Background

			Background How We Got Involved In Fall 2003 an NBC Dateline segment called ‘Fleecing of America’ focused a few minutes of time on the Briggs-Delaine-Pearson Connector, a 9 mile proposed bridge linking two small towns of Lonestar and Rimini, South Carolina. The short media coverage offered by Dateline left a poor impression of South Carolinians and set the making of this film in motion. The elements that make up the story deserve more than scant minutes of coverage. In the 1930s, President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration sought to bring electricity to rural areas across the country. The Santee Cooper Hydroelectric and Navigation Project began as a part of this project for South Carolina. 177,000 acres of land were cleared and 12,500 workers found employment with the project during the Great Depression. Once the it was completed in 1941, electricity began to flow to more than half of the state which did not have it at the time. For many, it marked the beginning of economic growth and recovery. Rimini and Lonestar were among the many towns that were thought to benefit from this project. As a result of the hydroelectric development, Lake Marion was created and separated the two towns, but many claim a promise was made to reconnect them. In 1968 Govenor McNair signed a bill into law that would have reconnected the two towns, Act 1094: the Orangeburg-Calhoun-Sumter Toll Bridge. It was never funded. Now, 65 years later, Rimini and Lonestar are still separated. To build a bridge now would cost near $100 million dollars. Many say that a $90-million bridge reconnecting these two tiny communities is frivolous, wasteful, environmentally destructive, or simply politically motivated. Others call it a classic story of racism and a case of the “haves” taking from the “have-nots.” It is the purpose of this documentary to examine the issues behind the bridge.