Every year in the mountains of North Carolina, people lose money and suffer hardships due to the lack of awareness and planning around important factors in the mountain environment that influence their land or a mountain home. This website will share some examples of those hardships, provide guidance on how and who to confer with to make wiser decisions for investment and development decisions, and hopefully lessen the impacts on our mountain environment.

A woman who lived in the rugged mountains of western North Carolina saved her money for many years with the intention of buying some property and building a home. She finally purchased a half-acre lot by a mountain stream.  Since the property was not serviced by a sewer line, the woman had to have the local health department check the

suitability of her land for a septic system before she began building her home. When the environmental health specialist checked the property, he discovered that solid rock lay just below the shallow soil. Any septic system on the woman’s small, rocky lot would be inadequate for treating and absorbing the sewage before it reached the nearby stream and, consequently, would create a potential health hazard for her and her neighbors. Since state law requires that each new house have an adequate, approved septic system, the woman could not. 

A man bought a small lot in a subdivision that provided a splendid view of the mountains. His trouble began when he drilled a well 600 feet deep that did not yield a drop of water. He drilled a second well 485 feet deep that yielded a water flow of only two gallons per minute. The total cost of obtaining those two gallons of water per minute exceeded the cost of the lot alone.

Within a year after buying the property, the banks along the excessively steep access road to the man’s lot were terribly eroded. The road ditch that was six inches deep when he bought the lot was now four feet deep and was eating away at the road. The developer’s promise that the state would assume maintenance of the road never materialized, and the developer refused to take the responsibility for maintaining the road. The lot owner is now considering taking his case to court.  If the property buyers in these true cases had taken some time to examine the environmental limitations on

building a home in the mountains of North Carolina, they would have saved thousands of dollars and avoided a great deal of trouble.