NEWS BRIEFS: Charleston Animal Society celebrates 8-year milestone

Staff reports  |  Charleston County is the oldest No Kill Community for dogs and cats in the Southeast, as Charleston Animal Society said last week in a release celebrating eight years as a No Kill Community.  

The society, which shelters and provides safe harbor for over 90 percent of the stray, unwanted and homeless animals in Charleston County, launched a three-year project in 2013 to build the first No Kill Community in the Southeast.  The project achieved its goal in the first year and has now sustained Charleston County as a No Kill Community for 8 consecutive years.

“No Kill Charleston became the boldest animal rescue initiative ever successfully undertaken, but more importantly, it demonstrated to doubters across the country that communities in the Deep South, a region with the highest euthanasia rates, could overcome the challenges of building No Kill Communities,” said Joe Elmore, president and CEO of Charleston Animal Society.

The organization’s plan included increasing adoption rates, boosting fostering of animals and spaying or neutering thousands of animals . 

“One of the remarkable achievements was the decline in dogs and cats relative to the growth in the human population,” Elmore said. “Dogs and cats, according to the AVMA, increase with an increase in the human population.  Instead of seeing an increase in dogs and cats of 12 percent corresponding to the human population increase, we actually saw upward of a 30 percent decline in animals during those 8 years, mostly due to our extensive spaying/neutering efforts.”

In other recent news:

CARTA launches rideshare partnership.  The Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) today is launching CARTA OnDemand, a first-in-the-region partnership with transportation network companies Uber and UZURV. The pilot program will offer door-to-door service for seniors age 55 and up and Tel-A-Ride customers making qualifying trips to or from the Medical District and/or WestEdge Publix on the peninsula. The service will operate from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Trips with UZURV and Uber cost $4 each way and rides can be scheduled as much as 30 days in advance or with as little as 1-hour notice. Registration for CARTA OnDemand is now open for anyone 55 and older at RideCARTA.com/OnDemand.

Charleston is charitable county.  A SmartAsset study analyzing charitable contributions as a percentage of net income in various places across the nation found that Charleston County ranks second in South Carolina for most charitable places to live, according to this story in the Charleston City Paper.

COVID-19 variants pop up here.  A private testing facility on Saturday reported the first case of a British COVID-19 variant was found in the Lowcountry.  Earlier in the week, a South African variant turned up for the first time in the U.S. in patients in the Pee Dee and Lowcountry. As of Sunday, the state had a 21.4 percent rate of people testing positive for the virus. More.

RiverDogs have new manager.  Blake Butera, a former Boston College baseball player and coach, is the new manager for the Charleston RiverDogs, which recently became affiliated with the Tampa Bay Rays.  With the new Rays partnership, and the transition for the team into Charleston in the midst of the pandemic, there are still a lot of unknowns circling any coming season, but Butera said he was confident that this will be a season everyone will be happy to be a part of and is looking forward to the future of the team.  Read more.

Senate subcommittee pushes on NextEra request.  A state Senate subcommittee unanimously passed a resolution last week that could force a Florida utility to turn over correspondence, documents and information on consulting fees related to an attempt to purchase the government-backed state electricity provider Santee Cooper, which is headquartered in Moncks Corner. Santee Cooper came under scrutiny in 2017 after the implosion of a $9 billion effort to build a nuclear power facility in Fairfield County.  Santee Cooper’s share of the busted project, being built with then-existing S.C. Electric & Gas, was about $4 billion.  Since then, legislators have struggled with whether to sell Santee Cooper, get a company to manage it or allow it to reform itself. Read the full story in our sister publication, Statehouse Report.

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