
Not long after workers began clearing land for a massive electric vehicle plant in South Carolina two years ago, project officials ran into trouble with state and federal agencies over damage being done to the environment in northern Richland County. Wetlands had been disturbed without federal permission and land was being cleared too rapidly at the Scout Motors site, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the S.C. Department of Natural Resources said in the summer of 2023. But the problems didn’t end there. By March 2024, Richland County — in...