It starts the way a lot of backyard problems start: you look out after a hard rain and realize your yard is holding water in places it never used to. In Chapin, one homeowner says that “new normal” showed up right after the land above her home was turned into a housing development—and it never stopped.
Linda Shanabrook has now filed a lawsuit naming the developer, Great Southern Homes, and Lexington County, alleging that runoff from the development flooded her backyard, undermined the ground, and eventually contributed to two trees coming down onto her home. The details were reported in the source post.
The first sign was water where it didn’t belong
Shanabrook lives on Harborview Point in the Night Harbor development near Lake Murray. Next door and uphill sits property on Daymark Drive owned by Great Southern Homes—land that used to be undeveloped before it was subdivided into smaller parcels for a new single-family project, according to the lawsuit filed June 16.
Shanabrook’s complaint says that on June 23, 2023, she began experiencing “excessive water runoff” in her backyard coming from the developer’s property. Anyone who has dealt with runoff knows how fast it can go from “annoying puddles” to “why is the ground squishing when I walk.” And once water starts repeatedly flowing where it didn’t before, it doesn’t just soak the grass—it looks for edges, seams, and weak spots…