My support for building a bridge spanning Sparkleberry Swamp to join the communities of Lone Star and Rimini is a commitment to fulfilling a promise made by the State of South Carolina nearly 70 years ago.   At that time, the State faced opposition to its proposal to build a dam to create Lake Marion.  Many opponents were "Northerners" who didn't want to lose their prime hunting ground.  I am still hearing this same argument from outsiders today with regard to the bridge.  

But a more compelling argument came from communities that were once neighbors that would soon be separated by the man-made lake.  At the time, residents in Calhoun, Clarendon and Sumter Counties were assured that once the lake was built, a bridge would soon follow to reconnect their now disjointed communities.  That is the very same bridge we are still debating today.

Had two wealthy communities been split by the waters that created Sparkleberry Swamp the promise of a bridge would have been quickly fulfilled.  But poor, rural, black communities have little voice and even less power.  They could not make the State be accountable for the promises made in the 1930s. 

The same situation occured in Columbia when a low-income black community was split when I-277, a four-lane highway, was constructed to give wealthy suburban residents an easier commute to work downtown.  People have been killed, including children, trying to cross 277 to reach their neighbors on the other side.  The City's only solution was to put in another barrier -- a chain link fence -- to prevent them from crossing.  It is barriers like fences, roadway and swamps that I am trying to bridge figuratively and literally.   That is why I secured funding for both a pedestrian bridge over 277 and a two-lane bridge spanning the Sparkleberry Swamp in TEA-21 legislation in 1998.  But I am not the first to recognize the plight of residents on either side of the swamp.  

The late, former Representative James Cuttino from Sumter tried in vain to reconnect these communities in 1968.  He introduced legislation that passed the House and Senate creating the Orangeburg-Calhoun-Sumter Toll Bridge Authority for the purpose of constructing a toll bridge over Sparkleberry Swamp.  But politics ultimately undermined the project.