Project Summary
The historic Sibley Mill was a textile manufacturing site that closed in 2006. Located between the Savannah River and the Augusta Canal, the 21-acre site has contaminated soil and several buildings contaminated with hazardous substances. The commercially desirable canal-side location provided strong incentives for the site to be redeveloped. In 2010, the Augusta Canal Authority purchased the mill to clean up and redevelop the site. The site cleanup was completed in 2018.
The Augusta Canal Authority used the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Analysis of Brownfields Cleanup Alternatives (ABCA) checklist to guide the cleanup and redevelopment process. This checklist requires that the resilience of remedial options be evaluated in light of reasonably foreseeable changing climate conditions. The Augusta Canal Authority used climate change considerations provided by South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to understand and account for expected climate impacts. The site is vulnerable to more frequent and intense storms and flooding, which can impact the mobility of contaminated material left onsite.
By including current and future climate threats in its analysis, the Augusta Canal Authority was better able to understand potential climate change vulnerabilities associated with their planned brownfields cleanup and to provide assurances to future site tenants or owners. In 2011, the Authority started a $1.3 million environmental cleanup which is expected to be highly resilient to climate change projections developed for the area. Rather than isolate and cap contaminated material onsite, the Augusta Canal Authority excavated the contaminated soil and disposed of it offsite. With assurance that the site was cleaned up in a resilient and safe manner, Cape Augusta Digital Properties began a 75-year lease on the Sibley Mill complex in 2016. The property is being developed into a mixed-use technology park with a 20-megawatt data center, called Augusta Cyberworks.
