said.

ALSO READ: 9 Investigates: Testing NC power grid security after recent attacks

Lucore said the substation would be surrounded by a concrete wall.

“Which will provide some extra security for those kind of incidents,” he said.

But the biggest frustration from residents is the lack of communication.

“They’re saying well we’ll put it here in the corner where it won’t impact Pineville residents who can vote for us, it’ll only impact Fort Mill residents who we don’t really have to listen to,” Batista said.

Lucore admits nobody was warned about this until this week. He said that’s because they were doing their due diligence.

Pineville will have a meeting about the plans on Jan. 4 and could vote on it in February.

(WATCH BELOW: Residents, officials look back at Moore Co. substation attacks after one year; still no suspects)

Residents, officials look back at Moore Co. substation attacks after one year; still no suspects

Residents of a Charlotte-area neighborhood continued to raise questions and concerns about a potential electric substation in their backyards at a community meeting Thursday night.

Officials in Pineville say it’s a necessary project to keep the lights on as the community grows. But residents of the McCollough neighborhood — which stretches from the town across the state line into Fort Mill, South Carolina — are worried about the impacts on their property values, safety and health.

And on Thursday, some asked why the town hadn’t considered future infrastructure needs more when deciding on past development deals.

“All we’re asking you all to do with this project is take a step back, do the due diligence and explore a myriad of options so that we can find the best suitable location,” one attendee said.

McCollough residents raised concerns about the project when they first heard about it in early December.

Pineville is working to buy about an acre at the intersection of Miller Road and Greenway Drive for a new electric substation to accommodate growth in the area and “serve as a back-up source to an existing substation,” the town said in a Dec. 5 news release. The town picked the site because it was the “most economical and least obtrusive to the community,” and the substation would be enclosed by a brick wall with plants around the outside, according to the news release.

The town initially thought they’d have till 2026 or 2027 to get another substation online, officials said at Thursday’s meeting, but accelerated growth moved up that timeline. Pineville’s population grew from 7,479 to 10,602 from 2010 to 2020, according to Census data. The town’s 2022 population estimate, the most recent Census data available, puts Pineville at 10,886 residents.

The project would need to be completed by the end of 2025 to avoid issues, David Lucore, Pineville’s electric services manager and a systems manager for ElectriCities of North Carolina, said.

Pineville Electric, which provides electric services in the town, is a public provider that’s part of ElectriCities, which provides services to member organizations. Public power providers differ from utility companies such as Duke Energy because they are part of local governments and often part of membership organizations such as ElectriCities.

The town picked the site out of 10 locations that were examined, town manager Ryan Spitzer and Lucore told the crowd Thursday.

Complications with the other sites included proximity to floodplains and wetlands and distance from usable transmission lines.

“There’s not a whole lot of options,” Lucore said.

Town staff will present more details to the Town Council at its Jan. 22 work session, and a public hearing will be held at the Town Council meeting on Feb. 13. It’s likely the council won’t vote on the issue until their March meeting, according to Spitzer.

It’s estimated the project will cost more than $5 million, and it would be paid for by electric revenues rather than tax dollars.

Although Spitzer and Lucore outlined why town staff are currently leaning toward the site neighbors don’t want, both stressed that “no decisions have been made.”

“We heard your questions,” Spitzer told the crowd of more than 100 Thursday night.

One top concern: the potential impact of electromagnetic fields emanating from the substation on residents’ health. Lucore, citing studies shared by the World Health Organization, said he’s found no conclusive evidence of such a threat from the levels that could be found at the site.

Experts say there’s not a clear-cut connection between exposure to electromagnetic fields and health issues.

“The possible link between electromagnetic fields and cancer has been a subject of controversy for several decades,” the American Cancer Society says, because “it’s not clear exactly how electromagnetic fields, a form of low-energy, non-ionizing radiation, could increase cancer risk.”

The Environmental Protection Agency notes that, while the World Health Organization “classifies extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans,” “scientific studies have not consistently shown whether exposure to any source of EMF increases cancer risk.”

Some residents also shared concerns about safety in the wake of an attack on another North Carolina substation that drew attention nationwide. In December 2022, about 45,000 homes and businesses in Moore County lost power for days after an attack on an electrical substation.

Lucore pledged that if the project moves forward it will be better protected than most substations in the country.

“We’re going to put in as much security as we’re capable of putting in,” he said.

Realtor Sean McGovern also spoke at Thursday’s meeting about the potential impact of the project of property values. Homes in the neighborhood “tend to range from around $390,000 to about $765,000,” according to Charlotte-based Terra Vista Realty.

McGovern, who said he’s also a McCollough resident and has his own issues with the plan, acknowledged that there’s “potential for decrease in value” but that the long-term impacts on real estate are “tough to say.”

McCollough resident Jen Kennedy, who was chosen to speak on behalf of the neighborhood at Thursday’s meeting, said she and her neighbors appreciated town officials putting the event together.

“You shared a lot this evening, and we do feel that we have a better understanding,” she said.

But, she added, “we do still believe that we are just started scratching the surface of understanding this process … we still have unanswered questions.”

“We believe that it is the responsibility of the town, and especially our elected officials, to provide us with all the information and allow our voice to be heard first and foremost before a decision of this magnitude is made,” she said.

Multiple residents at the meeting questioned why more consideration hasn’t been given to one of the other 10 sites that was examined.

That site is near the controversial site but further from the subdivision. It would cost about $1 million more than the currently chosen site, Lucore said, an expense that could be passed on to consumers through higher rates. But some at the meeting said they’d be willing to take on a slightly higher electric bill to pay that higher cost.

Both parcels in question are owned by the same family, who own and run Miller’s Flea Market on the land.

Spitzer indicated that the Miller family, through their attorney, have been resistant to sell either plot. But members of the family in attendance Thursday and their representatives spoke up to say they’d be more open to selling the other land than the controversial site.

They’re concerned about the impact of the project on their business, including a loss of more than 100 parking spaces, they said.

If the Millers continue their opposition to a sale, “there are other options the town has,” Spitzer said.

That comment drew ire from the crowd, including concern about the potential use of eminent domain. Multiple attendees continued to question why town leaders didn’t think ahead more about future infrastructure needs when considering developments and why the community wasn’t informed about the substation earlier.

Some accused Spitzer of trying to take “the easy route” on the project.

“If I was taking the easy route on this, we wouldn’t be having this meeting,” Spitzer said.

This story was originally published January 4, 2024, 11:10 PM.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct a quote from David Lucore, Pineville’s electric services manager. Lucore said a newly proposed substation would be better protected than most substations in the country.

Corrected Jan 6, 2024

Mary Ramsey is the local government accountability reporter for The Charlotte Observer. A native of the Carolinas, she studied journalism at the University of South Carolina and has also worked in Phoenix, Arizona and Louisville, Kentucky.