Horry County over-charged thousands of rural landowners. Refunds are coming
Horry County officials will issue refunds to some rural landowners after mistakenly over-charging them for the county’s stormwater fee.
The county collects the fee — currently around $90 a year — from property owners and uses the money to control flooding and the flow of stormwater.
The over-charge, which county spokesperson Kelly Moore said officials realized in December, occurred because of a 2009 amendment to state law.
County resident Chris Stevens, who sells crop insurance, raised the issue in late November with County Administrator Steve Gosnell.
State law allows counties to charge stormwater fees, and Horry County began doing so in 2000.
The 2009 amendment exempts “agricultural, forestlands and undeveloped lands” from the charge. Such lands are also exempt from other fees and land regulations.
After reviewing the issue, Gosnell determined the county’s stormwater fee was legal, and could be partially charged on rural lands. Increases in the fee, though - one in 2017 and another in 2021 - should not have been charged to rural landowners.
In 2017, the county increased the fee approximately $10 per household, making the total annual fee around $40.
In 2021, the county increased the fee from $44.40 to $89.40 per household.
The fee helps fund the county’s Stormwater Department which, among other functions, destroys beaver dams and digs drainage ditches to allow water to flow more easily through the flat, coastal county.
Since the 2021 increase, the department has hired additional staff and purchased new equipment to expand operations.
“A reasonable interpretation of (state law) would indicate that stormwater utility fees on agricultural land, forestlands, and undeveloped land could not be increased after 2009 and that no property owner of any of these three land use designations should be charged a rate higher than what they would have paid for the 2017 tax year,” Gosnell wrote in a Dec. 3 email to Stevens.
Stevens shared a copy of that email with The Sun News.
Moore, in an email Thursday, said between 16,000 and 19,000 parcels of land should not have been charged the 2017 and 2021 increases. That amounts to approximately $1.7 million in refunds the county will have to pay, and an approximately $1 million budget hole going forward, Moore said.
County officials are expected to address that shortfall at a budget workshop in April.
She noted that county staff is working to contact landowners who are owed a refund now.
“The county will be contacting impacted property owners and issuing refunds, and those details are being finalized now,” she said. “We expect to be able to provide more information on that process in the coming weeks.”
The refunds will not affect the Stormwater Department’s recent hires or equipment purchases, she noted.
State Rep. William Bailey, R-North Myrtle Beach, said in an interview the legislature may need to amend state law to prevent future headaches.
If counties, including Horry, have over-charged stormwater fees, he said, “then it’s something we need to stop doing immediately or redefine and do it legally.”
“I think once we started asking a few questions it was kind of clear right off the bat that there’s some uncharted territory,” he added.
Stevens said he pursued the issue with the county because he didn’t want farmers to be over-charged.
“I’m not opposed to the Horry County stormwater division,” he said. “It’s an important county function.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 12:39 PM.
