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‘This is beyond politics’: Local leaders call for Helene recovery support

Madison County Manager Rod Honeycutt, Marshall mayor Aaron Haynie, and Madison County Commissioner Mark Wechtel in Marshall, N.C.
Katie Myers
Madison County Manager Rod Honeycutt, Marshall Mayor Aaron Haynie, and Madison County Commissioner Mark Wechtel in Marshall, N.C.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

The leftovers of Hurricane Helene are deeply present in downtown Marshall.

Everything the French Broad River swept through Main Street – parts of buildings, wires, other detritus – are still piled high along the streets. Most of the businesses in the heart of the town’s historic downtown are still shuttered.

“This area was already in a floodplain before this happened,” Madison County Commissioner Mark Wechtel said. “So, this, really, it wasn't a surprise that it flooded. The magnitude of it is what was the big surprise.”

Wechtel, like many other county and town officials, hopes to rebuild. But for western North Carolina’s rural counties and smaller communities, questions remain about exactly how to navigate the recovery, even as people are in the process of rebuilding.

“They're going to come right back and do it again. And the hope is that it'll be another 116 years before this happens again, but we don't know. And they’re willing to take that risk.” Wechtel said.

Last Friday, officials from many of Western North Carolina’s rural, Helene-impacted communities squelched through the mud together to view the damage, and united to present a case for quicker response from federal and state agencies.

Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers spoke to the group about his desire for the recovery process to move forward more quickly for small towns.

“We have to find a way to cut through the bureaucracy, the red tape, the excuses, the starting at ‘no’ instead of getting to ‘yes’,” Smathers said in an address to the assembled crowd. “This is beyond politics.”

Leadership from Hot Springs, Black Mountain, Canton, and other local towns toured Marshall in Madison County and Biltmore Village in Buncombe County as part of a trip organized by the American Flood Coalition. The coalition is a bipartisan nonprofit working to bring these communities together to advocate for recovery on a state and federal level.

Many of the officials said that they hoped to work together to find more funding for their communities and advocate for themselves.

Smathers is on Gov. Stein’s Rebuilding Western North Carolina Advisory Committee alongside Asheville mayor Esther Manheimer, Senator Kevin Corbin of Macon County, and community organizers, business owners, and elected leaders from across the region. He has been working through his town’s recovery from two prior storms in 2004 and 2021.

Officials in Madison County and Marshall are wrestling with questions of how to safely and affordably rebuild their devastated communities.
Officials in Madison County and Marshall are wrestling with questions of how to safely and affordably rebuild their devastated communities.

“Everything that flooded in ‘04 and ‘21 flooded again and more,” Smathers said. “There were definitely some homes this time that had never been flooded, that flooded.”

Smathers said that while he was glad some previously-impacted homeowners and businesses had rebuilt in more flood-resilient ways, others were still waiting on FEMA buyouts or had not financially recovered from previous storms.

The event also announced the launch of the WNC Recovery & Resilience Partnership, a “community-led effort to secure financial resources, and policy improvements that aid in recovery and rebuilding” after Helene, according to the American Flood Coalition.

Through this partnership, the coalition says it will bring local concerns to the state legislature and to Washington.

Leaders say they can’t wait for reimbursement 

Like Smathers, other leaders expressed frustration with the arduous and time-consuming nature of the FEMA reimbursement and recovery process.

Wendy Stancil, a member of the Hot Springs town board, says she is frustrated waiting for reimbursement from FEMA. Right now, the town is holding a bill for a $300,000 contract for the first engineer they hired to help fix the town’s infrastructure problems after Helene. The town’s entire annual budget is $700,000, Stancil said.

“The one-on-one interactions are great,” Stancil said. “It's the system.”

She says the waiting period has been stressful on town administrators who have been trying to pay other bills, especially since the loss of tourism business like the town’s signature spa has meant less revenue is coming in.

Many of the local leaders mentioned these budgetary concerns. Unlike larger municipalities, these local leaders say that they don’t have the capital to front the funding needed to provide recovery for their communities while they wait for reimbursement.

Marshall has an annual town budget of $1.2 million, and Madison County’s annual budget is $32 million. The county is currently without a functioning courthouse, post office, or social services building,and is requesting $198 million, officials said. However, the FEMA process is moving forward. In January, more than 2,900 tons of debris were removed from Madison County making the county eligible for an additional reimbursement, according to the Asheville Citizen Times.

In lieu of waiting for FEMA reimbursement for Marshall’s emergency sewer repairs, the town took an emergency bridge loan from the state Department of Environmental Quality.

FEMA’s reimbursement process 

To be reimbursed by FEMA, local governments need to document damage, submit it to the agency, and receive an inspection; cost estimates for disaster-related emergency costs are calculated after the fact. For longer-term projects, FEMA works with community leaders to create a “scope of work”and develop a cost estimate to submit to the state, which then in turn helps provide funds to the applicant.

FEMA has special procedures in the case of emergency reimbursements, which communities can activate by informing assigned local FEMA Program Delivery Managers of the need for expedited funding. However, projects below $1.3 million are not eligible for this.

Reimbursement can be slower than communities desire for a number of reasons, said an agency spokesperson.

FEMA officials acknowledged in an email to Blue Ridge Public Radio that the agency is aware of complaints about its pace of work.

“We are actively working to streamline our processes and improve the overall experience for our applicants,” a FEMA spokesperson said, pointing out that the agency began distributing “Streamlined Project Applications” for projects under $1 million in 2022.

Debris is still piled high next to the French Broad River in downtown Marshall.
Katie Myers
Debris is still piled high next to the French Broad River in downtown Marshall.

The North Carolina Legislature has already passed three rounds of funding totaling about a billion in state funds. This week, Gov. Josh Stein called on state legislators to allocate $1 billion of that amount to cover repairs for homes, businesses, and infrastructure. This would be on top of the federal funding that has provided about $15 billion to the region.

The governor’s office estimated in December that $59.6 billion will be needed for recovery across the region impacted by Helene.

Smathers said he hopes their coalition can not only advocate for additional funds to the region, but help change how FEMA is run. He and other leaders at the tour expressed support for Rep. Chuck Edwards’ work advocating for the region. Edwards was recently  appointed to a new  task force to reform FEMA. Smathers, Stancil, and others believe the agency needs to exist, but want to see it run more efficiently. They also hope that disaster response can be improved through the lessons from Helene.

“I know the people in Western North Carolina would love nothing more than to know that not only we recovered, but we helped our other friends across the United States recover by fixing the problem, “ Smathers said.

Katie Myers is BPR's Climate Reporter.