South Carolina
Buying Land in Colleton County, South Carolina
County seat Walterboro. Colleton County contains the bulk of the ACE Basin -- the confluence of the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto rivers, and one of the largest undeveloped estuarine wetland systems left on the US Atlantic coast, held together by nearly 40 years of public-private conservation easements and refuges. Colleton also runs full countywide zoning, sits inside South Carolina's coastal critical-area overlay along its tidal reaches, and is in the middle of a contested, actively litigated fight over a proposed data center in rural, easement-dense land. Here's how all of it bears on a land purchase.
The ACE Basin: one of the Atlantic Coast's largest intact wetland systems, mostly in Colleton
The ACE Basin takes its name from the confluence of the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto rivers, which combine into St. Helena Sound along the South Carolina coast between Charleston and Beaufort. The basin -- a roughly 1.7-million-acre watershed encompassing tidal marsh, blackwater rivers, bottomland hardwood forest, and longleaf pine uplands -- is widely described as one of the largest, most intact undeveloped estuaries remaining on the entire US Atlantic Coast, and the largest share of its core protected footprint sits within Colleton County. That's not a marketing claim; it's the product of a specific, well-documented conservation history stretching back nearly 40 years.
The turning point was the ACE Basin Project, which protected roughly 9,200 acres in the middle of Colleton County in the late 1980s as its founding action. What followed was an unusual, sustained public-private partnership -- the ACE Basin Task Force, bringing together the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Ducks Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and, critically, a large number of private landowners -- that has since protected more than 300,000 acres in and around the basin. Of the more than 200,000 acres protected under the core project, roughly 79,000 acres are public land (the Ernest F. Hollings ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge, the SCDNR-managed ACE Basin National Estuarine Research Reserve covering over 99,000 acres, Bear Island Wildlife Management Area, and Donnelley Wildlife Management Area among them), while the remainder -- the majority -- is privately owned land held under more than 140 donated conservation easements. That private-easement share is the unusual part: in most large conservation landscapes, public ownership dominates; here, private landowners choosing to permanently restrict their own land's development have done more of the protecting than any single agency.
Why that history matters for anyone buying land here
For a land buyer, the ACE Basin's conservation legacy is a genuinely distinctive Colleton County fact with direct due-diligence consequences. A meaningful share of the county's rural acreage -- especially land along the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto corridors and their tributaries -- may already carry a recorded conservation easement that permanently restricts subdivision, clearing, or development, regardless of who buys the property next. An easement doesn't show up on a simple zoning lookup; it's a separate, recorded legal instrument, and the only reliable way to confirm one exists on a specific parcel is a title search plus a direct records check with the Colleton County Register of Deeds and, where relevant, the conservation organization holding the easement (commonly Lowcountry Land Trust in this area). Our companion page on ACE Basin conservation easements walks through how these easements are typically structured, how to find out if one is already recorded against a parcel, and what it means for resale and use -- worth reading in full before making an offer on any rural Colleton County tract.
That conservation legacy is also, as of this writing, under real and active pressure. In November 2025, Colleton County Council amended its zoning ordinance to add data centers as a special-exception use in rural districts -- including areas within the ACE Basin and its headwaters. A developer, Eagle Rock Partners, subsequently applied to build an 859-acre, roughly 1,000-megawatt data center complex on Cooks Hill Road, squarely within the basin's rural footprint. A December 18, 2025 public hearing drew large-scale community opposition, and landowners filed suit against the county challenging the special-exception ordinance itself, with support from the Southern Environmental Law Center, in January 2026. That fight has since moved into a new phase: on July 7, 2026, Colleton County Council unanimously adopted Ordinance 26-O-04, a six-month moratorium on new special-exception, conditional-use, and other land-use approvals for data centers, and SELC agreed to pause the landowner lawsuit for that period while the county works through a revision of its comprehensive plan and zoning rules. This is still a live, unresolved fight over exactly the kind of large-scale industrial development the ACE Basin partnership was built to prevent -- if you're evaluating land anywhere in or near the basin's rural core, get the current status of the moratorium, any replacement ordinance, and the paused litigation directly from the county rather than relying on any fixed snapshot, including this one.
Zoning, coastal critical areas, and septic outside the ACE Basin story
Set the ACE Basin aside for a moment and Colleton County runs a fairly conventional South Carolina land-use framework. The county has adopted full countywide zoning under Title 14 (Land Management) of its code, with Chapter 14.08 governing zoning districts, permitted uses, conditional uses, and special-exception uses; the county significantly updated this chapter in May 2022 alongside a ten-year Comprehensive Plan update, and added a Heavy Industrial land-use category and a Solar Farm Floating Zone in a further 2023 update -- both worth checking if your parcel sits near land being considered for larger-scale industrial or utility-scale solar use, an increasingly live question in rural Colleton given the data-center fight described above.
Colleton is also one of South Carolina's eight named coastal-zone counties under the Coastal Zone Management Act (see our state page for the full mechanic), which means SCDES's Bureau of Coastal Management holds direct critical-area permitting authority within mapped tidal waters, tidelands, and marsh along the county's stretches of the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto rivers -- but that authority is tied to the specific mapped critical-area boundary, not the county line, so most inland Colleton parcels, including a large share of the ACE Basin's forested uplands, are not automatically inside a mapped critical area. Confirm directly with SCDES rather than assuming either way. Septic permitting, meanwhile, runs through SCDES's Beaufort Environmental Affairs Office (1911 Boundary Street, Suite 104, Beaufort, SC, (843) 846-1030), which also covers Beaufort, Hampton, and Jasper counties -- a state office, not the Colleton County government, issues the actual permit under Reg. 61-56.
Who to Call Before Buying Land in Colleton County
The November 2025 data-center special-exception ordinance, the resulting litigation, and the July 2026 six-month moratorium (Ordinance 26-O-04) are all active/evolving as of this writing -- confirm current status directly with Colleton County Planning & Development and, if relevant, court records, rather than relying on this page's snapshot.
Planning & Zoning
Colleton County Planning & Development, Zoning Administration
Zoning district lookups, permitted-use tables under Title 14 Chapter 14.08, and current status of the rural special-exception data-center ordinance.
Other
SCDES Bureau of Coastal Management
Confirming whether a specific Colleton County parcel falls inside a mapped coastal critical area requiring a direct state permit.
Septic / Onsite Wastewater
SCDES Beaufort Environmental Affairs Office
Septic (onsite wastewater) site evaluations and permits under Reg. 61-56; also serves Beaufort, Hampton, and Jasper counties.
Other
Lowcountry Land Trust
Confirming whether a conservation easement is recorded against a specific ACE Basin-area parcel, and general easement-donation questions.
Recorder / Clerk / Land Records
Colleton County Register of Deeds
Recorded deeds, conservation easements, and title history for a specific parcel.
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Get local guidanceTopics Specific to Colleton County
Sources
- ACE Basin — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09)
- ACE Basin National Wildlife Refuge — Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09)
- Conservation Focus Area: The ACE Basin — Lowcountry Land Trust (accessed 2026-09)
- Characterization of the Ashepoo-Combahee-Edisto (ACE) Basin, South Carolina -- Protected Lands — South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (accessed 2026-09)
- Cooler Family Strengthens ACE Basin with 561-Acre Easement — Lowcountry Land Trust (accessed 2026-09)
- Colleton County lawmakers oppose proposed data center in ACE Basin — Live 5 News (WCSC) (accessed 2026-09)
- Landowners sue Colleton County over data center ordinance — Southern Environmental Law Center (accessed 2026-09)
- After passing moratorium, Colleton County quickly advances data center zoning changes — Post and Courier (accessed 2026-09)
- Colleton County residents file lawsuit challenging zoning ordinance for new data center — ABC News 4 (WCIV) (accessed 2026-09)
- 6-month pause on data center developments in Colleton County; lawsuit paused — Live 5 News (WCSC) (accessed 2026-09)
- Title 14 -- Land Management, Chapter 14.08 -- Zoning — Colleton County, SC (accessed 2026-09)
- Land Use Planning | Colleton County, SC — Colleton County, SC (accessed 2026-09)
- SCDES Local Offices — South Carolina Department of Environmental Services (accessed 2026-09)
Last reviewed 2026-09