Impact Fees, Properly Used, Could Benefit County
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
Anderson County is trying to do something that sounds simple until it isn't: grow without losing its character. The county's 2026 Comprehensive Plan, unanimously approved this spring in its bicentennial year, acknowledges that tension openly, and development impact fees have emerged as one of the clearest ways to make growth pay some of its own cost.
Those fees sit at the intersection of that aspiration and its price, and the question of who ultimately pays is considerably more complicated than the fees' proponents tend to acknowledge.
Every new subdivision rising along Highway 81, in Powdersville, in Pendleton, or along the arterials feeding Anderson from Greenville raises a version of the same question the Comprehensive Plan is trying to answer: who pays for what growth requires?
The argument for impact fees begins with arithmetic, not ideology. Anderson County is managing more than 174,000 acres of farmland, more than 3,000 centerline miles of public roads, a labor force of 103,346, and watersheds that already include impaired subbasins — all while absorbing new subdivisions and the traffic, utilities, and school demand that come with them. The county's plan says plainly that it does not want to morph into generic sprawl, even as it accepts that growth is coming whether it invites it or not.
Impact fees would help county leaders do what the plan asks of them: direct growth toward places that already have infrastructure, rather than endlessly chasing it after the fact. Under South Carolina's Development Impact Fee Act, counties may levy one-time charges on new development to recover a proportional share of the off-site public facilities that growth requires — but only if they follow a tightly regulated process. That structure matters because it turns a vague wish into a policy tool.
The strongest case is fairness. When a subdivision goes up, it uses roads that may need widening, intersections that may need redesigning, and public systems that must stretch farther than they were built to reach. If the county does not recover some of that cost from the development that creates it, the bill lands on existing residents, longtime taxpayers, and renters who had no hand in approving the project but must live with the consequences regardless.
There is also a planning case. The county's transportation chapter describes a road network already under strain — 1,554 miles of roads and 162 bridges in county care — and argues that traffic growth and land-use decisions are inseparable. Impact fees can reinforce that logic by steering growth toward areas already equipped to handle it, which matters especially in a county where dispersed, low-density development has made the infrastructure burden heavier year by year.
The prerequisites for enacting such fees are formidable. Before a county council may adopt an impact fee ordinance, it must possess a legally compliant Comprehensive Plan meeting state standards — or, in the absence of one, a Capital Improvements Plan that substantially complies with S.C. Code § 6-1-960(B) and identifies the specific improvements the fees will fund. Anderson County's completion of its two-part 2026 Comprehensive Plan clears that threshold, providing the legal foundation upon which a fee structure could be built.
The council must also pass a resolution directing its planning commission to conduct the necessary studies and recommend an ordinance, commission sound engineering and impact fee studies, and — notably — prepare a report estimating how residential impact fees will affect the availability of affordable housing within the county. That last requirement is not decorative. The Comprehensive Plan's housing element acknowledges that growth is placing pressure on residents across the income spectrum, and a mandatory affordable housing analysis written into the impact fee statute is, in effect, a legislative instruction to look at that pressure before making it worse.
Once the planning commission recommends an ordinance, the enactment process adds further procedural weight. A public hearing is required, preceded by at least thirty days of published notice. Approval requires a majority of the council. The final ordinance must establish procedures for the timely processing of fee assessments and appeals, define acceptable levels of service, and include a sunset provision — a termination clause that distinguishes an impact fee, at least in legislative intent, from a permanent revenue stream dressed in temporary clothing.
The rules governing how collected funds may be spent are, if anything, more restrictive than those governing collection. Federal case law and state statute together require a "rational nexus" and "proportionality" between what a developer is charged and what the development demands. Revenue may only be directed toward specific categories of capital improvements with a useful life of at least five years — roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, solid waste facilities, stormwater management, parks, and public safety infrastructure — and only when those improvements explicitly increase service capacity for new growth. The funds are geographically locked: they must be spent within, or in direct benefit of, the designated service area where they were collected. Impact fee revenue may not repair or maintain existing facilities. Counties are required to publish an annual report detailing amounts collected, appropriated, and spent, broken down by facility category and service area.
The main criticism is that impact fees do not stay neatly where they are levied. In practice, developers often pass the cost along, and the burden can settle into rents or home prices, particularly if the county applies the fee too broadly or too aggressively. That is why precision matters: a fee structure that discourages denser housing can end up working against the very planning goal of directing growth toward places where infrastructure already exists.
But that is an argument for care, not for paralysis. The county's Comprehensive Plan warns that land, water quality, and habitat are finite, and that growth without design converts success into vulnerability. Impact fees will not resolve every land-use question, but they would help make a basic principle concrete: if growth creates the need for new public facilities, growth should help pay for them.
For Anderson County, that matters because the county has become attractive for reasons that are easy to name and expensive to preserve — relative affordability, open land, proximity to Greenville, and a quality of life that people want to move toward. The more successfully the county attracts growth, the more pressure it places on the very qualities that made it attractive in the first place. Impact fees would at least acknowledge that prosperity is not free.
They would also give county leaders a modest but meaningful planning instrument. A well-designed fee structure can encourage development to happen where infrastructure already exists, rather than pushing each new subdivision to the outer edge of services and expecting the public to catch up later. Used carefully, it helps shape growth rather than merely react to it. Used bluntly, it can be inequitable — but that is an argument for thoughtful policy, not for doing nothing.
The deeper argument is philosophical. A place like Anderson County should not treat growth as an external force that descends like weather. Growth is a public event, not a private miracle. If new houses, new roads, and new subdivisions are reshaping the county's future, the cost of that change should be shared by the people asking to profit from it.
Anderson County's choice is not between growth and no growth. It is between growth that quietly shifts its costs to everyone else and growth that acknowledges those costs at the outset. Impact fees, used with care, would give county leaders one more way to protect the county's open land, infrastructure, and fiscal balance while the development pressure continues to build. That is not anti-development. It is a demand that development answers for itself.
