Local News

KERSHAW – A Kershaw water department worker made an interesting find while reading water meters last week.

The meter reader, Joey Tolbert, told a Lancaster County sheriff’s deputy that he was working on East Stevens Drive about 3 p.m. Feb. 20 when he found a green 20 mm shell in the yard of 120 E. Stevens Drive. He brought the shell to Kershaw Town Hall.

The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office called the State Law Enforcement Division for assistance, Sheriff Barry Faile said.

The Lancaster County School District dropped in one rating, but rose in another on  its state-issued report card for 2008.

The district received an absolute rating of below average, a drop from its average rating the year before. Slightly more than 41 percent of the school districts in the state were rated in the below average category in 2008.

But in the growth rating, which used to be called “improvement,” the district received an average rating, up from the below average it posted the year before.

An area paper plant is feeling the effects of a slow economy, and has made plans to furlough more than 100 employees.

AbitibiBowater, located just across the Lancaster County line in Catawba, will shut down one of its three paper machines for one month in an effort to save money.

The No. 1 machine, which creates paper from pulp, is operated by 123 people, which includes 101 production employees and 22 maintenance workers. Those people will be temporarily out of work from March 1 through March 31. Employees will be back to work starting April 1.

Though the bad may have overshadowed the good, there was good economic news in Lancaster County in 2008.

Continental Tire North America announced in February it would wheel its Charlotte headquarters into a new building in Indian Land in 2009.

The tire manufacturer will move 300 employees to a 75,000-square-foot building at McMillan Business Park on S.C. 160, an $11 million investment. Construction is expected to be completed in early 2009.