Stewards of North Carolina’s rivers and streams have created a manual designed to assist local governments in establishing land use rules that protect water quality and boost community flood resilience.
The new guide, “Gold Standard Development Practices for Watershed Protection,” was developed in response to river keepers’ documentation of irresponsible land use practices that have resulted in severe and devastating impacts across the state, said Neuse Riverkeeper and Sound Rivers Inc. Director of Advocacy Samantha Krop.
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“We realized that how our cities approach land use practices is one of the most important indicators of water quality and flooding mitigation we have,” she said. “So, we’ve taken a very thoughtful pivot to focusing on land use policy because we see it as inextricably linked to our community health and safety in the future.”
The guide, created by Waterkeepers Carolina with support from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, provides an array of options local governments may consider implementing in land use rules, developers can offer as proffers or in conditional rezoning applications, and concerned residents may use as an advocacy tool.
Counties, cities and towns throughout North Carolina establish key land use regulations through a single, consolidated document called a unified development ordinance, or UDO.
A UDO governs land use, zoning, and development standards aimed at guiding growth and protecting natural resources.
Local governments use these ordinances to govern land use in ways tailored to their communities.
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Down-zoning ban limits local governments
In 2024, the North Carolina General Assembly banned local governments from being able to initiate a process called down-zoning, which is when property is rezoned to less dense or less intense use.
The ban effectively restricts those governments’ ability to enforce land use rules because the law requires that they must get written permission from all affected property owners before amending zoning text or maps.
The down-zoning ban in Senate Bill 382, a 2024 disaster relief bill, one vetoed by then-Gov. Roy Cooper, has prompted cities like New Bern and Durham to pump the brakes on updating their UDOs because the law lacks clarity, Krop said.
“I think that is presenting a lot of challenges, both in what the letter of the law says and also in what municipalities are sort of perceiving it to say, or sort of worried it’s created this boogeyman that I think is creating a lot of fear in municipal governments around can we do anything at all,” she said. “There are a lot of things that we can still do, both in passing changes to local UDOs and also in asking for more in some of these rezoning cases as proffers to protect waterways and communities from some of the harms that we’ve been documenting associated with development practices.”
Waterkeepers Carolina and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice last week in Durham hosted an event, “Designing Communities that Protect our Waters,” to discuss development and zoning practices aimed at protecting water and building community flood resilience.
Counsel for Environmental Justice James Huey at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice explained that one tool local governments have is something called conditional zoning.
Conditional zoning is a process in which a property owner and local government negotiate conditions in a rezoning request.
Local governments, “can impose conditions that address lots of various potential issues that might come up with any sort of development,” he said. “A lot of times with development, there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all and I think that’s why this document is important to show that there is a path forward, especially for those local governments that are concerned about their authority and also a little bit confused about if they should always be implementing a certain system or what systems to implement.”
Tree retention protects water quality
The guide also highlights how local governments can implement overlay districts that identify and bolster protections specific to sensitive and important areas such as drinking watersheds.
“With water quality, it really boils down to silver bullets, and that starts with leaving more trees in the ground,” Krop said. “The single, best thing that we can do when developing a landscape, a forested landscape, is leaving as many trees in the ground as possible. That looks like tree retention instead of removal and replacement with young saplings.”
Targeting tree retention around waterways, expanding riparian buffers, making sure wetlands are protected and buffered and increasing overall tree connectivity on the landscape are crucial in protecting water quality.
In areas where multiple acres of trees are being removed at one time, it is crucial that exposed soil is stabilized as soon as possible to prevent erosion, sedimentation and pollution in waterways. Local governments can regulate timeframes for which developers must establish ground cover to avert erosion.
Waterkeepers Carolina continues to push for a change in state law that would require developers to monitor all discharges coming from their sediment basins to prove they’re not pumping dirty water into creeks and streams.
“We would argue that this is something that needs to happen, at least in all sensitive watersheds where there’s evidence of construction practices polluting waterways,” Krop said.
She encourages communities to look at those that are implementing forward-thinking rules and protections for waterways.
“I think we can learn from each other and try to create more universal, more consistent protections across the whole state,” she said.
