News

City, county endorse agreement to end water war

By Bill Moss, Published: June 17, 2025

The decades long conflict between the city and county over utility extensions, annexation and high-density development may have come to an end on Monday with decisions by the two governing boards to endorse a compromise in the state Legislature.

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners and the Hendersonville City Council both formally backed a bill in the state Legislature that would set up a joint water-sewer commission, give the county control of land-use when the city annexes property and eliminate the ability of any city in the county to control land-use outside their boundaries through extraterritorial zoning. Meeting at the same time in City Hall, the city council also endorsed the new language.

“This is just a big deal. Everybody came together and we worked it out, and it’s very cool,” Commissioner Jay Egolf said. “It’s good when everybody comes together.”

Commissioner Michael Edney, who served along with Egolf on the county’s negotiating team with the city, also praised the agreement.

“There’s been a contentious history with the city on various issues but I think water, sewer and annexation have been the crux of almost all of them,” he said. “I think we’ve come further than I ever thought would be possible with this agreement. Neither side got what they wanted totally, which generally means it’s a pretty good agreement.”

Mayor pro tem Jennifer Hensley said the agreement was a long time coming.

“I actually feel pretty good about it,” she said. “It’s one of the things I wanted to work on when I got into the city council. It was a lot of work and a lot of give-and-take but I’m happy we came up with something we’re all happy with.”

After meeting in a closed session for 45 minutes, Chairman Bill Lapsley gaveled to order the open meeting of the Board of Commissioners. He described the background of a bill in the Legislature that would have barred the city from requiring annexation in exchange for city sewer service.

Lapsley said that when he and County Manager John Mitchell discussed the topic with state Sen. Tim Moffitt in December, the senator “agreed to reintroduce the bill” that he had also filed in 2023. Moffitt shepherded the bill through the Senate in April. It is now pending in the state House, which, Lapsley said, was scheduled to take it up on Tuesday.

After the Senate passed the bill, the city contacted county commissioners to request a meeting to negotiate changes to the measure. The county board agreed, assigning commissioners Edney and Egolf and Mitchell, the county manager, “to see if some revisions could be made to the bill that would be more palatable to city council,” Lapsley said. “Issues were discussed, concerns were raised by both sides, consequences (were brought up) for both parties that would result from an adoption of this bill.”

Although she was “really upset about the bill” that undercut the city control of its utility system, “I understand why Tim did what he did,” Hensley said. “I think they were all tired of hearing the same discussion over and over and nothing happening. I think he was trying to force us to come to table and get this done.”

Negotiations continued through April and May. Legislators had “requested the county and the city to work hard together to reach a conclusion, to come up with language that both parties can agree with,” Lapsley said. “They were not excited about taking action on their own.”

The main points of the agreement:

• Joint Water and Sewer Commission. The legislation forms a new nine-member Joint Water and Sewer Commission to guide the operation of the city’s water and sewer system. The city and county would appoint four members each; appointment of the chair (for a two-year term) would alternate between the city and county, with the county going first.
• Impact of annexation on fire departments. The bill requires the city to contract with the rural fire department to provide service for five years to any property the city annexes in the fire district.
• Extraterritorial zoning jurisdiction. The bill eliminates ETJs for all of the county’s municipalities in unincorporated areas outside their borders. “This has been a concern of the county commissioners for a number of years, and this bill does, in fact, eliminate that jurisdiction,” Lapsley said.
• Annexed parcels. Zoning of land the city annexes will remain under the county’s control. “This has been a major point of concern of this board and previous boards for years,” Lapsley said. “The situation that the county found itself in is, as we do our comprehensive plan and envision certain zoning classifications of land outside the city limits, that zone is usurped whenever the area is annexed by the city.”
• Downzoning: “The ability for local governments to downzone parcels of land within their jurisdiction was taken away by the General Assembly” last year, Lapsley said. “We expressed our concern about that as soon as we found out about it back in December.” The bill creates a carveout for Henderson County and its municipalities that allows a city- or county-initiated downzoning here. Downzoning is defined as a change in land-use that decreases development density or reduces the number of permitted uses.

During the Board of Commissioners meeting, Egolf praised Jeff Miller, the former council member whom the city appointed as a volunteer negotiator to help shape an agreement, Mayor Barbara Volk and Hensley, along with county staff.

Edney recalled that as a law school student in the 1980s he had worked under Henderson County Attorney Don Garren doing title searches for the Cane Creek sewer district.

“The county has been in the sewer business for a very long time,” he said. “We also got into the Mud Creek basin, which were basically parts of the county around the city and south that needed sewer that were not being served. The county has always been in the collection and transmission business but never in the treatment business.”

Commissioner Rebecca McCall said she had read Board of Commissioners minutes from the 1960s when water and sewer was discussed.

“It doesn’t give us everything we want but we’re getting 90 percent,” she said of the agreement. “We’re focusing on Henderson County and I think that’s what’s important, rather than being swallowed up by what’s going on in the rest of the state and being affected by that. Assuming this moves forward in Raleigh, this will be huge for Henderson County.”

“I’m grateful for the collaborative spirit that it took to achieve what this agreement is today,” Commissioner Sheila Franklin said. “That collaborative spirit is something that I had hoped and envisioned — several of us have — because Henderson County depends on it.”

The joint utility commission was modeled after one formed by Winston-Salem and Forsyth County to manage water city and sewer systems there.

“It is an advisory board but they will actually drive policy because they will essentially make strong advisory decisions on that utility and how that utility is run,” she said. “We need to run it like an efficient business model and not a political vested interest.”

During a visit to Winston-Salem, officials there emphasized that their joint commission had worked to take politics out of the operations.

“One of the things they drove home there was that it was run like a business and not a political entity and we all supported that,” she said. “We all thought that was a good idea.”

In a separate interlocal agreement, the city agreed to extend sewer service without requiring annexation to the Flat Rock Cidery on Upward Road and to the proposed Baystone Glen development on Asheville Highway, which is seeking a rezoning to allow 30 single-family lots, 120 townhomes and 280 apartments on 56 acres across from Jackson Steel. The Baystone Glen agreement reverses the developer’s original plan, according to its zoning application, to get sewer service from MSD, the Buncombe-based system.