SHALLOTTE, N.C. (WECT) – One of the fastest-growing counties in the state could soon grow even more.

Developers want to build 150 single-family homes on 91 acres near the Shallotte River. Many neighbors who already live there say rising waters won’t make that development easy.

At a neighborhood meeting Wednesday night, an engineer representing the developers answered questions from neighbors about the proposal. Many asked questions about how this project could potentially impact their environment, from cutting down trees to the risk of septic tanks leaking into the river and traffic congesting their roads and ruining their neighborhood’s peaceful atmosphere.

For 28 years, Terry Alston has lived on the Shallotte River on Fletcher Hewett Road. That road also happens to be at the edge of the proposed development project.

“It’s a lot of property on a very small space,” Allston said when asked about the size of the project.

One conservationist at the meeting said she also doesn’t see how that many homes could fit in the area, especially with only two entrances to the neighborhood planned at Shell Point Road and High Meadows Drive.

“I think the housing is gonna have to come down. I don’t see 154 houses going in there,” Christie Marek of Brunswick County Conservation Partnership said. “And I do think with it being only two entrances going in and one entrance on each side…I don’t think that that’s gonna happen.”

Marek said beyond the size, the location of the project seems like it will cause issues in the long run.

“My initial concern is the way it’s butting up to the flood zone and almost to the river. That area already floods as it is,” Marek said.

Flooding is something Alston sees firsthand. She said the flooding on her dock she saw during Tropical Storm Debby was the highest she’s ever seen the river rise in her decades of living there. She says sometimes, however, all it takes is high tide for her dock to be covered with water.

“The water goes directly over my walkway and the floor of my dock,” Alston said. “So if it impacts me, it impacts everybody else that has water coming to them from the river.”

Both Marek and Alston say they aren’t opposed to all forms of development in Brunswick County, but they just want to see it done “responsibly.”

“It needs to slow down,” Marek said. “I mean we can’t we don’t have the infrastructure to handle the growth that we’re having. Our schools are already overcrowded.”

“We don’t expect to stop development, but we are asking for the planning board and the commissioners to be responsible and have some reasonable development,” Alston said.

An engineer representing the developer at tonight’s meeting told neighbors they have not done any studies on the project’s potential impact on the environment, including the river, yet.

Those would have to be done before any approval would be given to move forward and start construction. The engineer said breaking ground on this project, even if everything gets approved promptly, could still be one to two years away.

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