BRUNSWICK COUNTY — Two months after an unnamed storm inundated Brunswick County with severe flooding and damage to local roadways, officials are evaluating options to enhance stormwater management.
READ MORE: 341 residential developments in Brunswick County approved
ALSO: No-go on development moratorium in Brunswick County, officials cite legal concerns
Last month, Brunswick County Commissioners struck down chair Randy Thompson’s motion to request staff prepare information for an imminent 120-day development moratorium due to issues including strained water and wastewater capacity, flooding and stormwater management, and the adequacy of the county’s emergency services.
County manager Steve Stone recommended the county instead continue to evaluate the feasibility of a moratorium and amend stormwater rules to require systems to handle 100-year storm events. Commissioners unanimously passed a motion for staff to present potential updates to the county’s stormwater ordinance at the October meeting.
Stormwater engineer Richard Christensen and deputy engineering services director Brigit Flora carried out the presentation at last week’s commissioner meeting. Recommended changes include enhanced protections of riparian buffers — undisturbed vegetation, such as trees or shrubs, adjacent to natural drainage ways — and the potential creation of a new stormwater utility for the county.
The utility would be a separate legal entity in charge of stormwater management planning, engineering, administration, maintenance, and permitting. It would be paid by user fees and determine rates based on properties’ runoff generation and stormwater controls.
Staff’s presentation stated upgrading stormwater control measures to handle a 100-year storm event — 10 to 11 inches over 24 hours — would increase management costs and reduce developable land; standard stormwater conveyance systems within the county are designed to handle a 10-year storm event of seven inches within 24 hours.
September’s Potential Tropical Cyclone #8 dropped upward of 20 inches of rain in 24 hours and was considered a 1,000-year storm event.
Commissioners requested staff provide additional information at the December meeting and did not take a vote last week.
Brunswick County’s stormwater ordinance requires 30-foot riparian buffers be maintained on streams, ponds, lakes, and other water bodies in the county. Christensen and Flora noted the vegetation strips trap and filter pollutants from upland stormwater and maintain the integrity of natural drainage systems.
However, Brunswick County currently does not require riparian buffers around wetlands; staff recommended adding new requirements for wetlands and increasing buffer width to 50 feet.
Residents have repeatedly raised concerns about the impact of development in the county — consistently ranked among the fastest growing in the state — on stormwater management. Brunswick County Conservation Partnership founder Christie Marek first floated the idea of a development moratorium at the planning board’s August meeting to ensure infrastructure can meet demand and address negative impacts of growth.
The issue was salient before the planning board approved the 2,950 unit Ashton Farms development in March after rejecting it last year. The planning board endorsed the project after applicant Thomas & Hutton Engineering revised its plan to include 30-foot wetland riparian buffers in Natural Heritage Program areas and expanded stormwater ponds capable of handling 100-year storm events.
In neighboring New Hanover County, its Unified Development Ordinance requires 25-to-100-foot buffer zones from conservation areas. Conservationist Andy Wood argued protections have not been adequately enforced and views the reduction of riparian buffers in Brunswick and New Hanover counties as a contributor to degradation of local waterways.
“When you destroy the riparian buffer for short-term development,” he said, “you’re ultimately ruining water quality both at the surface and in the aquifer. And relative to travel and tourism at the ocean, because our dirty surface water flows out to the beach.”
Wood is a member of Save Sledge Forest, a group that seeks to conserve a 4,030-unit development proposed in a 4,039-acre Castle Hayne property including roughly 3,000 acres of wetlands.
The North Carolina Land and Water Fund cited Sledge Forest’s riparian buffers along the northeast Cape Fear River and Prince George Creek among its reasons for considering the property a top state priority for conservation. A portion of the waterway was added to the Department of Environmental Quality’s impaired water bodies list this year due to arsenic and hexavalent chromium found in fish tissue.
DEQ added several Brunswick County water bodies to the 2024 list. In the Lumber River Basin, 2.2 miles of Leonard Branch river connecting to Juniper Creek joined due to fecal coliform and Lockwoods Folly River from Royal Oak Swamp to SR 1200 was included for dissolved oxygen.
Sustainable engineering firm Stantec Consulting Services Inc. cited stormwater runoff from development in the Lockwoods Folly River Basin as a contributor to declining water quality in a 2010 report. The firm included riparian buffer restoration among its recommendations to improve water quality in the region.
Riparian buffer regulation has been fiercely contested over the last decade. Business associations representing development and real estate interests have argued developers are insufficiently compensated for protecting riparian buffers and advocated for less expansive mandated buffer size.
The North Carolina Home Builders Association took credit for helping pass a 2015 bill which prohibited local governments from enacting stricter riparian buffer regulations than the state’s 50-foot guideline. The Business Alliance for a Sound Economy, an influential Wilmington-based business association, also expressed support for the legislation.
The bill still allowed municipalities to apply to the North Carolina Environmental Management Commission for greater buffers with local scientific evidence to justify regulations. Sen. Bill Rabon — who has served as Brunswick County’s senator since 2011 — supported a 2017 bill that would have removed local governments’ abilities to apply for individual standards. He argued municipalities “use the provision to get around buffer rules” during a 2017 committee meeting.
The 2023 Farm Bill removed protections for up to 3 million acres of state wetlands and further reduced riparian buffer protection in the state. A provision drops the penalty for removing timber in a riparian buffer from a maximum of $25,000 to the value of timber removed.
The Department of Environmental Quality allows developers to pay into a mitigation bank to compensate for impacts to riparian buffers. Environmental Management Commissioner Michael Ellison — former director of DEQ’s Division of Mitigation Services — circumvented the Environmental Management Commission’s proposed 2014 update to stream protection rules after engaging in private meetings with industry representatives. The EMC publicly criticized his actions.
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