Waterways throughout western North Carolina are still scarred by Hurricane Helene, with eroded banks and steep slopes threatening roads, power lines and other infrastructure.
In Buncombe County, a $36.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will help stabilize some of those vulnerable waterways.
At Tuesday’s Buncombe County Board of Commissioners meeting, the county is expected to accept the federal grant, which is furnished through the USDA’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program. It's the largest streambank restoration grant the county has received since Helene hit in late 2024.
The funding will help shore up 207 sites countywide, including farms, businesses, homes and public land. It will reshape steep slopes, remove debris, and plant deep-rooted vegetation – like rivercane – to help hold the vulnerable streambanks in place.
Jennifer Harrison, Buncombe County’s agriculture and land resources director, said the region’s mountainous terrain makes its streams especially vulnerable during heavy rainfall.
“One of the things that makes Buncombe County so awesome is our varied terrain,” Harrison told BPR. “Our mountainous regions, all of our rivers and streams – as beautiful as they are, they also pose some significant challenges when we get heavy weather events.”
During Helene, Harrison said, rain rushed down steep slopes and overwhelmed waterways.
“All of that water was flowing. All of our stormwater was taking all of the hardscape water and also pushing that into the same streams,” Harrison said, referencing the stormwater runoff from the surrounding area that flowed into the French Broad River. “So, we had massive streambank failure and massive erosion and landslides.”
The Emergency Watershed Protection Program is not designed to fully restore natural systems or solve long-term flooding problems. Rather, it’s focused on emergency repairs that protect infrastructure at risk of failing.
“Whether that’s a house or a bridge or maybe it’s a utility pole or fiber optic cable or sewer lines, we need to protect that infrastructure so that our community can continue to operate safely,” Harrison said.
For Kevin Madsen, the county’s Helene Recovery Officer, the grant represents a new phase of recovery for Buncombe.
“This is taking it to that next level and addressing additional sites, where, not only is there debris removal, but then, additionally, the need for doing that restoration of stream banks,” Madsen told BPR in a phone interview.
Still, Harrison said the grant only addresses a portion of Buncombe County’s broader streambank damage, which she estimates will cost “hundreds of millions of dollars” to fix. She added that county staff completed more than 500 site visits on behalf of grant applicants, although only 207 projects were ultimately approved for the program.
“That kind of tells you a little bit more about the overall damage in the county that we’re facing,” Harrison said.
The Buncombe County Board of Commissioners is expected to formally accept the grant at its next meeting on Tuesday, June 2.
