If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to cut it up and use it for heat or timber, is it a waste of resources? Or, put another way, are humans the only reason that all other life on Earth was created?

Sylva has taken the next step in the long process of repairing Allen Street after slope failure destroyed parts of the road early in 2020. 

In the year since Tropical Storm Fred  ravaged Western North Carolina, emergency managers have been busy working to ensure that next time a wall of water tears through Haywood County, it will exact a much lower cost to life and property.

An inclinometer on the prefab slope above Bryson Park shows that some movement has occurred since it was installed more than 60 days ago, indicating a need for repair. 

Sylva Town Manager Paige Dowling presented two options during the town board’s Aug. 26 meeting for funding the $2 million needed to repair landslides on Allen Street, but her ultimate recommendation was that commissioners pass on both and wait for help. 

Fixing ongoing landslide issues on Allen Street could cost up to $2 million — an amount equivalent to more than 40% of the town’s current budget — Sylva commissioners learned during a discussion at their Aug. 12 meeting  that lasted over an hour. 

Facing an estimated price tag of $1.5 million to fix persistent landslide issues on Allen Street, the Town of Sylva is asking the State to take on half the cost. 

The first students moved into The Husk at Western Carolina University last August, but nearly a year later the companies responsible for developing, designing and building the environmentally disastrous  Millennial Campus student housing development are embroiled in a complex lawsuit that has left at least one local subcontractor facing a six-figure deficit until the situation resolves. 

Despite their proximity to multiple slope failures on and around Allen Street in Sylva, two trouble spots that appeared in late 2020 are unrelated to the others, according to a recently released engineering report. 

A 150-foot section of Allen Street in Sylva has been closed since April as the town board decides what to do about an ever-worsening slope failure that is now threatening the road in two separate places.