OCEAN - Live oaks grow on this 200-acre swath of former farmland that turns soft where it slopes down to Bogue Sound. Until recently, mobile homes stood here too, but they're nearly all gone.

Coming soon: Bogue Watch, likely to rise next year. It'll have a guardhouse, clubhouse, tennis courts and 287 lots that will range from $125,000 to $700,000.

The development is large enough -- and close enough to the water -- to attract attention from state regulators. But it's almost certain to get their blessing, and it already has been approved by Carteret County.

Robert Jackson, a Raleigh developer who is leading the project, said he and his partners want to build a comfortable residential community oriented toward boating while trying to protect the water and the land's natural features. The subdivision near N.C. 24 will have six common areas, including five waterfront parks and piers for property owners.

"Developers should realize that part of what they are selling is water quality," Jackson said. "We're not flying in from Texas and burning and churning and leaving."

Plans show that the development will cover close to 25 percent of its land, the maximum allowed without stormwater controls. But Jackson says his group will exceed what the state requires: The design includes five holding basins to capture stormwater and allow it to percolate into the ground, vegetated buffers to filter runoff, 38 acres of open space, as well as several large ponds that double as basins for treated wastewater. They are giving up four lots to install the stormwater basins.

"We feel like we've made some decisions to show our willingness to be more environmentally friendly," Jackson said. "Are there other things we could have done? I'm sure there are. We could have had one-acre lots."

Instead, the lots will average a little more than a third of an acre. Few people could afford one-acre lots on the water, Jackson said.

"It would be ridiculously priced," Jackson said. "The pool of folks that could afford it would be very small."

Jackson said he expects that the pollution from the subdivision into adjacent shellfishing waters will be minimal.

"I think we could make a good scientific argument [that] the impacts will be less than the mobile homes and the former agriculture uses," he said. "The objective is to have minimal to no impact."