One year later, towns still wait for Helene relief
Local leaders (left to right) Matt Wechtel, chair of the Madison County Board of Commissioners; Carol Pritchett, mayor of Lake Lure; Anthony Sutton, Waynesville Town Council member; and Brandon Rogers, vice chair of the Haywood County Board of Commissioners join Tony McEwen, Carolinas director of the American Flood Coalition in Washington, D.C.
American Flood Coalition photo
Nearly a year after Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, the federal government still hasn’t delivered on the money it promised to local governments. With the one-year anniversary looming, towns and counties say most of their needs remain unmet, forcing them back to Washington yet again, to beg for help.
Led by the American Flood Coalition, multiple delegations of Western North Carolina leaders have been meeting with FEMA officials, members of Congress and senators in an ongoing effort to pry loose funds that leaders say are stuck in bureaucratic purgatory.
“This is my third, maybe my fourth trip to D.C. for flooding-related stuff,” said Brandon Rogers, vice chair of the Haywood County Board of Commissioners. As it turns out, it was indeed Rogers’ fourth trip to the nation’s capital — including one after Tropical Storm Fred in 2021.
Rogers was accompanied by a bipartisan delegation that included Lake Lure Mayor Carol Pritchett, Waynesville Town Council member Anthony Sutton and Madison County Commission Chair Matt Wechtel.
“We just want to make sure that Western North Carolina doesn’t fall through the cracks,” Wechtel said.
Helene left Madison County with catastrophic losses — a courthouse, two town halls, a public library and two sewage treatment plants. The county initially estimated $200 million in damage, though that number later dropped after joining a state debris removal program.
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“We’ve got around $87 million worth of projects countywide right now, and so far, we’ve received $2.2 million. That includes the county and both Marshall and Hot Springs,” he said.
Of 61 projects in Madison County, 24 remain stuck at the local level and aren’t even in FEMA’s portal. Another 22, worth a combined $44 million, are pending review and obligation. A handful of small, “low-hanging fruit” projects were funded, but the bulk of the big-ticket items remain unresolved.
“The victories have been few and far between,” Wechtel said.
Lake Lure Mayor Carol Pritchett echoed those frustrations. She said the town had received just $2.8 million for reimbursement of bills incurred in the first three weeks after the storm.
“We finally received that in May,” she said. “We have our larger projects — the dam, which is probably anywhere between $150 and $200 million; the wastewater treatment plant; about $40 million; the subaqueous sewer system, probably another $100 million. We still have not just not gotten the money. We haven’t even gotten to the point to know even if they will be obligated.”
The Army Corps of Engineers is leading dredging operations on the lake, removing more than a million tons of debris. While Pritchett expressed gratitude for that work, she said the real test will come when it’s time to replace essential infrastructure.
“It is critical that we get funding for these projects in the near future,” she said.
Local leaders say FEMA’s processes are bogging everything down. Projects over $100,000 require sign-off from the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. That bottleneck, combined with repetitive requests for information, has left towns mired in uncertainty.
“We submitted these projects, and then they keep getting these RFIs kicked back. They’re duplicative. Some of the questions are repetitive and redundant,” Wechtel said.
Pritchett pointed to an absurd example involving marinas destroyed by Helene. The Army Corps ordered them moved to clear debris, but when Lake Lure later applied for reimbursement, FEMA questioned whether the damage had occurred during the storm or during the move.
Waynesville Town Council member Anthony Sutton said his town spent $380,000 out-of-pocket to repair the Depot Street bridge — equal to two cents on the tax rate — and has yet to be reimbursed.
“That would be very detrimental to our constituents if they had to pay that out of pocket,” Sutton said.
He said FEMA officials acknowledged the problem but acknowledged that “committed” money is not the same as cash in hand.
“Until the money is in the bank, I won’t have any relief,” Sutton said.
Sutton warned that the delay has real consequences. While day-to-day town operations are currently stable, a reduced fund balance could hurt the town’s ability to respond to disasters or to borrow in the future.
“If we’d had an instance where we had to go get a loan, it may increase our interest rate,” he said.
And the stress is taking its toll on town staff, who now have to become experts on confusing and sometimes contradictory FEMA processes.
“Everyone is exhausted,” Sutton said. “If it happens again, I don’t know what we would do.”
Both Wechtel and Pritchett said the system should mirror how federal COVID relief money was distributed. Counties and municipalities received funds directly, then were held accountable afterward.
“The model is already there,” Wechtel said. “We need that same kind of trust with this. Push some money out on the front end, let us heal our fund balances and get some of these projects moving along. Hold us accountable on the back end, and we’ll prove to you that we’ll be good stewards of the money.”
Pritchett agreed, adding that certain expenses should be covered immediately without delay.
“Some of this money needs to be dispersed in a more efficient manner, because there simply is just a limit as to how long little towns can last,” she said.
The delegation met with members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation, including Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd. Gov. Josh Stein also lobbied federal officials, seeking $13.5 billion for Helene recovery.
But even if Congress acts, local leaders say the damage estimates are so massive that the process will drag on for years.
“It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon, and it’s going to take a lot of time before everything gets back to normal, if everything ever does get back to normal,” Wechtel said.
In a meeting of Haywood County commissioners last week, Finance Director Kristian Owen told commissioners the county had received just 4% of the $15.8 million it’s owed.
The unpaid balance, Rogers said, was equivalent to about 15 cents on the county’s 55-cent property tax rate; he told FEMA Director of Public Assistance Robert Pesapane that despite the county’s healthy fund balance, it leaves the county in a precarious financial position.
“We’re the only ones that have to have a balanced budget every year, where the federal government, the state government, they don’t have to,” Rogers said. “I don’t mean to throw rocks, but I am.”
Rogers also said he was prepared to throw more than just rocks.
“I actually told [Pesapane], ‘I come in here wanting to pop you on the chin, but you’re too much of a likable guy and seem like you want to fix things,’ and he really did,” Rogers said. “He seemed like a type of guy that cares and he is trying to fix things.”
He also expressed concern about how competitive grant funding opportunities pit one storm-stricken local government against another — in theory, Haywood’s win could be some other community’s loss, or vice versa.
Overall, Rogers is again optimistic that AFC’s western delegation was heard in the hallowed halls of Washington, but as has been said many times before, disaster-affected counties in Western North Carolina will have to do what they’ve always done — lean on each other and help themselves.
“This is the second storm in such a short amount of time, with the mill closing as another big slap in the face, but Haywood County as a whole has pulled together unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Rogers said. “It means a lot, just the folks that we have here in our county, I’m talking about our constituents and neighbors that pulled together, the minute the rain stopped, to start helping one another. We do have a very resilient county, and I’m pretty proud of that.”
