The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Flood Resiliency Blueprint is partnering with the North Carolina Land and Water Fund to provide $1.1 million for three flood risk reduction projects located in Dunn, Clyde and Smithfield.  

In total, the projects will restore more than 1.29 miles of stream and 50 acres of floodplain as well as retrofit a pond to reduce flooding.   

Haywood Community College’s Department of Arts, Sciences and Natural Resources and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission will offer two opportunities for hunter safety courses in Spring 2026. Classes will be offered Jan. 6-7 and April 1-2 from 6-9 p.m. on the HCC campus in Clyde in the Walnut building, Room 3322. Participants must attend two consecutive evenings to receive their certification. 

Students in the Professional Crafts Program at Haywood Community College will host a holiday craft sale from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4 on campus in Clyde. The sale will feature student work in four mediums: fiber, metals, ceramics and wood. Held in the Mary L. Cornwell Gallery in the Sycamore Building, the sale is open to the public. 

Western North Carolina voters turned out in strong numbers across municipal races this year, deciding contests that will shape local recovery, infrastructure and growth for years to come. 

In Haywood, Jackson, Macon and Swain counties, ballots featured a mix of incumbents and newcomers in competitive races that reflected both the challenges and the momentum of a region still rebuilding from repeated disasters — a region where voters think they’ve now chosen the right people to move it forward. 

Overwhelmingly, municipal officials take pride in their nonpartisan service, but once they’re elected, they don’t just leave their party hats at the chamber doors.

Clyde voters confronted familiar questions this election — how to rebuild after disaster, how to manage growth without losing the town’s identity and how to plan for a future defined by both opportunity and risk. Four candidates competed for two seats on the Board of Aldermen, offering different ideas but sharing a commitment to long-term resilience.

Haywood County commissioners advanced the long-planned Clyde EMS base project Oct. 20 by approving a $2,069,955 construction contract with RYSE Construction. 

The bid represents the second phase of a federally funded initiative to redevelop the Clyde Armory campus into a modern emergency response hub that will serve as both an EMS base and a regional emergency shelter, right in the geographic center of Haywood County. 

It’s not a lot of money, but it’s the principle — the hurricane-ravaged Town of Clyde is out more than $3,400 due to a baffling disconnect between FEMA reimbursement guidelines and a state program meant to ease the burden of debris removal on private land. 

Clyde is a small town surrounded by bigger ambitions. Tucked between Canton and Waynesville, hemmed in by interstate lanes and the Pigeon River, it is both geographically and economically poised on the edge of growth — an edge that has never been sharper than it is now, in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s destruction and amid mounting pressure to plan for a future that’s already arriving. 

Accessorized with purple-rimmed glasses, dangly beaded earrings and a well-worn Café Du Monde apron, Denise Teague brings the humility and unwavering tenacity needed to sustain Clyde United Methodist Church’s community kitchen since the earliest days following Hurricane Helene.