It was not supposed to be like this.
Galey & Lord, founded in 1886, was a vanguard of American textile manufacturing. In addition to popularizing khakis, it supplied uniforms for the Flying Tiger pilots of World War II.
The company, for a time part of Burlington Industries, opened its Society Hill plant in 1966, and within a decade the buildings had grown to 700,000 square feet, as big as an Amazon distribution center today, employing 1,400 people.
Manufacturing textiles requires copious amounts of water and chemicals. Michael Scott, who worked for a decade in the plant’s dye room, remembers the five dyeing machines churning mixtures of peroxide, sulfur and other chemicals. And he remembers that mixture being sent to be treated, with the sludge settling into large lagoons on the factory grounds to later be distributed to farmers.
“They had a truck, and they had a pump on it, and they put the pipe in the water,” he said, “and it sucks it out of the water, into the tanks, and then it gets sprayed in the fields.”
Mr. O’Neal, who raises soy, corn, wheat, as well as butter beans, peas, squash, sweet corn and about 100 head of cattle, started accepting free sludge in 1996. He estimates it went on about 400 acres of his 2,000-acre farm.
But he started having doubts. “If something’s so good, why would they be giving it away for free?” he said. He stopped accepting the sludge in 2000.
In 2021, local regulators told Mr. O’Neal that high levels of the chemicals had been detected in well water at his family farm. At one well, PFOA levels were about 550 times the E.P.A. drinking-water standard.
After the mill shuttered in 2016, the company abandoned the site and it quickly fell into disrepair. In 2018, Hurricane Florence flooded several of the wastewater treatment pools.
Today it is a labyrinth of weed-tangled paths, half-burned structures and crumpled tanks. Recently, Clifton J. Howle, chief deputy at the Darlington county sheriff’s office, picked his way through the crumbling main brick building, keeping an eye peeled for two stray dogs nearby.
The site holds so much promise, he said. Riverfront property near the heart of town. Maybe someday it could be used for a new factory, he said, or even new homes. “Imagine the potential if they could clean this place up,” he said.
At the sound of approaching footsteps, an alligator resting on the banks of a wastewater lagoon slithered down into the dark water.
