Growth along Horry County’s Highway 90 has become ‘unbearable.’ A building ban is on the table.
After World War II, when the U.S. Army was finished using a swatch of Carolina Forest and rural Conway as a bombing range to test its weapons, Carolyn Ballington’s parents moved back onto their farm in the Tilly Swamp area.
They were tobacco farmers, and worked the land until her father aged and could no longer labor every day. Then they rented out the land to other farmers, hundreds of acres in all. Ballington had an idyllic rural upbringing in the area, as did her daughter and granddaughter. She and friends could ride their bicycles along the dirt roads without fear of traffic, drive a tractor without bothering the neighbors and drive her father’s car — at 14 years-old — all the way to Conway and back without encountering another driver.
Recently, though, growth along the Highway 90 corridor has brought speculators and developers knocking, looking to buy her land. She’s gotten phone calls, letters in the mail, and knocks on the door. She’s refused, even telling one recently that she’d only sell if they offered her $100,000 per acre, as a way to scare the buyer off.
“I know all this dirt, I know all sorts of things about it,” Ballington said recently. “This is my farm, this is my family’s. It’s going to stay mine until I die.”
But the fact that developers are keen for Ballington’s land is indicative of the explosive growth that’s come to the area.
Over the past two decades, developers have snatched up stretches of cheap land, often a hundred acres at a time or more. They’ve cleared acres of forest, filled in wetlands and built large subdivisions. Cookie-cutter neighborhoods with names like Astoria Park, Hillsborough and River’s Edge Plantation now dot the rural landscape. Land that was once predominantly swamp and farmland is now peppered with new homes and businesses.The developments have brought an increase in traffic, more car wrecks and flooding and a feeling that the growth is encroaching on the rural lifestyle some residents enjoy.
“It’s just sad. I mean, I know development is going to come, but there’s people who want to live in the country and they’re building a city around us,” Tammy Baker, who lives in Lee’s Landing, said. She’s lived along the Highway 90 corridor for 25 years and has begun working with some of her neighbors to bring concerns about the growth to county officials.
County Council member Danny Hardee, who represents part of the corridor, said he’d like to use Horry County’s portion of the hospitality fees it collects to widen Highways 90 and 905, which has also seen growth in recent years. If his fellow council members don’t agree to that, Hardee said, a building moratorium for the area could be on the table until county leaders can implement another infrastructure plan.
“We either have to get a financial plan in place or we have to stop the growth,” he said.
That plan could be politically difficult, though. The original plan for the county’s hospitality fee money was funding construction of Interstate 73, a major infrastructure project that could change the region’s economy by bringing in more tourists and new industries since Horry County would have easier interstate access.
Residents, too, are split on how to best address the growth. Some favor widening the highways, while others favor only adding turning lanes in certain areas, worried that a full widening would displace residents and invite more development. Other residents favor stricter building regulations all around, while some would simply like to see building barred from swampy, wetland areas. But all agree that the county must do something about the growth. Their peace of mind and lifestyles are at stake, they argue.
“What I feel like needs to happen is we need some responsible development,” said Tina McAfee, Baker’s daughter, who lives off of Old Altman Road. “We don’t need to quit but we need to stop until we can develop responsibly.”
Crashes, some fatal, increase with traffic
The chief issue for many residents, that traffic has become “just unbearable,” as Tilly Swamp resident Amelia Wood put it, is the one of the more obvious signs that the Highway 90 corridor has grown. Despite the number of subdivisions that have cropped up on either side of the road in recent years, only a handful of traffic lights exist along the roughly 20 miles from Highway 501 to Highway 90’s termination in North Myrtle Beach.
“You slow down and put your blinkers on but you have 50 cars behind you,” Mary Anders, a resident of the Rivers Edge Plantation subdivision, said of driving along Highway 90. “It’s almost impossible not to be a race car driver turning into our development, there’s no turning lane for us. It’s just a very dangerous situation.”
Federal vehicle crash data appears to support the notion that Highway 90 and other nearby roads have gotten more dangerous as the area has grown. Data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation, shows that the 29526 zip code, which encompasses Highways 90, 905 and part of Conway, has seen more crashes in recent years. Between 2005 and 2014, an average of 10 drivers per year wrecked their vehicles in the area. But between 2015 and 2019, the last year NHTSA had data, an average of 13 drivers per year wrecked their vehicles in the area.
Additional data collected by the South Carolina Department of Public Safety shows that six people have been killed in vehicle wrecks along Highway 90 since the start of 2019.
For McAfee, data like that is personal. On her daughter Zoie’s 8th birthday last year, Zoie’s stepmother was picking her up from McAfee’s home, and attempting to turn onto Highway 90. But a semi-truck, parked along a narrow berm at the intersection, blocked part of her view of oncoming traffic, and she wrecked. Neither were seriously injured, but the incident has scarred McAfee and her mother, Baker.
“If I hear about an accident on 90 I’m calling my daughter to check on her,” Baker said. “This is a two-lane country highway. It was never designed for this density.”
Flooding, infill and bears, oh my!
The increased flooding Horry County has seen in recent years has also become a problem for residents along the corridor. With much of the land low-lying and swampy, heavy rains and river flooding can cut off residents in the area. Wood, who lives in Tilly Swamp, couldn’t leave her home for several days when Hurricane Florence hit because she was surrounded by flood water. With the exception of International Drive, some roads in the area go under water during serious floods, residents said, making life difficult until the waters go down.
Some residents blame the floods more on recent development than other factors, like climate change. The “fill and build” development technique, in which developers truck in loads of dirt to raise the foundation of home up several feet to prevent flooding, inadvertently causes other nearby properties to flood instead.
“The fill and build is disgusting, that I totally disagree with,” said Anders, who moved to Horry County from the Pocono mountains in Pennsylvania six years ago.
For Angela Naples, who moved into her home along Bear Bluff Road about a decade ago, the development has meant flooding on her property. When she first moved into her home, she only had a small handful of neighbors, and was mostly surrounded by forest. Now, though, several subdivisions have cropped up nearby, and she’s noticed her front yard floods.
“I get lakefront property everytime it rains,” Naples said.
Others still are worried about how the growth is affecting wildlife. Home to black bears, deer, coyotes, bobcats, foxes and more, some residents said they worry that all the building is destroying the homes of wildlife and causing more to die than normal.
“Those issues need to be addressed because I’ve never seen so much wildlife on the side of the road,” McAfee said.
Balancing growth and the country lifestyle
Tina McAfee and her family have a backyard full of projects. There’s two project cars, not quite road-ready, a camper, a fire pit and some toys. The front yard is 8-year-old Zoie’s playground, complete with swings, a slide and a picnic table she can readily turn into a blanket fort.
There’s also enough space out back for a makeshift shooting range. According to county rules, residents in rural areas like theirs can shoot guns until 10 p.m. at night, but McAfee worries that the increased development could one day hinder that ability.
“Right now, I’m able to shoot and have fires and things like that in my backyard and the closer that a suburban population comes to me, how long before the police are going to show up?” she wondered recently. “People who aren’t from here and aren’t used to that are going to hear gunshots and that’s going to become a thing of the past one day I fear.”
It’s a tug-of-war between the country lifestyle that many of the longtime residents signed up for and the rapid pace of recent development bringing the suburbs further West into the county. While one new home, or one new subdivision may not encroach on longtime residents’ way of life, some worry about the cumulative effects in a decade, or even less.
During a recent conversation about the changes, Baker and her daughter McAfee wondered what small joys they might lose as the growth continues.
“The (homeowner associations), they won’t let you have a clothes line. It’s just simple things like that,” Baker said. “It’s not just saving on your light bill, you know, your sheets smell better outside. That’s only a tiny thing and (for) those that don’t embrace that, it’s really hard to explain.”
“Yeah, how do you explain to someone how good your sheets smell when they’ve been on a clothesline?” McAfee added. “That’s something you have to experience for yourself to learn to love that.”
Residents split on solutions
But residents are split on the best ways to address the growth. Some see a building moratorium as necessary; others don’t want to harm the local economy. Some see widening Highway 90 as needed; others worry that doing so could force some people who live close to the road out of their homes because the state or county would have to buy up that land for the expansion. Some say the county should invest more in police to patrol the area for speeders; others say the county should dedicate resources clearing storm ditches and inspecting new homes to stay on top of flooding issues.
“If they widen it, it would cause issues with the property lines and the ditches and drainage,” said Jesse Wilt, who used to live along Highway 90 and, though he’s since moved away, continues to pick his children up from school in the area. “Enforcing the speed limit could help.”
For Finley MacIver’s family, these problems aren’t new. Carolyn Ballington is her grandmother, and she grew up on the family’s land. In MacIver’s words, the family has been “struggling, fighting, begging, pleading” with the county for more infrastructure and resources in the area for as long as MacIver can remember. One salient example is the lack of a fire station. Only a single, unmanned volunteer station exists in the area, meaning residents wait longer when fires ignite or other emergencies occur.
“Basically, the issue with Highway 90 is that it was not set up for success,” MacIver said. But, she said, the county government has the power to fix many of the problems that residents face. “There are things the county council has the power to do to better people’s lives and their safety.”
Naples, who lives along Bear Bluff Road, has a unique perspective on the growth: Her husband is employed by one of the developers spurring the growth in the area. So while the growth is causing them headaches at home, it’s also helping to pay the bills, a microcosm of the economic impact that curbing the growth could have. In Horry County, the construction industry is one of the largest, and employs thousands, nearly 9,000 as of 2017. Building permits and other related fees also bring in millions in revenue for the county government each year, further compounding the issue of curbing growth.
“I think they shouldn’t just rush into just approving all of these things, the infrastructure things need to be situated first,” Naples said. “It’s difficult for me.”
Developer: Highway 90 is what’s ‘next’
Chris Manning, owner of Chris Manning Communities, is one of the developers benefiting from the cheap land along the Highway 90 corridor and building home after home. He recently closed on a property in the area where he’ll build 127 homes, followed by another project nearby where he’ll build another 300 homes. He’s in favor of widening Highway 90 and thinks a building moratorium is a bad idea. But in lieu of major fixes, he said he takes smaller measures to alleviate flooding and traffic concerns, like adding in turning lanes when the state Dept. of Transportation says they’re needed, and building homes above flood levels.
Manning said he’s focused on building along the Highway 90 corridor because it’s “next” for growth.
“I just start at the ocean and see how close I can get with large pieces of property, in this market,” he said. “The growth can only go West.”
As the county begins debating how best to approach the growth in the area, Manning said he prefers a piecemeal approach.
“I don’t think stopping growth is the answer,” he said. “If there are specific concerns those should be addressed.”
A building moratorium?
Among the concrete solutions on the table for the Highway 90 corridor are widening the road and instituting a building moratorium. Regulations meant to mitigate damage from flooding, because much of the area is near the Waccamaw River, could also have an impact. One of those regulations would ban building in areas that were flooded by Hurricane Florence.
Hardee, the council member, said he’d like to use the county’s portion of the hospitality fee money to pay for the widening of Highways 90 and 905, and institute a building moratorium if his fellow council members don’t agree to that plan. Using the hospitality fee revenue, a pot of money collected from restaurant meals, hotel stays and event tickets previously unavailable due to a lawsuit between Horry County and Myrtle Beach, could prove difficult, though. Originally, Horry County dedicated the hospitality fee revenue to funding the local portion of Interstate 73, a project some on council still want to pursue now that the lawsuit is over. Hardee, though, said fixes to Highways 90 and 905 should take priority over Interstate 73 and that the county can’t wait for a RIDE 4 program to fund the projects.
“I want to try to speak to the other council about getting Highway 90 done first, before we put a penny towards I-73 or anything else,” he said.
If the County Council doesn’t want to go with that plan, Hardee said, he’ll seriously consider pushing for a building moratorium in the area.
A moratorium on new development along Highway 90 wouldn’t be the first time Horry County Council has considered such a measure. As Carolina Forest experienced similar growing pains a few years ago, the Council debated a building moratorium but ultimately backed away.
The Hurricane Florence building regulations the council is considering separately — one of which require new developments to meet Florence flood levels, another of which would bar so-called fill and build in Florence-affected areas — could also slow or halt building in the area.
Hardee said he worries about the lack of infrastructure and resources, such as emergency and fire services, as the area continues to grow.
“When you put a house out there, then you’re obligated for fire, police, EMS,” he said. “We’re all concerned, there’s nobody who’s not concerned about the infrastructure on Highway 90.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 10:48 AM with the headline "Growth along Horry County’s Highway 90 has become ‘unbearable.’ A building ban is on the table.."
