Durham County commissioners get back to business Monday after several weeks' post-budget break, and the biggest part of their agenda is a closed session on the Jordan Lake lawsuit.

Southern Durham Development, the outfit that wants to build a mixed-use subdivision on N.C. 751 just above the Chatham County line, is suing the county over the lake's critical watershed boundary — a detail that could scrub the project that already has some millions of dollars invested.

The county is seeking outside counsel to represent it in the case, County Attorney Chuck Kitchen said in June. Kitchen said that, since he is named in the suit, he expects to be called as a witness.  

The commissioners' closed session, scheduled to last 2.5 hours, comes after their regular meeting Monday night.

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Now, along another line of Jordan enquiry, there's the matter of surveys.

The original position of Jordan's critical boundary was set in the 1980s, before the gee-whiz high-techniness of today's survey techniques came along.

In 2005, Southern Durham partner Neal Hunter paid for a new survey that indicated the boundary should be moved to a point that leaves the subdivision site outside the critical area.

This year, the Haw River Assembly commissioned a survey that found the boundary should be moved to a point that brings the subdivision site even farther into the critical area.

Catch 1 is, assistant planning director Keith Luck said Monday, the two surveys were done by different methods.

Catch 2 is, the great state of North Carolina, which makes the rules about watersheds, doesn't say which method to use.

What the state does say is that local jurisdictions will "correctly" determine the boundaries.

What it doesn't say is what "correctly" means.

In this case, "correctly" may turn out to mean two completely different things.

That, in Bull's Eye's opinion, all adds up to Catch-22.