Politics

GUEST COLUMN: Land development code needs major repairs

Arielle Emmett

By ARIELLE EMMETT, Published: June 25, 2025

Per the official record, “climate change” in Henderson County gets a single footnote in the updated 2045 Comprehensive Plan.

There is little mention of tree canopy loss or declines in herbaceous wetlands. There is some attention paid to conserving open spaces, natural resources and mitigating increasingly severe floods. But there is no explication of mountainside erosion or even the growth of barren land in this county, which EPA defines as “bedrock…pavement, scarps, talus, slides… gravel pits, and other accumulations of earthen material, where vegetation accounts for less than 15% of cover.”
Some residents believe Western North Carolina is in climate-resistant paradise, a Camelot, if you will (Hurricane Helene excepted, of course). But LandSAT and other survey data collected by our tree canopy group, part of Henderson County’s Environmental Advisory Committee, reveal a much more disturbing picture. Our region is now subject to runaway population growth, flooding, warming, wetter weather, declines in tree canopy, aggressive commercial development and, potentially, a loss of local zoning control.
Here’s what EAC found:

• Henderson County lost 5.72 square miles of forest between 2001 and 2021. Nearly 10 percent of evergreen forests have disappeared, while deciduous forest has decreased a relatively small 3.33 percent.

• Henderson County grassland has grown 140 percent and barren land 85.98 percent while agricultural land has diminished, paving the way for more commercial development and tree canopy loss. The county also lost nearly 6 percent in emergent herbaceous wetlands, a source of ground water recharging and flood protection, wildlife and plant productivity. Impervious surfaces (i.e., hard pavement, roads, parking lots) have risen 21 percent in 20 years. Flooding is now occurring in areas never flooded before.

• Medium-intensity development in Henderson County has grown 58.86 percent and high intensity development 38.40 percent over two decades. Population from 2000-2022 in the county rose 31.7 percent, second only (and very close) to Buncombe County, topping 119,000 people in 2023. Land cover changes already account for 18.64 square miles of county land or 4.97 percent of the total.

• The long-term effects of Hurricane Helene and future severe storms aren’t fully known. Helene destroyed 299 homes in our county and left major damage at another 1,400 homes. In our general region, an estimated 822,000 acres sustained damage, including $214 million in timber damage and losses. Seventy-one percent of the damage occurred on private lands. Helene also damaged or decimated 187,000 acres in Pisgah and Nantahala national forests, 20 percent of the total acreage.

To those who want to look away, these changes may seem minor, a sign of our troubled times. But there are even more worrisome signs—both environmental and legislative—converging. One is that the Republican-dominated House and Senate in Raleigh have been debating bills aimed at bolstering homebuilder and land owners’ rights under the so-called “Dillon Rule,” which means that local governments can exercise zoning powers only as they’re expressly granted by the General Assembly. In practical terms, both bills —HB 765, now defunct for this session, and Senate Bill 205, which is in House committee review and contains cut-and-paste content from HB 765 —diminish the power of elected local officials to say “no” to medium- and high-density development projects. Senate bill 205 specifies that zoning authorities can no longer demand specific design and aesthetic features for new communities which are deemed “unauthorized and unlawful,” according to the proposed amendments to state housing law.

Why would the General Assembly rein in local authority to control rapid growth? Ostensibly, HB 765 and Senate 205 were both designed to plug the state’s projected “housing supply gap” (an estimated 765,000 new units are needed by 2029, according to an N.C. Chamber report), and to make new housing more affordable.

But the bills were also drafted by pro-business legislators to circumvent local NIMBY “bad actors” who had “weaponized the zoning and permitting process against private landowners and developers,” as state Rep. Jake Johnson put it in a news release last month. Johnson also acknowledged the original bill had gone too far in punishing “good actors” who happen to understand their localities, including rural counties, better than Raleigh. (Tellingly, HB 765 contains a provision to allow developers to sue elected officials and board appointees for damages tied to development decisions. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jeff Zenger, a Forsyth County Republican construction company owner who has sued the town of Lewisville over a rejected development. Zenger’s company won $2 million in a settlement.)
Today, multiple localties have voiced strong opposition to both bills, including the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC).
Henderson County Commissioner Sheila Franklin, who met with Raleigh legislators earlier this month, says she’s leery because of their apparent lack of concern for local environmental protections or zoning knowledge.
“There’s a huge need for conservation of land,” Franklin said. “But we couldn’t get any consensus or vibe as to what will happen” to the homebuilder bills. Franklin acknowledges every legislative decision is complex and requires much give-and-take among diverse interests. “But our message to Raleigh was ‘Please don’t ask us (to give up) local zoning control.’ There are places to zone for growth and places not to grow in order to avoid destroying rural areas.”
In Henderson County, our EAC environmental research supports Franklin’s message. Without stronger guidelines for tree canopy, mountainside erosion protections and flood zone and wetlands preservation, destruction of our area’s forested beauty will continue right along with rapid development.

Our county’s Land Development Code, adopted in 2006, is hopelessly outdated, almost exclusively defining bare-minimum landscape design requirements for developers. The big picture guidelines for preserving large tracts of forest on public and privately held lands remain unaddressed despite community surveys consistently indicating that protection of open spaces and forests ranked #1 in priority.

It’s time now for our elected representatives, commissioners and planning board to act. We need concerted opposition to the loss of local zoning authority that SB 205 would order. We need to get our heads straight around what’s worth preserving. The planning board should spearhead a new Land Development Code, inviting appropriate stakeholders and experts —arborists, environmental experts, commercial developers and real estate agents—to create a modern, robust bulwark against stupid development. In short, we need to preserve and protect the beautiful forests, wetlands, rivers and other resources that attract so many to our mountain home.

* * * * *

Arielle Emmett, Ph.D., is a journalist and author who lives in Henderson County. A member of the Henderson County Environmental Advisory Committee, she served on a subcommittee that studied the loss of tree canopy and forests. Emmett’s recent novel, “The Logoharp” (Leaping Tiger Press, 2024), won the Silver award in science fiction in the Nautilus Book Awards this year.