One morning in January 1989, people on John’s Island, South Carolina awoke to the sound of chain saws cutting a 3.5-mile right of way for a power line being built by South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCE&G) to serve a new shopping center. It confused them as much as it would soon anger them. 

What was this investor-owned utility doing on their river-girdled island on the outskirts of Charleston? They already had a power provider, a good one—Berkeley Electric Cooperative—which had served them reliably for nearly 50 years and whose linemen and service people they knew and liked.   

“SCE&G came on the island illegally and irresponsibly,” R.M. “Sonny” Hanckel, an island farmer who helped organize his neighbors against the interloper, said at the time.  

SCE&G claimed Charleston had annexed that part of John’s Island. Berkeley Electric said its service area was assigned by the Public Service Commission of South Carolina and couldn’t be taken away. 

Al Ballard, executive vice president of the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, said John’s Island was a “testing ground…We’re in the middle of a takeover fight ... SCE&G is trying to find a way to take over the co-ops. If they can get away with it, it’ll happen all over the state.” 

E.E. “Skip” Strickland, Berkeley Electric’s general manager, was thankful islanders were putting up a strong resistance. He noted that the 40,000-meter distribution system had a number of other turf battles smoldering in other parts of its service territory. 

The resistance was aimed at SCE&G, but it was also against four-lane highways, golf courses and Charleston professionals who looked at John’s Island and saw not country lanes, trucks farms and forests, but bedroom communities.  

“The island people are really being taken by developers,” said Hanckel, who had been elected chairman of John’s Island Citizens for Co-op Power. 

Locals were still angry at Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley for saying on TV in 1984 that the city had no plans to annex any part of John’s Island, and then doing just that two weeks later.  

“Country people…believe what people tell them,” explained Barry Hart, co-chairman of the citizens group. “That kind of thing doesn’t go well with them. People take you at your word.”  

John’s Islanders referred to Berkeley Electric as “us.”  It’s “their company. They have always felt this way,” said Hart.  

“It’s our business—we own it,” chimed in Queen Esther Jenkins, a Berkeley Electric member. “Poor as I am, I can say I own part of a company.” 

The citizens group accused SCE&G of intimidating landowners and throwing money around. One pro-SCE&G landowner was allegedly paid $45,000 for a strip of land seven feet wide and 335 feet long. Another received $11,500 in consulting fees over a two-month period.  

Hart charged the investor-owned utility with trying to divide the island along racial lines, pointing out that SCE&G had met with a group of Black ministers but hadn’t talked to any representatives of churches attended by whites.  

The first meeting of John’s Island Citizens for Co-op Power was held in the St. Johns High School cafeteria. So many people showed up some of them had to stand outside listening through an open window. Dozens of meetings followed.  

On February 14, 1989, John’s Islanders started showing up for a 6:30 p.m. Charleston City Council hearing at 1:30. By 3:30, the 463 seats in the Council chambers had filled with both co-op and SCE&G supporters. By 4, there were people crowding the hallways, and Mayor Riley decided to move the meeting to the Dock Street Theater a few blocks away. 

Many of the Berkeley Electric supporters wore “I love my co-op” buttons, and after almost four hours of debate, they felt Mayor Reilly and the City Council had had their eyes opened—and maybe their hearts. It helped that Citizens for Co-op Power presented a petition with 7,000 signatures.  

But that was not the end of the story. Berkeley Electric and SCE&G continued their territorial battle over John’s Island until 2001, when the investor-owned utility abandoned the feeder line that served the shopping center,  and the ground under it became a permanent part of the co-op’s service territory.