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Stormwater manager outlines infrastructure priorities, easement hurdles and 136 open qualifying requests
Summary
Stormwater Program Manager Jeff Netzinger outlined the town's stormwater utility, its MS4/MPDES responsibilities under the Clean Water Act, inventory and monitoring work, and a list of infrastructure priorities — including a Gumtree Road CIP in design and an aging Wexford pump station — while stressing easement acquisition and contractor capacity limits. He said there were about 136 open qualifying service requests and 72 new incoming requests pending evaluation.
Jeff Netzinger, Stormwater Program Manager, gave a detailed briefing on the town’s stormwater utility, operations and the challenges of maintaining infrastructure in historic neighborhoods.
Netzinger described the stormwater division as an enterprise fund supported by a stormwater fee collected on annual property tax bills and said the town is an MS4 community with an MPDES permit that implements Clean Water Act obligations at the local level. He said the division has seven staff, runs routine maintenance on roughly 40 sites, operates four major pump stations, maintains an inventory and watershed models (work the town has done since 2003) and runs continuous water‑quality monitoring since 1999.
The presentation included maps showing service requests in historic neighborhoods. Netzinger said the town grouped several small‑to‑mid priority referrals on Gumtree Road and Squire Pope into a CIP project now in design, with construction possible in spring. He noted a specific fix near the Gullah Museum — adding one or two inlets — to relieve chronic inundation.
Netzinger also described jurisdictional boundaries: the town owns roughly 10% of public roads and must advocate for repairs on the remaining state and Beaufort County corridors; PUD and POA agreements can allow corrective maintenance but not routine maintenance without easements. He used Cobia Court as an example where lack of unanimous property‑owner buy‑in prevented a full paving and drainage solution.
On workload, Netzinger said the town had about 136 open qualifying service requests at the time of his update and that 72 new requests had come in recently and were awaiting evaluation. He flagged contractor capacity constraints and cited an aging Wexford pump station that will need an overhaul. He also said the Gumtree Road grouping might require roughly an additional $80,000 to fully address the work identified in design.
Netzinger invited task‑force members to help with community outreach to build support for donated easements and suggested convening neighborhood meetings where groups of adjacent residents could be engaged together. Members expressed interest in a public education session to explain stormwater programs and easement negotiations. The task force did not take formal votes on the CIP projects during the meeting.
