The Horry County Solid Waste Authority operates one of the largest landfill complexes in coastal South Carolina — a sprawling facility at 1886 Highway 90 in Conway that includes a Class 2 landfill, a Class 3 landfill, a processing facility, and a composting operation. The site sits at the edge of Sterrit Swamp, a freshwater wetland corridor that drains into the Waccamaw River, the primary drinking water source for tens of thousands of Horry County residents.

PFAS Horry County Landfill exceed EPA limits, yet no testing appears to occur onsite at the landfill.

HCSWA now wants to expand. The authority has applied for a 15-year Army Corps of Engineers permit to build three new landfill cells — one for municipal solid waste, two for construction and demolition debris — that would impact 102.4 acres of freshwater wetlands connected to Sterrit Swamp. The expansion would handle 23.4 million tons of waste over 45 years across more than 400 acres in and around the swamp.

But while attention has centered on wetland destruction and flooding risk, a different question has gone almost entirely unasked: **does HCSWA test for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS — in the leachate its landfill produces?**

Understanding PFAS Horry County Landfill

The answer, based on every publicly available record, is no.

## What the EPA Already Knows About Landfills and PFAS

The federal government has studied this problem. In September 2021, the EPA examined 200 landfills across the country and found PFAS present in the leachate at 95 percent of them, according to the agency’s Effluent Limitations Guidelines Plan 15, published in January 2023. Researchers identified 63 different PFAS compounds. Average concentrations for individual compounds reached as high as 14,000 parts per trillion.

Those numbers are not abstract. The Environmental Working Group estimated in March 2024 that approximately 16,500 pounds of PFAS end up in American landfills every year. An estimated 1,760 pounds escape through leachate — the liquid that percolates through buried waste and collects at the bottom of a landfill. Roughly 13 million Americans live within one mile of a landfill, according to EPA data.

The EPA has already finalized Method 1633, a standardized test capable of detecting 40 PFAS compounds in landfill leachate, wastewater, surface water, groundwater, soil, and biosolids. The testing method exists. The science is settled enough for the federal government to build a protocol around it.

What does not yet exist is a federal mandate requiring landfill operators to use it. The EPA’s proposed effluent limitation guidelines for PFAS in landfill leachate remain in rulemaking, with action anticipated sometime in 2026, according to the EPA’s September 2025 Unified Agenda and a March 2026 analysis by DLA Piper. Until those rules take effect, testing remains voluntary.

## The Regulatory Gap in South Carolina

South Carolina has not stepped in to fill the federal void. The state Department of Environmental Services requires Class 2 landfills to maintain a groundwater monitoring well network, sampled twice yearly, with reports submitted to the agency. **Standard monitoring parameters do not include PFAS**, according to a review of SC DES landfill regulations.

South Carolina has no state-level requirement for landfill operators to test leachate or groundwater for PFAS, according to a March 2025 state-by-state regulatory analysis by All4 Inc. That means HCSWA faces no legal obligation — state or federal — to look for forever chemicals at the Highway 90 facility. And based on every public document, permit filing, website disclosure, and news report available, the authority has chosen not to look.

SC DES does test for PFAS in surface water. The agency monitors 26 types of PFAS quarterly from more than 100 streams, rivers, lakes, and coastal sites across the state, according to the Carolina News and Reporter. Nearly all South Carolina surface water bodies tested positive. But that ambient monitoring program tracks what is already in the water — it does not trace contamination back to its sources.

The result is a regulatory structure where the state knows PFAS saturates its waterways but does not require the operators of potential sources to test their own output. For Horry County residents downstream of the Highway 90 landfill, that gap carries real consequences.

## The Waccamaw Is Already Contaminated

The Waccamaw River — the waterway Sterrit Swamp feeds into — already has a PFAS problem serious enough to generate litigation.

Grand Strand Water and Sewer Authority, the Conway-based utility that serves much of Horry County, filed a lawsuit in August 2025 over PFAS contamination in the Waccamaw River. Georgetown County Water and Sewer District filed a similar suit in January 2025. Both cases name more than 20 defendants, including 3M, DuPont, and Daikin America, according to the Post and Courier.

The lawsuits allege that PFAS levels detected in the Waccamaw “far exceed the EPA’s most recent Health Advisory, Maximum Contaminant Levels, and Maximum Contaminant Level Goals,” according to Georgetown County’s filings reported by the Post and Courier. Water utilities must comply with EPA limits by 2029.

Here is where the story folds back on itself. HCSWA collects leachate internally at the Highway 90 landfill and sends it to Grand Strand Water and Sewer Authority for treatment, according to Ed Marr, HCSWA’s assistant executive director, as reported by WPDE. **HCSWA sends its leachate to the same utility that is suing over PFAS contamination in the river the landfill drains toward.** Standard wastewater treatment does not remove PFAS. Whether GSWSA’s treatment plant can effectively strip PFAS from landfill leachate before discharge remains an open question — one that no public data answers.

Preston Kelly, the Waccamaw Riverkeeper, told WPDE in January 2026 that pollutants and contamination from the landfill could carry through Sterrit Swamp into the Waccamaw River, affecting downstream communities including Conway, Bucksport, Burgess, and Georgetown County.

## What the Expansion Means for the Swamp

The proposed expansion would push the landfill deeper into an ecologically sensitive corridor. Sterrit Swamp serves as a habitat connection between the Waccamaw River and Lewis Ocean Bay Heritage Preserve, according to Monica Whalen, an attorney with the South Carolina Environmental Law Project.

Environmental advocates told WPDE that filling the swamp could release 100 to 150 million gallons of potentially contaminated water. Eleven endangered, threatened, or proposed-listed species are potentially present in the area, and four rare or threatened species — bald eagle, Yellow Pitcher Plant, Leatherleaf, and Stalked Milkweed — have been recorded within one mile of the site in the past 10 years, according to SCELP’s comments to the Army Corps.

More than 76 acres of the affected wetlands sit under restrictive covenants from a previous expansion, put in place specifically to limit further development, according to Becky Ryon, the Coastal Conservation League’s North Coast director, as reported by the Post and Courier.

**The expansion would add decades of waste capacity to a facility that has never publicly demonstrated whether its leachate contains the most persistent class of contaminants in modern environmental science.**

Renee Ruff, a Wild Wing Plantation resident, told WPDE at the April 2 SCDES public hearing: “I think there is a clear conversation here, and a challenge to the Clean Water Act, to have an unlined landfill that could leach into wells.

Ed Marr countered that “engineering features are put in place to protect any of the stormwater runoff,” according to WPDE. Tom Ballou, a consultant with Beam and Associates working on the expansion, argued that relocating would require approximately 1,200 contiguous acres, and “the wetland impacts would be almost three times as much as what we were proposing, about 280 acres.

## What Happens Next

The SCDES public comment period closes April 17, 2026. The agency has approximately 280 days from that point to make a permit decision, according to WPDE’s reporting on the April 2 hearing. Monica Whalen of SCELP told WPDE in March 2026 that if the authority does not amend the project to avoid environmental impacts, “there’s definitely the possibility of a lawsuit.”

Horry County Administrator Barry Spivey told WMBF that the decision will prioritize “the most financially and environmentally responsible option.” That framing assumes the county has the data to judge what is environmentally responsible. On PFAS, it does not — because nobody with authority over the Highway 90 landfill has required the testing, and the authority itself has not volunteered it.

The EPA has the test. The science supports the concern. The Waccamaw’s own water utilities are already in court over the same class of chemicals. The only thing missing at the Highway 90 landfill is the willingness to look.

Horry County residents who want answers have one tool available right now: a public records request to HCSWA asking whether PFAS testing has ever been conducted at the facility and, if so, what the results showed.

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## Further Reading

– [EPA Effluent Limitations Guidelines Plan 15 — PFAS in Landfill Leachate (Jan. 2023)](https://www.epa.gov/eg/landfills-effluent-guidelines)

– [Waste Dive — EPA proposes leachate regulations after 95% PFAS finding](https://www.wastedive.com/news/pfas-epa-landfill-leachate-swana-nwra-wm-republic/641030/)

– [Environmental Working Group — Forever chemicals at landfills (March 2024)](https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/03/forever-chemicals-landfills-threaten-environmental-justice-communities)

– [Post and Courier — Horry County landfill expansion wetlands impact](https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/news/horry-county-landfill-expansion-impact-wetlands/article_b671829f-f378-4ac9-add4-213138765134.html)

– [Post and Courier — Georgetown County PFAS lawsuits](https://www.postandcourier.com/myrtle-beach/news/georgetown-county-water-pollution-forever-chemicals-lawsuit-sc/article_e63160e6-ce09-11ef-9f76-cbdfa5e62136.html)

– [WPDE — Advocates say Hwy. 90 landfill expansion could harm wetlands](https://wpde.com/news/local/horry-county-landfill-expansion-army-corps-environment-letter-petition)

– [WPDE — Community meeting on landfill expansion](https://wpde.com/news/local/community-meeting-held-over-controversial-landfill-expansion-in-horry-county-steritt-swamp-wetlands-downstream-river-alliance)

– [WPDE — SCDES public hearing](https://wpde.com/news/local/south-carolina-des-takes-public-input-on-horry-county-landfill-wetlands-expansion-solid-waste-authority)

– [WPDE — Residents open house](https://wpde.com/news/local/horry-county-officials-address-residents-concerns-over-proposed-landfill-expansion)

– [WMBF — Residents voice wetland concerns](https://www.wmbfnews.com/2026/04/03/residents-voice-wetland-concerns-over-proposed-horry-county-landfill-expansion/)

– [Carolina News and Reporter — SC surface water PFAS contamination](https://carolinanewsandreporter.cic.sc.edu/almost-all-sc-surface-water-bodies-contain-forever-chemicals-many-exceed-proposed-standards/)

– [SCELP — Garbage juice, flooding impacts](https://www.scelp.org/news/garbage-juice-flooding-what-are-impacts-of-horry-county-landfill-filling-wetlands)