A burial site is nearly complete for contaminated sediment that will be removed from behind two Twelve Mile River dams slated for demolition in the coming year.

“I'm delighted with the progress,” U. S. District Judge G. Ross Anderson Jr. said after meeting with two special receivers he appointed to oversee the work that is part of a 2006 settlement for natural resource damages to Lake Hartwell and the Twelve Mile.

Anderson accelerated the project this summer after The Greenville News reported that the dam removal he ordered in the 2006 settlement had stalled.

The project now is running on time despite frequent rain, and construction of a disposal site for the sediment will be complete soon, said former 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Billy Wilkins and Leon Harmon, attorneys appointed by Anderson as special receivers to oversee the project.

The sediment basin, off Old Henderson Road near State 137, will be completed and lined by the first of the year, Wilkins and Harmon said.

Crews will begin to run pipes from the dredge area to the sediment basin after the first of the year, they said.

While the rain hasn't hampered the pace of work, crews may have to stop work on the river because of high water if the rain continues, Harmon said.

While work continues at the site, natural resource trustees now will begin to look at more than 2,800 responses from a public comment period that ended Sunday on spending of $9 million that is also part of the court-ordered settlement.

The agency received about 250 public comments on plans released prior to the 2006 settlement, compared to the far greater response now, said Ross Self, chief of freshwater fisheries with the state Department of Natural Resources, the lead trustee agency.

Trustees have a telephone conference scheduled this week to begin review of the public input, however Self doesn’t anticipate a final decision until the new year. There’s a lot of information to digest, he said.