HORRY COUNTY, SC (WBTW) – Close to 1,300 homes are a step closer to popping up in a rural area of Longs.
During Thursday night’s county planning public hearing, the commission voted to send a request to Horry County Council to rezone the nearly 600-acre area of land a developer wants to use to build housing units. The wooded area is just off of South Carolina Highway 905 on Old Buck Creek Rd.
Several residents near the area in Longs attended the public hearing Thursday night, where they expressed their growing concerns about how potential development could impact the land and their homes.
“If you have even more people here, that’s gonna bring more people in; it’s gonna cause more problems,” says Carolyn Jones, a longtime resident of Old Buck Creek Road.
Neighbors worry about how emergency services will be impacted as the population grows.
“We already have to wait 20, 30, 40 minutes for the police,” says Jones.
The issue of potential flooding was also a main topic of the hearing, however, the developer says building the 12 to 20-year construction project would decrease stormwater runoff by 20 percent, according to their flooding test.
They have plans to help improve the area’s infrastructure, like widening roads, to ensure the land could handle the massive population increase.
Horry County Council will vote to approve or deny the rezoning request in a future meeting. The planning commission will hold an additional public hearing concerning the development plans on June 28th before voting to move the plans to county council for approval.
