Ghost Town in the Sky failed to make timely payments on its liability insurance policy, and as a result it lapsed just days before a massive mudslide originating from the theme park wreaked havoc on the mountainside below.

Now, property owners downhill of the mudslide whose homes were damaged may have no recourse to pay for repairs to their homes.

It is unwelcome news, although not surprising, to Kurt Biedler, a homeowner in the path of the slide whose home is now unlivable.

“We are victims of shabby business,” Biedler said. “Ghost Town is the Sky has effectively turned my life upside down and it is a very difficult thing for anyone to put with. It is not an easy thing knowing that a company, whether it is bankrupt or not, has been allowed to pull the shenanigans they have.”

Biedler and his wife have a mortgage on a house that has been destroyed. They say they are innocent victims with no clear or obvious path for recourse. But that isn’t going to stop Biedler from trying.

“We are still exploring our options of what we are going to do. There are always options,” Biedler said.

Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver and others knew almost a year before the mudslide that the mountain was unstable. Ghost Town hired an engineer to examine the slumping portion of the mountainside in early 2009. The report calls into question the structural integrity of a massive series of retaining walls holding back a section of the mountainside that had proved troublesome on and off for 30 years.

“The MSE wall is not functioning as intended at this time and structural failure of the wall is possible if not replaced,” the report by Haywood County engineer Pat Burgin states.

The report was made in March 2009. However, Ghost Town owners failed to alert anyone of the potential danger — not the town, county, emergency agencies or homeowners living below.

Insurance saga

Ghost Town was three months behind in liability insurance payments when a cancelation was issued on Jan. 28.

The mudslide happened on Feb. 5. Five days later, on Feb. 10, Ghost Town wired $27,400 to cover the past due bill. Insurance was reinstated, but it was too late to cover damages stemming from the mudslide, the insurance company contends.

The insurance company, First Mercury Insurance, has been contacted by three homeowners suffering damage in the mudslide, according to the company. But First Mercury says it will not cover the claims, citing a lapse of Ghost Town’s liability insurance policy at the time of the slide.

“Some homes were in the direct path of the landslide and certain homeowners appear to be pursuing claims against Ghost Town for damages,” an attorney for First Mercury wrote in a federal bankruptcy court filing. “First Mercury contends that it has no duty to defend or indemnify any claims that may arise from the landslide because the policy was cancelled prior to the landslide, and therefore does not afford any coverage.”

Homeowners could redirect their claims and lodge them against Ghost Town directly instead of the insurance company, but First Mercury admits in the court filing that route could be futile, stating there is “little to no likelihood of recovering anything from (Ghost Town) itself.”

Ghost Town has been in federal bankruptcy court for more than a year. This week, Ghost Town brokered a deal to sell the amusement park to one of its current owners, but under a new corporate entity — walking away from several million in debt in the process and starting over with a clean slate.

The former corporate entity of Ghost Town may cease to exist once the new corporate structure takes over. The new entity, while comprised of the same major player, may not be responsible for claims against the old corporate entity.

It’s the same principle that allows the amusement park to leave behind millions in unpaid debt while the primary owner remains at the helm.

First Mercury Insurance points out in its court filings that Ghost Town may not be liable for damage claims anyway. Lawsuits would have to hash out whether Ghost Town is at fault for the slide before the insurance company would have forked over damages under the policy, even if it was valid.

When The Smoky Mountain News first reported on Ghost Town’s insurance lapse two months ago, Ghost Town partners insisted their coverage had never lapsed. Failure to keep insurance current is a violation of bankruptcy rules.

Ghost Town has not filed a response to the court filing of First Mercury outlining issues with the insurance coverage.

In a record year for landslides, yet another one struck this week, this time along U.S. 441 in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The slide occurred Monday near Newfound Gap, about a mile from the Tennessee state line. One lane of the road is open to traffic. The park hopes to reopen two lanes by commandeering a portion of an overlook parking area for a travel lane.

U.S. 441 between Cherokee and Gatlinburg is one of the only routes between North Carolina and Tennessee that is passable. Three other highways between the two states are closed due to rockslides of their own.

• Interstate 40 has been closed for five months now near the state line.

• U.S. 64, which runs between Murphy and Chattanooga, is also closed due to a rockslide.

• U.S. 129, which leads from Robbinsville to Maryville, Tenn., is also closed due to a rockslide.

There have been four other landslides in the region: a major one in Maggie Valley that forced an evacuation of several homes, one that took out a road and a lot in the Water Dance development in Jackson County, one that took out a road and a lot in the Wildflower development in Macon County, and one in Macon County that could be partly to blame for destabilizing a home foundation.

Moreover, there have been two more rockslides on the Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Everything has fallen into place for a government-sponsored cleanup of the Rich Cove mudslide in Maggie Valley, an undertaking pegged at roughly $1.47 million.

The federal Natural Resources Conservation Service agreed last week to foot 75 percent of the bill to stabilize the slide through the Emergency Watershed Protection program, which helps repair watersheds damaged by natural disasters.

The N.C. Department of Transportation has agreed to fund much of the remaining 25 percent local match since the slide affects a state-maintained road.

Maggie Valley’s town government has agreed to chip in $25,000 toward the local match, while Ghost Town in the Sky, a bankrupt amusement park where the slide originated, has volunteered $25,000 as well, but possibly in in-kind services rather than cash.

Town officials were driven by a sense of urgency to lock down funding for the cleanup since a large part of the mountainside remains unstable and threatens an even worse slide.

“I don’t think we have a choice but to do it,” said Maggie Valley Alderwoman Saralyn Price. “Because I feel like it’s a safety issue.”

At first, the town was at a loss for how it’d come up with the local match, which under current estimates comes to $334,000. Maggie Valley could hardly afford the whole amount by itself.

The town asked county leaders for help, but they balked at the idea of committing tax dollars to fix a slide that originated on private property — even though the property owner is in bankruptcy with a long trail of debt and was unable to pay up, either.

In the end, N.C. Rep. Phil Haire and N.C. Sen. Joe Sam Queen stepped in, teaming up to secure emergency funding from the N.C. DOT.

“We realize the dire circumstances those people who use Rich Cove Road were in,” said Haire. “I’m certainly glad Sen. Queen and I could do all we could to help out.”

Alderman Scott Pauley said Friday he was disappointed in the county board for not pitching in.

“We’ve got county residents and town residents that are losing sleep every night and haven’t slept since the slide,” said Pauley.

Pauley called the town’s contribution of $25,000 “a small, small cost to get this done.”

Town Manager Tim Barth said the town had to take action because it was unrealistic to expect Ghost Town to foot the bill.

“The reality is Ghost Town is in bankruptcy,” said Barth. “I know that they don’t have $334,500, so there’s no point in forcing them to pay because they won’t.”

However, Barth and Pauley have not ruled out the possibility of suing Ghost Town to be reimbursed. For now, Pauley said the focus is on getting the cleanup going.

“Anything after that is going to have to be for a later date,” said Pauley.

Ghost Town CEO Steve Shiver said he hopes to pay the company’s share of the cleanup cost by contributing work from Ghost Town’s engineer.

“We want to make sure that he’s involved completely,” Shiver said.

Shiver also pointed out that Ghost Town has already cooperated with NCDOT, and state and local agencies to help study the slide and facilitate cleanup.

According to Shiver, the economic importance of Ghost Town to Maggie Valley “far outweighs” the government’s investment to repair the slide.

“There are issues that we all must be a part of the solution,” said Shiver. “This is one of them.”

With federal and state grants in hand, work will soon get underway to stabilize the remnants of a massive landslide still looming precariously over Maggie Valley.

“You can see the cracking of the soil. It is obviously very unstable and just hanging there, if you will,” said Mike Hinton, manager of the federal Emergency Watershed Protection Program administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service office in Raleigh.

The landslide originated from Ghost Town in the Sky, a mountaintop amusement park, and damaged five homes along its 3,000-foot path. But several other households are in the potential line of fire if the remaining portion of the mountainside gives way, essentially leaving them without a home until something is done to fix the unstable slope.

A chief concern right now is spring rain. A good, soaking rain could easily trigger a second slide, which makes time of the essence, Hinton said. But not at the expense of a carefully crafted plan.

“I know it is an emergency, and I know the people who are out of their homes are anxious for work to be started. I know if I was in their shoes I would be thinking ‘This is taking forever,’” Hinton said. “But at the same time, we need to make sure that whatever we do does not cause further damage and takes into account the workers’ safety.”

While a second slide would certainly solve the problem of trying to stabilize the precarious slope — it would simply come crashing down on its own — a second slide could be even worse than the first one.

Only a portion of the slope collapsed in the first slide. Far more is still vulnerable.

While a second slide would likely follow the same route down the mountain, it would be deeper, wider and faster — and travel further. Houses unscathed last time could be taken out by a second slide, Hinton said.

Plus, giant piles of dirt and debris left in the landslide’s track would get caught up in a second slide, creating even more momentum, Hinton said.

A daunting challenge

But figuring out how to shore up the remaining mountainside remains elusive. Clearly, it can’t all be stabilized in place. Some will have to come down, Hinton said.

“That is easier said than done: how do you remove it?” Hinton said. “That part is really the dilemma.”

A contractor who was at Ghost Town the same day Hinton was surveying the site said he was willing to get on his dozer and just start pushing dirt off the side. But if the whole slope began to give, the man on the dozer would have had a wild ride to the bottom.

Hinton said it would be impossible to be stationed on the slope itself while performing the work. Equipment would have to far from the edge and on stable ground. But from that far back, could it reach out far enough to knock loose the unstable part?

Another option is evacuating everyone who lives below and blasting the soil off — not in one big blast but a series of smaller, controlled blasts.

“But who is to say one little blast wouldn’t trigger the whole thing?” Hinton said. So that option would likely be frowned on.

Simply coming up with an estimate was challenging. They obviously couldn’t scamper along the face of the slope. Hinton wasn’t willing to stand at the bottom and look up at it either. So all they could do was stand at the edge and look down on it.

As a result, the estimate of $1.47 million is an estimate in the truest sense of the word.

“That amount could change dramatically,” Hinton said. “This is really a starting point if you will. We had to come up with an estimate in order to request the funds, so that’s what we did.”

The first order of business now is to hire a geotechnical engineer to do a more thorough assessment. Once work does get underway, Hinton has no guess how long it may take, since the approach hasn’t even been figured out.

Last on the list will be cleaning up debris left along the track of the first slide. The area is steep, wooded and inaccessible, so carting off truckloads of dirt from the slide’s wake may be difficult, Hinton said.

“You would likely create even more of a problem, so the question is ‘Can we stabilize it on site?’” Hinton said. “I think everyone would agree just throwing grass seed on it isn’t going to do it.”

But, it could be possible to recontour the mounds of debris and build some retaining walls that would hold it. Rich Cove Road, which winds up the mountain to Ghost Town, is crossed twice by the slide’s track.

“For a while every time you get a rain, it is going to wash some of that across the road,” Hinton said.

For now, that’s the least of their concerns.

“The main thing is to stop a major movement,” Hinton said.

In the meantime, Hinton does not foresee Ghost Town amusement park opening until the slide is stabilized, although it is not an area his agency has jurisdiction over.

“I don’t see how they could,” Hinton said. “I wouldn’t want a crowd up there on a Saturday and that thing decide to let loose.”

Ghost Town has been struggling with bankruptcy for the past year. Foreclosure against the park is scheduled for June by BB&T, which is owed $9.5 million on the property. However, Ghost Town owners are optimistic that investors or some sort of financing will materialize between now and then. If so, BB&T has said it would call off foreclosure.

Over the past month a slow-moving landslide behind the Craftsmen Village development in Macon County has worsened, leaving one property owner facing life without a home.

Michael Boggan’s house was condemned by the county last week, a decision arrived at jointly by the planning, soil and erosion, and building inspection departments. County staff deemed the house unsafe after determining the foundation was compromised. The earth around the home site has shifted, twisting the footings and cracking the foundation.

It’s the first time since the devastating Peeks Creek slide that destroyed 15 homes and killed five people in 2004 that the county has used GS 153.366 to condemn a property that wasn’t damaged by fire.

The county’s soil and erosion control director, Matt Mason, explained Boggan’s predicament to the planning board at its meeting last week.

“I think he honestly was afraid for his safety. He knows now he has to pay a mortgage on a parcel that’s essentially useless,” said Mason.

The implications of condemning the property are far-reaching, but the decision wasn’t taken without careful examination.

The story began in early February when Boggan noticed a crack in his driveway that appeared following a nearby landslide. The landslide originated from the back of a large, terraced retail development called Craftsmen Village that lies adjacent to Ruby Cinemas on U.S. 441.

In the wake of that slide, a noticeable scarp had emerged on the face of the hillside above Boggan’s house.

Boggan called the county on Feb. 11 and asked them to come look at it. Mason went out to examine the trouble. While the landslide had indeed opened up part of the hillside, Mason found that a scarp in some form or fashion already existed on Boggan’s property, but it was unclear whether the slide had exacerbated its movement.

So Mason asked State Geologist Rick Wooten to come take a look the next day along with other staff from the N.C. Geological Survey’s Asheville office.

After examining the hillside, Wooten determined the scarp on Boggan’s property had been growing for several years and said it should be monitored closely.

Fast forward a month to March 11. Boggan called Mason back, because the crack had grown into a 10-inch shelf that made his driveway impassable. Mason and Wooten returned to the site to find out how things could have worsened that quickly.

“Over the course of the month, the scarp had gotten bigger and extended, connecting to the other slide area,” Wooten said. “They’re becoming part of the same slide.”

Wooten estimated that a 13-acre tract of land, 30 to 40 feet in depth, had shifted.

When the county’s inspectors came to the Boggan property March 15, they found a house with a cracked foundation sitting on footings that were twisted and out of true. Meanwhile the hillside was still moving, providing the real threat of an even worse secondary slide.

Those factors left the county’s chief building inspector, Bobby Bishop, with a serious decision. He posted a notice of condemnation, leaving Boggan and his wife homeless.

Wooten hasn’t finished his site assessment on the February landslide yet, but certain details are clear.

It occurred on top of an older slide, and the scarp on the Boggan property had likely been widening since 2006. Meanwhile, the bedrock being excavated at the foot of the hill to make way for the Craftsmen Village development was badly weathered, creating ideal conditions for a slow-moving slide. Add to that the large-scale excavation undermining the base of the slope, and it was almost a perfect storm.

“One thing that can de-stabilize a slope is when you excavate into a hillside and over-steepen the toe of the slope,” Wooten said.

Barbara Kiers, a spokesperson for Joseph G. Moretti Inc., said Mr. Moretti was aware of the damage on Boggan’s land but has not seen any information that links the damage to the slide at Craftsmen Village.

Wooten is a geologist, and it’s not his job to determine if anyone is to blame for Boggan’s loss, but in the wake of the Maggie Valley slide, it’s becoming more and more clear that civil suits are poised to be a new part of the landscape where landslides are involved.

“These are local jurisdiction issues. We try to provide the factual information and our best understanding of the causes of events to any interested parties,” Wooten said.

Mason took the case to the Macon County Planning Board as an example of the need for a steep slope ordinance.

“The question is would the new ordinance have helped him?” Mason said.

The answer isn’t entirely clear, but the slope standards proposed by the Steep Slope Committee last month would have put three measures in place that may have helped Boggan’s cause.

The condemned house lies on property that has 30 to 35 percent slope in some places, which would fall within the threshold for county oversight. Under the proposed ordinance, county planners would have had discretion to require engineering.

In addition, another proposed standard could require geotechnical engineering for properties that lie in the certain landslide hazard areas.

Also the cut-and-fill guidelines proposed in the ordinance would likely have forced Craftsmen Village developer Joseph Moretti to seek geotechnical engineering expertise when excavating the property at the foot of the hill.

Planning Board Chairman Lewis Penland thanked his colleagues for their foresight and greeted the event as a sign the county needs the steep slope ordinance in place as soon as possible.

“When we started this whole process, it wasn’t near the issue it’s become,” Penland said.

The Town of Maggie Valley recently transferred the responsibility for building inspections to Haywood County. Now, Maggie is considering handing over soil and erosion control, too.

“We could really become a one-stop shop,” said Maggie planning director Nathan Clark.

Town officials from Maggie Valley and Clyde will meet Tuesday, March 23, with the Haywood County manager to discuss the potential takeover.

Both towns are also interested in exploring the possibility of adopting a county ordinance that regulates construction on steep slopes. Currently, neither town has such a policy.

The joint meeting follows a massive mudslide in Maggie Valley, which traveled 3,000 feet down the mountainside and damaged four homes.

Roads have been cleared, but up to 16,000 tons of unstable material still looms over the Rich Cove community.

Haywood’s steep slope ordinance allows the county government to force a property owner to clear debris from landslides. It can also coerce a landowner into stabilizing a slope that the county engineer deems unsafe.

If the Town of Maggie Valley adopts that ordinance, the county would have authority to deem the Rich Cove area an unstable slope, forcing Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park to take action.

Ghost Town is far from off the hook for repairing the latest landslide in Maggie Valley.

The Rich Cove slide originated from Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park more than a month ago. About 16,000 tons of material remain unstable at the site, threatening an even worse slide.

No one has said yet whether natural causes or the failure of retaining walls led to the mudslide. But that might not matter. Town officials have discovered several lines of attack for forcing the amusement park company to foot the cleanup bill.

Town Manager Tim Barth has unearthed a state law that would allow the town to step in and stabilize the site then force Ghost Town to cover all the expenses.

Another more long-term option is to pass an ordinance regulating development on steep slopes — to prevent future landslides and force property owners to clean up slides that occur. The county already has such an ordinance, but the town chose not to adopt it, so it doesn’t apply to Ghost Town, which is within town limits.

The state law that Barth cited says a town can summarily remove anything that is dangerous to public safety within one mile of time limits. Expenses would be covered by the property owner. If they aren’t paid, the town could place a lien on the property and on any other property owned by the same entity in town, except for primary residences.

Barth acknowledges that it would be difficult to get Ghost Town to pay up since it’s already mired by bankruptcy. But the town may proceed anyway.

“It may be a situation where certain actions have to be taken to stabilize that area, and maybe the town gets paid back at a later time after the property is sold,” said Barth.

It would be beneficial for anybody who owns the land to repair the slide, Barth added.

Town officials are still waiting to hear on the prospect of federal assistance from the United States Department of Agriculture.

The USDA may be able to provide 75 percent of funding for the Rich Cove slide repair, though local sources will still need to scrape up the remaining 25 percent.

The town and county plan to meet jointly after the estimate for the cleanup and stabilization work is finalized some time this week. Both governments hope Ghost Town will cough up money for the cleanup regardless of its bankrupt status.

However, Ghost Town’s bankruptcy attorney has said the park does not have the $250,000 it needs to open for the season unless an investor is found.

Steep slope ordinance in sight?

Barth recently consulted with Haywood County on the possibility of adopting a steep slope ordinance within town limits.

Because of the potential for another slide at Rich Cove, the town would have to move fairly quickly. It could adopt the county’s slope ordinance wholesale, rather than take the time to write one of its own.

“We recognize that there’s a time factor, that we need to probably get something in place fairly soon,” said Barth. “But we want to make sure we do things the right way, and in a way that makes sense for Maggie Valley as well as the county.”

Barth said the town had not pursued an ordinance in the past because little development occurred on steep slopes within town limits.

Another limiting factor was not having enough resources to hire a full-time engineer to enforce a steep slope ordinance. If the county agrees to handle enforcement, Maggie might sign on to Haywood’s ordinance.

“That would be the easiest, quickest way to have legislation enacted,” said town planner Nathan Clark, who hopes that the slide will renew serious discussions about a steep slope ordinance in Maggie.

Such an ordinance provides several ways to force a landslide cleanup.

For example, Haywood can delay necessary permits to hold up development until the slide is stabilized. It can also fine property owners until they cooperate.

“It might start out at $5,000 or it might start out at $50, depending on the severity of the slope failure and how much noncooperation there is,” said Mark Shumpert, Haywood County engineer.

Under the county ordinance, Shumpert has the authority to deem a slope in danger of sliding a “critical slope” and compel the property owner to stabilize it.

For now, the county has little influence over the Rich Cove cleanup. That would change, however, if Maggie passes a steep slope ordinance and the county takes over.

“It all boils down to jurisdiction,” said Shumpert.

Two landslides hit in the Maggie area in January 2009, but they were outside the town limits so the county’s slope ordinance kicked into effect.

For the first time, Haywood County was able to force a property owner to clean up a slide.

One property owner recently submitted design plans for the slide stabilization.

The other owner filed for bankruptcy, and the county is now negotiating with the bank that’s taken over the property. Haywood has not filed a lien on the property.

Shumpert said the bank has two options: it can either repair the site and sell the house on it, or it can bulldoze the home and return the area to its natural state.

Haywood County commissioners are reluctant to hand over taxpayer money to stabilize the latest landslide in Maggie Valley — even if the federal government chips in for much of the cost.

At a commissioners meeting on Monday, the Town of Maggie Valley asked the county to partner in a grant application from the federal Emergency Watershed Protection Program. If approved, the grant would pay to remove debris, reroute the natural stream channel, and most importantly, shore up the still unstable portion of the mountainside. About 12,000 to 16,000 tons of material is looming over the Rich Cove community, posing the potential for more slides.

The federal grant would cover 75 percent of the cost, while the remaining 25 percent would have to be found locally.

But lingering questions over whether the slide at Rich Cove was a natural disaster or caused by a failed retaining wall at Ghost Town in the Sky amusement park has caused county commissioners to hesitate about participating in the program.

Commissioner Kirk Kirkpatrick said the issue at hand is whether Ghost Town is at fault. If so, the company, not county taxpayers, should pay for the slide’s impact. Ghost Town has been struggling with bankruptcy for the past year, however.

Steve Steve Shiver, CEO of Ghost Town, said he just didn’t have enough data — namely the cost of cleanup and stabilization — to make any decisions.

“At this point, we’ll just wait and see what the estimates are,” said Shiver, adding that Ghost Town has been able to repair a road that was washed out by the slide over the weekend. Road access to the top of the mountain is now restored, Shiver said.

At one point on Monday’s meeting, Commissioner Skeeter Curtis asked Maggie Valley’s town manager point blank if the town would pursue litigation against Ghost Town in the future to recoup its costs.

“Is the Town of Maggie Valley willing to enter litigation to get their 25 percent back?” asked Curtis.

Maggie Valley Town Manager Tim Barth replied the town would talk to Ghost Town about whether its owners would chip in to cover the 25 percent local match.

“It won’t get any cheaper for them, I’ll just say that,” said Barth. “If they have to fix that on their own, it’ll be 100 percent cost, and not 25 percent.”

Meanwhile, Commissioner Mark Swanger worried about setting a precedent for providing county money to clean up slides, even when they occur on private property or are caused by private companies.

“How is this one different from the ones we had in the past?” asked Swanger.

Swanger said if Maggie is going to ask for county assistance, it should also follow the county’s lead in implementing regulations for development on steep slopes.

Curtis added that local governments should begin pushing to bring landslide insurance coverage to the state, even if it is expensive.

The commissioners ultimately decided not to commit to the program before receiving a concrete dollar figure on the 25 percent match.

“Really, the bottom line is going to be the cost,” said Commissioner Bill Upton.

Town and county leaders will hold a joint meeting once the federal agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, comes up with a proper estimate for the stabilization and clean up.

A project manager and engineer surveyed the slide this week and hope to provide a damage survey report by early next week.

Carol Litchfield, a local representative from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said while legal complexities may arise with this particular landslide, it meets the objectives of the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, which only responds to natural disasters.

Litchfield said the main issue now is not the 25 percent, but whether the grant will be awarded given competition for the funds. Litchfield said it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up a site, though she does not have a ballpark figure for what it would cost to stabilize the Rich Cove slide.

The agency will not cover the costs for repairing structures or homes damaged by the mudslide, she added.

The last time the Emergency Watershed Protection Program was utilized in this area was to mitigate the impact of the 2004 floods in 17 western counties, including in Haywood and Macon counties. At that time, a federal state of emergency was declared, and the state covered the 25 percent match.

With this slide, there hasn’t been enough damage to call for a state of emergency at the state or federal level, though both the county and the Town of Maggie Valley signed a disaster declaration.

For now, the threat of another slide still looms over Rich Cove with a precautionary zone that covers more than double the size of the area currently damaged by the slide.

“We got to do something,” said Greg Shuping, emergency services director for the county. “The fact remains that we have a threat.”

Rather than continuing a reactive approach to rockslides on Interstate 40, the DOT is making a widespread effort to prevent disasters like the Oct. 25 slide from occurring again.

The DOT says it will invest $4 million to stabilize five other sites that have either experienced slides in the past or are likely sources of future slides. The money will hopefully come from federal highway emergency funds.

“If there’s a silver lining in all of this,” said Jon Nance, DOT’s chief engineer of operations, “it’s that we’ve located other areas that need to be repaired to prevent another occurrence like this one.”

All of the sites are in the final five miles of the Pigeon River Gorge before reaching the Tennessee line. The area is known for instability and has been prone to slides since its construction. When a second rock slide struck six weeks ago — in the same vicinity as the major slide — it triggered an assessment of the corridor to identify particularly unstable spots.

This additional work will not affect the reopening of I-40, though one mile of the westbound lane will be closed until this summer to finish it.

The DOT estimates the new project will employ between 50 to 100 more people. The first step is removing unstable rock in a process called scaling, which involves men with crowbars dislodging loose rock. Large bolts will then be set deeply into the mountain to snug down the rock face.

A landslide at the Waterdance development in the Tuckasegee area of Jackson County washed out a road and dumped a significant amount of mud and concrete into the Tuckasegee River in early February.

Robbie Shelton, erosion control officer for Jackson County, estimated the slide laid bare a 75-foot-wide swath about 100 yards long. A retaining wall holding back a cut-and-fill slope above a road broke, and the resulting slide covered an entire lot at the development.

“It was just retaining too much water and the hydrostatic pressure caused it to fail,” Shelton said.

Shelton said the cause of the slide had not yet been determined.

Shelton said cold weather froze the slide and limited the effects of runoff. He also said the near flood levels of the Tuck’s West Fork may have minimized the impact by diluting the sediment. Shelton said there were no visible soil deposits downstream of the slide when he examined the river days after the event.

Water Dance is located between Tuckasegee and Glenville and is owned by Legasus, a mega developer that once held more than 4,000 acres in Jackson County. The developer fell victim to the recession and has faced numerous foreclosures over the past year.

The slide damaged a lot owned by Patrick Kennedy, who bought large acreage from Legasus during the company’s financial problems. Shelton said Legasus is currently working on a mitigation plan for the soil and concrete that entered the river, and the company’s engineers are studying the roadway. Water Dance was started before Jackson County passed a new, more restrictive subdivision ordinance, but its roads met county standards, Shelton said.

Shelton has received numerous calls about slides around the county as heavy rains and snow hit the mountains hard in February.

“These slides are occurring countywide,” said Shelton. “None as visible as this one, but I’m vetting calls every time it rains.”

Another slide closed a lane of N.C. 281 near Little Canada, and Shelton received reports of a third heavy slide near Whittier.