RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina legislators are lining up concessions necessary for the redrawn boundary between North Carolina and South Carolina to take effect in 2017 after more than 20 years of work, reported the Associated Press. A convenience-store operator’s livelihood is at stake.
The North Carolina Senate voted unanimously May 26 to confirm the re-established 334-mile boundary separating the states and alleviate problems for about two dozen homes and businesses shifting states. The bill addresses public schools, taxes, sewer districts and an alcohol beverage permit for a South Carolina convenience store that will wind up in North Carolina.
The Carolinas formed a bistate boundary commission in 1995 to remark the original boundary, established in Colonial times.
For decades, officials thought the land Victor Boulware’s Lake Wylie Minimarket occupies was in South Carolina, because maps said the boundary with North Carolina, drawn in the 1700s, was just to the north, AP reported in 2012.
The store currently sits in South Carolina, allowing it to sell fireworks, beer and gasoline at least 19 cents cheaper because of lower taxes. Modern-day surveyors, using computers and GPS systems, redrew the border to narrow it down to the centimeter. Their results put the new line about 150 feet south of the old one and placed the c-store in North Carolina.
North Carolina’s bill would allow the store to keep selling beer and wine without approval by voters in North Carolina’s Gaston County and sell gasoline with South Carolina’s lower motor fuels rate until the store is sold to someone else.
The bill now heads to the House. A similar bill in the South Carolina Legislature has cleared the Senate and is now in a House committee.
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