Growth Reckoning In Brunswick County

Mike Forte moved to Brunswick County from New Jersey more than 20 years ago, settling down in a home in Boiling Spring Lakes. "It's a great community. It really is," Forte said of the central Brunswick County city, which has an estimated population of about 7,000. "I never wanted to live in an HOA or a POA development. My wife loves to garden – that's her peace. She'll sit out there for 10 hours on a Saturday playing in her garden (and able to do what she wants with it). And if I were in an HOA, POA, she wouldn't be allowed to do that."

But in his elected position as chairman of the Brunswick County Board of Commissioners, Forte looks beyond Boiling Spring Lakes to a big-picture view of growth in the rapidly expanding county. The board he leads governs unincorporated Brunswick County, which includes a large chunk of the county's total 850 square miles.

This broader view becomes more pressing given the county's growth rate. In September last year, state officials announced that Brunswick County was again the fastest-growing county in North Carolina, with a 24% population increase from 2020 to 2024.

The variety of community options throughout the county, its low taxes and its coastal weather are among the factors attracting thousands of new residents each year, with developers responding to that demand in kind.

"I moved here in 2005, and I will be the first person to tell you, this is not the Brunswick County I moved to 20 years ago," Forte said. "It has changed, but I can't stop it statutorily."

Forte clarified that state law sets specific limits on what local governments can prohibit regarding development rights. "Our previous county attorney stated it at almost every meeting that statutorily, we cannot say no if they (developers and property owners) meet all the standards and all the zoning and everything. … We will get sued, and we will lose," he said.

However, rapid expansion has brought challenges. Among the latest growth hurdles for Brunswick County is a recent sewer capacity conflict between state and county officials that has halted some development.

At the heart of the dispute: the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality's handling of a state statute that calculates available wastewater capacity for new sewer line extension permit applications.

An existing "80/90 rule" requires officials governing wastewater systems to begin planning for expansion when those systems reach 80% capacity and to have construction permits in place before reaching 90% capacity.

A statute adopted in 2023, however, allows a wastewater treatment system in the state's fastest-growing counties, like Brunswick, "to allocate future flows up to 115% of its existing hydraulic capacity under certain conditions with a signed contract for the expansion of its wastewater treatment system," according to state officials.

The hold on Brunswick wastewater connection permit applications, they said, "resulted from an inspection by the DEQ Division of Water Resources (DWR) that showed all of Brunswick County's future obligated wastewater flows as part of inter-local agreements were not being reported on applications for sewer extensions for future developments."

They said DWR requested that the county "submit a proper accounting of the amount of wastewater capacity that had already been obligated. New information showed the county's future obligated flows were above permitted capacity, and there were no approved speculative limits for an expansion."

According to the county's development dashboard as of March 13, Brunswick officials had approved nearly 61,000 residential units since 2015. Forte doesn't think it's a fair assumption that all of those units will come to fruition. "Many of those homes won't show up for 15 to 20 years, if ever," he said.

In a statement to the media in February, the county staff wrote, "Brunswick County is not out of sewer capacity at the Northeast Brunswick Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant nor at the West Brunswick Regional plant. Brunswick County also has several expansion projects that are either under construction or are in the planning or permitting stages to further increase capacity at our plants to anticipate future growth in our sewer system. … Currently, DEQ's change only affects future applicants for any new sewer line extension permit requests. Any projects that have already received their sewer line extension permits are not affected."

County officials have been in regular contact with N.C. DEQ, providing data and information to work toward a solution. "There is not an estimated time or date that this issue will be resolved, but we believe we now have a path forward for the Northeast Wastewater Treatment Plant," the county statement said in February, "and staff is submitting the necessary information to resume line extension permitting."

The statement said Brunswick officials didn't find out about the process change until the state began denying certain permit applications.

State officials said in an email that N.C. DEQ's Division of Water Resources was continuing to work with Brunswick County "to address future obligated wastewater flows and current capacity at its treatment plants. In addition to working to identify ways to move the permitting process forward for sewer connections, DWR has been working with the county to improve their future wastewater allocation tracking to facilitate future permitting, and to identify additional flow available due to unrealized development projects."

They said DWR had identified a permitting process to move applications forward for permits for connections to Brunswick County's Northeast Brunswick Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Despite the lingering challenges, plans for more residential real estate growth are far from at a standstill in some parts of the county. Jackey's Creek, a more than 1,440-acre master-planned community that could hold 6,000 residential units and multiple commercial buildings, is in the works between U.S. 17 and N.C. 133.

"I don't think we'd be making sewer applications for another year," said Hill Rogers, broker in charge at Cameron Management and a managing member of Jackey's Creek Investors LLC, the entity that currently owns the 1,440 acres.

Conversely, other developers have shifted plans related to hundreds of homes farther south in the county because of uncertainty about the sewer permitting process. Waterway, a development that could include 1,100 homes in a mix of housing types, is ready for sewer permitting for its first phase, but its developers are focusing instead on another part of the project – dredging an existing marina – for the time being.

East West Partners is developing the Waterway community, a project on 400 acres in and near Southport, along with Bald Head Island Limited. Waterway needs to connect to the West Brunswick Regional Water Reclamation Facility.

"The timing problem is more drastic for many others in Brunswick County," said Chad Paul, CEO of Bald Head Island Limited. "We have plenty to do and plenty to work on before we actually need to have flow. There are a lot of developers that are out of business in the next 30 days if they don't get their flow."

Paul said it's really an issue between Brunswick County and the state. "The issue is the interpretation of the 2023 legislation regarding how you determine sewer allocation, and we are up to our eyeballs working collaboratively with everybody involved. In my opinion, there is no villain here. This is, 'How do we deal with the growth in Brunswick County collaboratively and equitably with everybody involved?'"

Some in the county's residential real estate industry say they agree with those who think Brunswick's infrastructure needs to keep pace with, not chase, development. "People want to move here because of the lifestyle, because they can go fishing, because they can enjoy the waters, but if we start polluting those waters, and we don't pay attention to the ecological impacts of not having enough stormwater and sewage capacity … we're going to end up in a tangled mess," said Pete Key, a Brunswick County real estate broker and president of the Brunswick Environmental Action Team.

Key said he has spoken with county commissioners about the area's infrastructure needs before. "When I go and talk to those guys, I'm constantly bringing up how we need to be ahead of this. I mean, how are we paying for this? And they keep saying, the tax revenue. And, you know, tax revenue is not, in my opinion, the right answer because you're waiting on the houses to be in place with people living in them. You're borrowing from a future that hasn't occurred yet, and if you're chasing it, it's just going to cause issues down the road that can be avoided. … If you have thoughtful, planful planning going on, from the county standpoint, you're going to plan ahead and you're going to put that infrastructure in ahead of time."

Key's colleague and real estate team leader, Hank Troscianiec, has seen the issue firsthand from both government and business perspectives. "I used to serve on the board of commissioners for the city that I live in, in Boiling Spring Lakes. And the stereotypical drum that was beaten was, 'Well, he's a Realtor; of course he wants to develop, develop, develop,' And my feeling has always been progress is not measured by rooftops but how you do those rooftops. … If you don't do it the right way, then in the end, you're shooting yourself in the foot because people go, 'There is Brunswick County, but, man, that place is overpopulated, and they've got major issues.'"

Concerns that growth in the county was getting ahead of itself spurred a couple of county commissioners to try to take action in March. Brunswick County Board of Commissioners member Pat Sykes voted, along with commissioner Randy Thompson, to "freeze the review of any development applications it has already received and to hold on accepting any more project applications until the issue with the state concerning sewer extension applications is resolved," according to a March 2 commissioners' meeting recap by county staff.

The motion was defeated by a 3-2 vote after county staff explained that, under both state law and the county's Unified Development Ordinance, a development moratorium cannot be enacted without a public hearing. They also said such a moratorium would apply to commercial and industrial projects, thereby halting developments that would otherwise create jobs.

"I'm not against the growth now, but I'm against it not being handled appropriately and safely for the citizens," said Sykes, a Southport resident, "because they're the ones who are going to have to pay down the road."

Growth Reckoning In Brunswick County

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