A developer wants to build on wetlands. Could it worsen flooding for residents?
On sunny days, West Perry Road is a quiet neighborhood and children race up and down the two-mile road on their bicycles.
But when it storms, West Perry Road floods. Badly.
“[My neighbor] and I put a line and a level across the road. There was 18 inches, we took a picture,” West Perry Road resident Mary Nickerson said. “Eighteen inches of water in the road. You couldn’t even tell there was a road there.”
That particular flood was during 2018’s Hurricane Florence, but residents can tick off all of the other major storms that have caused their road to go under water, including 2010’s Tropical Storm Nicole and heavy rains in October 2015.
The water approaches their garages and leaves the road impassible.
A developer wants to build more homes in the neighborhood, on land that residents believe is wetlands. Development plans submitted to the county call for only 23 new homes, but the builder would need to reclassify wetlands as uplands in order to build there.
The plans argue that 29 acres of wetlands that once surrounded West Perry Road has shrunk to only nine acres of wetlands.
That has residents like Chuck Lange worried.
“We’re concerned that if they do away with two-thirds of the wetlands, where’s the water going to go?” Lange said. “Because we’re already in a flooding condition when we have these storm events and if they take away two-thirds of the wetlands then how bad is the flooding going to be?”
The development — headed by Steve Powell of Venture Engineering and landowner AP Land Holdings — went before Horry County Council Tuesday for a public hearing, but council members voted to defer a decision on the plan until May 17.
Residents, including Lange, urged the council to reject the building plans. They’ll have to wait two weeks for an answer.
Council member Harold Worley, of North Myrtle Beach, asked that the developer bring back information on the properties’ wetlands in two weeks.
Powell, for his part, said that if the county approves the land changes, engineering work will ultimately bring West Perry Road up to county standards — allowing the county to adopt it and maintain it — and would improve drainage in the neighborhood to prevent flooding from storms.
He argued that his plans do not call for building on wetlands.
“Let’s be real clear, we’re not building on wetlands,” he said. “We will make the flooding far less severe.”
Are the wetlands really gone?
To date, Powell’s rezoning request to build on what he says are former wetlands has been controversial. County planning staff recommended that leaders not approve his plan. Planning commission members voted in favor of the project, by a six-to-four margin.
County Council member Johnny Vaught, who represents the area, said he won’t vote in favor of the plan if it harms residents. Other council members frequently take cues from the home-district member when it comes to rezoning requests.
“We’re not going to allow them to come in and exacerbate the situation that already exists,” Vaught said.
It’s not yet clear, though, whether or not the wetlands that once surrounded West Perry Road are still wetlands.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has the final regulatory say on wetlands, previously said the land was wetlands. But that classification, called a delineation, expired in 2004, according to Army Corps spokesperson Jackie Pennoyer.
Even without that official designation, data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, shows that much of land Powell wants to build on was considered freshwater wetlands up through 2008.
But even that data is now 14 years old. Powell argued that over those years, those wetlands have drained, and it’s now safe to build there. His rezoning request states that 29.4 acres of wetlands have shrunk to 9.2 acres.
“In this case the wetlands have changed and created less wetlands along West Perry Road,” Powell said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, though, hasn’t yet made a final determination on whether or not the land is wetlands, or buildable. Pennoyer said that Powell had submitted initial paperwork asking the Army Corps to determine whether the land is wetlands or not, but that the agency hadn’t yet made a decision.
Pennoyer, though, said that wetland boundaries can change over time.
“Changes to wetland delineations may be caused by shifts in drainage patterns, land use, surrounding development, climate, and other environmental factors,” she said.
West Perry Road residents, though, argued they see evidence of wetlands today. For one, resident Jim Gunter said, turtles living near the stormwater ponds lay eggs in his backyard
“if it’s not a wetland area, why do I have turtles laying eggs in my backyard?” he asked. “They come out of the pond and nobody will bother them because they’re at that wetland area.”
What happens now?
The residents of West Perry Road said, their part of West Perry Road, and the stormwater drainage system underneath, wasn’t built up to county standards. That means the county won’t adopt the infrastructure as its own, meaning the county won’t help fix it.
Powell pledged that his project would bring both the road and drainage system up to county standards, and would improve the residents’ drainage issues.
He said his project will enlarge the existing stormwater ponds and connect them to each other to provide more places for stormwater to go.
But both Vaught, and the residents, said they want proof that Powell’s plans will improve the neighborhood and actually solve its existing flooding problems.
“I’m not against development, but do it in a way that’s transparent and I know that I have safety,” resident Sebastian Davis said.
Vaught said he wanted to see a stormwater plan that county engineers agreed would fix the neighborhood’s drainage.
“If they can convince me that building those homes in there will not make the problems worse, it would also probably improve peoples lives,” Vaught said. “I’ll be standing with the residents on that all the way.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated with additional information.
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 8:55 AM.
