Leland has taken Belville to court over a handful of commercial parcels on Chappell Loop Road, asking a Brunswick County judge to void two annexations the smaller town approved in 2024 and 2026. The lawsuit claims Belville overstepped its legal authority when it absorbed properties at 9990 and 9971 Chappell Loop Road, land Leland says sits closer to its own municipal border than to Belville's.
Leland filed a complaint in Brunswick County Superior Court on June 26, 2026. The lawsuit lays out distance measurements meant to show the disputed properties either directly touch Leland's limits or sit roughly 30 feet closer to Leland's jurisdiction than to Belville's town limits, per the same report. Two parcels tied to 9971 Chappell Loop Road were annexed in 2024, while 9990 Chappell Loop Road was annexed later; both addresses sat in unincorporated Brunswick County before Belville took them in.
What State Law Says About Border-Crossing Annexations
At the center of the fight is a state rule requiring an annexation agreement between two municipalities whenever a proposed satellite corporate limit lands closer to a neighboring town than to the annexing town's own limits, the Observer's report notes. State law does allow municipalities to annex noncontiguous, or satellite, property under certain conditions, but Leland and Belville had no such interlocal agreement in place covering the Chappell Loop Road parcels. A separate Port City Daily account of the dispute adds detail on that gap: an interlocal annexation agreement the two towns once shared expired in December 2023, leaving no active pact when Belville's board voted to approve the annexations in February 2024 and April 2026.
Under North Carolina General Statute § 160A-58.1(b)(2), a municipality cannot annex noncontiguous satellite property if any point on the proposed boundary sits closer to another municipality's primary corporate limits, unless an interlocal agreement between the two towns permits it, according to the UNC School of Government. Leland says it sent Belville written notice of its concerns before both the 2024 and 2026 annexation votes, and that those notifications went unaddressed. The Observer's reporting states that Leland is asking the court for a preliminary and permanent injunction blocking Belville from exercising municipal authority over the properties, along with an order voiding both annexations outright.
Belville Pushes Back, Calls for Dismissal
Belville's town attorney, Norwood Blanchard III, filed a motion on September 10, 2026, asking the court to dismiss the case with prejudice. Blanchard argues that Leland's complaint fails to state a claim and that no justiciable issue exists, per the Observer. Port City Daily's earlier account of the dispute frames Belville's underlying position: Mayor Chuck Bost has argued that the annexation was voluntary, while the UNC School of Government considers satellite annexations subject to proximity rules even when voluntary. The same reporting identifies the property owner behind the petitions as local resident Walter Burckhalter, who owns roughly seven acres across the three parcels, home to businesses including Gatlin's Straw and local towing companies, and who petitioned Belville to annex his land in hopes of improving border continuity.
As of September 18, 2026, neither side had filed additional documents and the court had not set any hearing dates, the Observer reports. Leland declined to comment on the pending litigation, while Belville Mayor Chuck Bost commented on the lawsuit and said he did not think it had merit.
A Rivalry Decades in the Making
This is not the first time Leland and Belville have squared off over territory. Port City Daily's July report traces the friction back to 1989, when Belville voted to annex commercial properties on Village Road just 90 minutes before polls closed for Leland's original incorporation vote — a detail chronicled in depth by The Assembly NC, which notes Belville itself incorporated in 1977. Leland merged utility operations with H2GO in 2021.
Leland's growth has made it the dominant player in the county by population, expanding from 13,527 residents in 2010 to 22,908 by 2020, according to Census figures cited by Wikipedia. That expansion prompted the North Carolina General Assembly to impose a legislative moratorium on Leland's annexation activity in 2023; lawmakers eased it this year with Senate Bill 876, passed July 2, 2026, which lets Leland resume processing voluntary annexation petitions filed before July 1, 2026, while still barring new ones. Leland had already annexed a 150-unit development known as the Chappell Loop Tract along the same corridor in 2022, a stake in the area that Belville officials have pointed to as a motive behind Leland's current legal challenge.
