Home developers are eyeing this rural NC community. How neighbors are responding.

Late-spring sunlight seeped through the leaves in southeastern Alamance County, but it cast its full light on the fields where Lloydtown and Morrow Mill roads meet.

Wall lettuce, field garlic, musk and sow thistles surround the roadside entrance to a 440-acre farm once known as Morrow’s Mill.

A “for sale” sign lists the property’s acreage, where one of two proposed subdivisions totaling more than 1,000 homes could be built in the next year.

On June 2, just a half-mile up Lloydtown Road, 70 neighbors and their supporters gathered on the Lloyd family farm to plead with Alamance County Commissioners Steve Carter and Sam Powell to enact zoning ordinances and stop the proposed Morrow Mill and Hunter’s Ridge developments.

It wasn’t the first meeting of its kind in the last year.

Environmental scientist and activist Mike Holland has attended many of these meetings. This time, he directed his questions about zoning and the Morrow Mill project to community members in attendance.

“If you don’t want this development, please raise your hand,” he said.

Everyone present, including the two commissioners, raised their hands.

“I think the commissioners can see that the community does not mind zoning,” Holland said, responding to Carter’s past claims that most Alamance County residents oppose zoning.

U.S. Census data shows Morrow Mill and Hunter’s Ridge could more than double the number of people and homes within 10 square miles.

Neighbors fear it’s just the beginning, and expect more houses, traffic, stormwater, noise and lights. Already, roads are buzzing with drivers heading to events at The Barn of Chapel Hill on Morrow Mill Road, to spend a day in Saxapahaw, to play in the Haw River or to enjoy cool beverages and music at the Haw River Ballroom.

“Once [farmland] becomes housing, it doesn’t go back,” local business owner Sadie Rapp said in an interview. “To see the scale of what is being proposed, it baffled us. It absolutely shocked us.”

What are developers’ plans?

While no official application has been submitted, Morrow Mill could be the first project built, adding 541 homes to 440 acres of farmland.

The Morrow farm has been in the same family since at least 1880, according to an Alamance County historic inventory. The Dutch-style barn still stands in the rolling fields, a mark of the Piedmont’s dairy heritage.

Neighbors tried to buy the property after learning it was going to be sold, but they were outbid by developer Sasser Properties.

County records show the site, which sits on the Orange County line, was sold June 2 to a Sasser Properties affiliate, Morrow Mill Development, LLP, for $6.5 million.

Sasser Properties developer Kevin Sasser said they were attracted to the site because of “its location within a growing regional corridor while still allowing for a thoughtfully planned residential community with supporting infrastructure.”

The plan shows three low-density clusters of homes separated by streambeds. The remaining land could be preserved or used for recreation or septic fields.

Rapp said “it is completely out of scale with the surrounding area and the surrounding land uses.”

Last year, the Morrow Mill Road bridge flooded during Tropical Storm Chantal, raising fears that more flooding is possible with development.

They are aware of the concerns, Sasser said, and plan to meet “with community representatives to have a direct and constructive discussion as plans move forward.” They are also working with state water, wastewater and transportation officials to design the project, he said.

Plans for Hunter’s Ridge could be submitted soon, said Dustin Carroll, with the other developer, Alpha Real Estate Partners.

The site is east of the Alamance County landfill, with county parkland on three sides that was acquired from Higher Ground Farm East LLC, which still owns the Hunter’s Ridge site.

Higher Ground owner Jeff Fisher said he and his partner Chris Brewer bought over 1,100 acres on the river with the intent of selling as much as they could to the county. They also contributed $1.1 million to close the deal for 800 acres when the county’s grant money fell short.

Carroll has the rest under contract and wants to build more than 650 homes on 371 acres, but could settle at 450 to 550 homes, he said. It’s a good opportunity for homes priced at $350,000 to $450,000, although the builder will set the final price, he said.

“This area is a good area, and we know that Alamance County is adding all these jobs. … [There’s] just a high demand for housing in this area,” Carroll said. And, “you’re close to Chapel Hill, you’re close to Pittsboro, close to Mebane, not too far from Burlington.”

That’s a real selling point for families that work in Chapel Hill and other parts of the Triangle but are being priced out of the housing market, the developers said.

Concerns about the environment and quality of life

Neighbors have been organizing to get out the word about the developments. They;ve met multiple times with local and state elected officials.

“The county needs to step up and figure out what they can do and quit talking about what they can’t do,” Bill Shaw told N.C. Sen. Amy Galey and other elected officials at a May gathering at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church near Saxapahaw. “[This issue] is not going to get smaller, it’s not going to go away.”

But residents have started to realize both projects may be inevitable, because Alamance County lacks zoning, leaving any review to a staff technical committee that considers local and state rules and building codes.

A larger role is played by state agencies that approve new roads, wells, septic and stormwater systems, county Planning Director Matthew Hoagland said.

County staff is “pretty limited,” he said. “We can’t really, subjectively, say we think this is a bad idea or we don’t like it, and therefore we’re going to deny the permit. There has to be a tangible reason why they have fallen short of the regulations in the ordinance.”

Here’s a look at the Morrow Mill neighbors’ concerns:

Fire safety: The area is served by two mostly volunteer fire departments. Swepsonville Fire Station 10 is about 5.5 miles northwest of the Morrow Mill Road site and 6.5 miles from Hunter’s Ridge. Eli Whitney is more than eight miles from Morrow Mill, and 7.5 miles from Hunter’s Ridge.

The distance raises concerns about emergency response times, Hoagland said. It also puts homeowners who are more than five miles from the nearest fire station at risk of paying steeper fire insurance rates or struggling to get any coverage at all.

At a June 9 budget work session, Swepsonville Fire Chief Steve Couturier told commissioners the Morrow Mill subdivision would be split between Station 10 and Eli Whitney.

Both asked for fire district tax increases this year to hire more firefighters and buy equipment to cover more calls and housing developments, and to give raises to existing support staff. The commissioners could vote on the 2026-27 budget Monday.

Stormwater: The state regulates stormwater quality, but not quantity, which is directly related to flooding. Hoagland said that can be more of an issue as rural areas are developed.

Both developments could include stormwater ponds, which slow runoff. Sasser said his project is taking last year’s flooding into account. Alamance County may require a stormwater system maintenance agreement with developers in the future, Hoagland said.

Anita Moore, with the Haw River Assembly, said the potential risk to nearby Cane Creek and the Haw River is not just a local issue, especially if a shallow aquifer becomes contaminated.

“This is a drinking water source for downstream communities as well. We have to think about that,” Moore said. “We’re all downstream and upstream from someone. Nine hundred and fifty-six lots of rooftops, driveways and roads will dramatically increase impervious surface and stormwater runoff.”

Traffic: Both projects will add traffic, and the developers are working with the N.C. Department of Transportation and traffic engineers to determine any road improvements.

NCDOT made improvements to the N.C. 54, Mebane Oaks and Saxaphaw-Bethlehem Church Road intersection, but there’s no left-turn lane to Saxapahaw, and traffic can back up for nearly a mile on the highway when it’s busy.

Community wells: Both developments will rely on community wells and septic systems that serve multiple homes and are regulated, permitted and inspected by the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality.

Morrow Mill has three approved community well sites, NCDEQ officials said, but the developer still must fulfill three requirements: test the well and treat it if PFAS and other contaminants exceed safety limits, conduct a 24-hour drawdown test to prove there’s enough water, and submit a professionally designed water system.

Just a few miles away, state officials cited extremely high levels of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or “forever chemicals”) in a well at the Eli Whitney Volunteer Fire Station earlier this year. Neighbors worry that also might be a problem for Hunter’s Ridge because of its proximity to the landfill.

Assistant County Manager Brian Baker said there’s little risk of contamination because the site is a former farm with a wide county park buffer, and the landfill is only about 30 years old and lined. A creek also diverts runoff from the landfill to the river, he said.

Community septic: The state has not received any applications for community wastewater treatment systems, NCDEQ officials said. Options include a specialized non-discharge system; a standard, underground septic system approved by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, or a federally permitted system that discharges treated water into nearby waterways.

Businesses and Orange County neighbors also concerned

Most of Morrow Mill Road’s five miles are actually in Orange County, but there’s a one-mile stretch through Alamance that includes the old Morrow farm.

Neighbors have asked Orange County officials to intervene, since the project is just over the county line, but were told counties don’t interfere in each other’s business. Now, signs line the shoulders of Morrow Mill and surrounding roads urging the county to “Stop Mega Subdivisions.”

Linda Keith, who lives on Morrow Mill near Saxapahaw-Bethlehem Church Road in Orange County, said she’s worried about traffic.

“If you go down this road to the intersection of Lloydtown and Saxapahaw-Bethlehem Church Road [near N.C. 54], it is very difficult now if you go during rush hour to get on that road because it’s so congested,” she said. “I can’t imagine 9,000 more cars.”

And it’s not just residents who are concerned, but also Saxapahaw business owners, who have already brought a lot of traffic to the community, Haw River Ballroom owner Heather LaGarde said. It’s hard to imagine that many homes “without a careful planning process,” she said.

“We have dedicated a quarter of a century of our lives to carefully developing Saxapahaw and making sure that it’s inclusive and very, very environmentally focused, as much as we can, with the resources we have,” LaGarde said, “and we just ask the people that we have put into positions of power to take great care with this special area.”

This story was published in collaboration with NC Local, a nonprofit newsroom delivering public service journalism about statewide issues.

Tammy Grubb

The News & Observer

919-829-8926

Tammy Grubb has written about Orange County’s politics, people and government since 2010. She is a UNC-Chapel Hill alumna and has lived and worked in the Triangle for over 30 years.