Over the past decade or more, Western North Carolina Republicans have proven that the only candidates that can beat incumbent Republican congressmen are other Republicans. Adam Smith talks like someone who has already settled on that outcome and is now working backward to make it inevitable. 

“What conservative voters in the United States want to see is Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to do what they said they were going to do,” Smith said. 

Editor’s note: This piece is the first of a two-part series exploring plans to rebuild I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge and the project’s implication for wildlife populations. Part two will appear in next week’s the Smoky Mountain News.

When I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge first opened in October 1968, it was hailed as a triumph of human accomplishment, the dawn of a new era for travel, tourism, and economic opportunity in newly linked Haywood County, North Carolina, and Cocke County, Tennessee.

In 2025, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality supported communities recovering from Hurricane Helene, took actions to address PFAS contamination and continued to protect the state’s natural resources for the health and prosperity of all North Carolinians, according to a lengthy DEQ press release. 

The monumental task of helping communities recover from Helene, while rebuilding in a way that makes them more resilient to future storms, played a central role in the department’s actions last year.  

The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality has launched the Western NC Recovery Grants Program to help communities affected by Hurricane Helene secure long-term recovery funding. The program offers free grant-writing and technical assistance to local governments, eligible nonprofits partnering with them, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians across 39 disaster-declared counties.

When Drake Fowler returned to the North Carolina Arboretum after Hurricane Helene, the extent of the damage broke his heart. 

“We lost 10,000 trees over 80 acres,” he said.

However, as the initial shock of grief subsided, Fowler, the arboretum’s executive director, considered how to find opportunity amid destruction.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Environmental Assistance and Customer Service is now accepting applications for the Helene Recovery Recycling Infrastructure Grant Program, which supports western North Carolina communities in rebuilding and strengthening waste reduction and recycling systems following Hurricane Helene. 

Gov. Josh Stein is highlighting Renew NC’s work to repair and rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Helene. Western North Carolinians who are seeking assistance in rebuilding Helene-damaged homes have until Dec. 31 to submit an application to the state’s Renew NC Single-Family Housing Program (SFPH).  

In the wake of two devastating floods just three years apart, Western North Carolina’s resiliency didn’t come from government agencies. While FEMA and state emergency teams provided vital aid, three regional nonprofits — Dogwood Health Trust, Mountain Projects and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina — stepped beyond their missions to fill critical gaps. 

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.

Hurricane Helene may not have been so devastating for Western North Carolina were it not for the half foot of rain that dumped on the region just ahead of Sept. 27, 2024. Getting ahead of what promised to be a monumental disaster, on the afternoon of Sept. 26, only about 12 hours before flooding began in some WNC communities, the National Weather Service office in upstate South Carolina issued the following statement: