Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017

(News 12 First at Five)

AIKEN, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – Catherine Templeton is the first of many candidates in a stacked field running for South Carolina governor. News 12 caught up with Templeton to discuss her approach.

In a speech to the Aiken Republican Club, former South Carolina DHEC Director, Catherine Templeton, talked about some of the issues facing Aiken County and the state.

After her introduction and warm reception, Catherine Templeton spoke to the crowd, "My interaction with your community has been a lot about the Savannah River Site."

Templeton is the former director of South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control, where she served from 2012-2015, advocating for more federal funding to SRS.

"MOX is necessary to move out all this cold war plutonium and nuclear waste,” she stated.

Templeton says the proposed federal budget cuts to the MOX facility at SRS are unacceptable.

"We were promised things, we've done our part. It's a bad deal for us."

She told the crowd she would continue to fight to push the government to do the job she felt it should already be doing, "I don't think you'd find a whole lot of people that would say they've fulfilled their obligation and not just with MOX, but over and over again as it relates to SRS."

In reference to the abandoned VC summer plant, Templeton remarked, "You never sell anything when it's rocked back on its heels. It's a fire sale."

She says careful steps need to be taken and quickly, "We have got to get it ready to sell, or we're going to end up paying more than we're paying now."

Templeton expressed her excitement for the opportunities that cyber presents for the region, "I think it's great that the cyber industry is coming here. I don't want it to be in our backyard. I want it to be in our yard."

"I understand the industry and I’ve worked with it not only as a government employee but as a private sector employee," recalling her time as DHEC Director, where the office was constantly under the threat of a cyber-attack.

In addition to discussions about the SRS and cyber, Templeton touched on Governor McMaster’s sanctuary city announcement from yesterday, saying simply “we don't have any of those in South Carolina”. She also talked about rural unemployment numbers, saying the answer to curbing those starts with education while voicing her for vocational and technical schools.