Failures in the federal response to Hurricane Helene are still rippling into Haywood County’s bottom line, forcing the county — like most of its municipalities — to build a budget around uncertainty and delay rather than recovery. 

County Manager Bryant Morehead’s March 16 presentation made clear that millions in storm-related costs remain unreimbursed, leaving the county to carry the financial burden 18 months after the disaster. 

More than 17 months after Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through Western North Carolina, the floodwaters have long since receded — but Waynesville officials say the federal reimbursement process remains mired in uncertainty, denials, reversals and what several described as mounting roadblocks. 

The U.S. Census Bureau on Feb. 2 announced that it was cutting four of six 2026 nationwide test sites aimed to inform the 2030 decennial count — Colorado Springs, Fort Apache Reservation, western Texas and Western North Carolina. It will now conduct operations in only Huntsville, Alabama, and Spartanburg, South Carolina. 

Haywood County Community and Economic Development Manager Hannah White used a Jan. 5 presentation to give commissioners a detailed accounting of where broadband access stands today, how far the county has come since the depths of the digital divide were exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and what work remains before reliable high-speed internet reaches every single household tucked into the county’s ridges, hollers and remote valleys. 

Nearly 15 months after Hurricane Helene tore through rural Appalachia, North Carolina recovery officials said in a Dec. 15 meeting and press conference that federal recovery programs meant to help communities rebuild after $60 billion in damages are still slowing them down. 

Michael Whatley, appointed by President Donald Trump as Helene recovery czar in January, has spoken to the head of the governor’s recovery task force only once this year. 

As the federal shutdown drags on, Republicans accuse Democrats of prolonging it for political reasons, pointing to stalled votes that could reopen the government and fully restore programs like SNAP. But Democrats say what they’re holding out for isn’t politics — it’s protection. Specifically, protection for millions of Americans who rely on Affordable Care Act subsidies that will soon expire. 

On Oct. 1, Republican-controlled Congress shut down the federal government, bringing a renewed round of confusion, finger-pointing and uncertainty to tourism-reliant Southern Appalachia — a region still paying the price for generational poverty, and still struggling with recovery from Hurricane Helene more than one year ago.  

As the federal government shutdown drags into its second week, Western North Carolina has so far escaped major impacts — but that could change quickly. Some federal agencies have curtailed operations, some public lands have opened and closed in cycles and some regional offices are bracing for deeper impacts if the impasse lingers. 

Last week, Mountain Projects’ Amanda Singletary was convinced she’d be calling all 250 Section 8 landlords with bad news: they wouldn’t be receiving October’s rental payment.  

Because Section 8 received funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but HUD hadn’t indicated what might become of its finances given a federal government shutdown, Singletary was “sweating bullets” as the Oct. 1 deadline to extend a continuing resolution to keep the federal government open loomed over the horizon.  

It was a time and a place, and now that place is gone.

Or is it?

I came across some version of that idiom about time and place a few months ago, just as we at The Smoky Mountain News were beginning to discuss how to cover the one-year anniversary of Helene’s historic and deadly impact on this place we call home.