And as hotels on the Outer Banks bus in low-wage service workers from Elizabeth City, Griffith sees problems in the making. You end up having ghettos where people live who service the big luxury hotels, and they're out there only during the day. It's sort of like an apartheid situation. So along with this coastal development, you have people being marginalized and ghetto development going on at the same time. That creates all kinds of problems for inland counties that are near the coast.
Pressure also increases on traditional coastal industries.
In rural eastern North Carolina, that's traditionally been one of the primary sources of income for a lot of people. Our purpose is to identify where there may be problems and make people aware of where the problems lie. The coastal development project, still in the early stages, is the latest in a 15-year history of collaboration for Johnson and Griffith. At first they seem an unlikely duo. Johnson is big, loud and passionate about numbers.