Community News

Here's the latest on debris removal, hazard mitigation, long-term recovery

Contractors at a collection yard at Blue Ridge Community College load hurricane debris into a large chipper, which spits out mulch that is then hauled away to be sold.

By Bill Moss, Published: June 25, 2025

Given the magnitude of the wreckage that Helene left behind, it’s worth looking ahead a year, two years, even five years to what a post-hurricane world might look like.

Roadside debris, even private property debris, is gone — repurposed as mulch in someone’s yard who knows where. Roads are repaired, bridges are replaced and slide-prone steep slopes are stabilized. The county is the owner of nearly 90 pieces of land, former homesites purchased through a FEMA program and preserved forever as conservation space. Mud Creek, Clear Creek and the French Broad are cleared of debris. Even Hickory Nut Gorge, ravaged by the epic flooding of Hickory Creek, Reedy Patch Creek and the Rocky Broad, is renewed, based on a community-driven recovery plan.

Programs are in place to make that vision a reality, as the Henderson County Board of Commissioners heard last week in a wide-ranging post-Helene update. Here’s a roundup:

Debris removal

The end of roadside piles of roofing, home siding, oak logs and other rubble on public right-of-way is upon us. Crews under contract with FEMA are working seven days a week to pick up and haul off debris and dump it at numerous processing yards around the county. It’s been estimated that Helene left behind debris that’s five times the volume of any hurricane ever in North Carolina. County Engineer Marcus Jones heads up the monumental effort to make it all vanish.

“Marcus’s team continues to work on what we call the punch list of right-of-way debris, with the goal of having all that collected by June 30,” county Public Safety Director Jimmy Brissie told commissioners. “We’ve picked up a little over half of those punch list right-of-way debris piles. One of the challenges they’re experiencing is continued illegal dumping, where people are just bringing stuff out that isn’t hurricane related and putting it on the side of the road.”

Removing piles from the public right-of-way does not mean all piles will be gone. The deadline for applying for the Private Property Debris Removal program is the end of July. (Apply at the multi-agency resource center at the Henderson County Veterans Center at Five Points on Tuesdays and Thursdays.)

Debris removal remains the single largest cost the county is covering in advance. FEMA reimbursement is expected to happen — at some unknown point in time.

“The county is forwarding this money,” County Manager John Mitchell told commissioners. “It’s paying money out for debris, which will be, in my opinion, the largest expenditure related to our hurricane recovery activities locally. There’s certainly more money being spent in concert with the county on federal highways. But here on your books, you’re going to see the largest transaction occur. It’s very important that we have a pipeline with FEMA and the state of North Carolina to have a reasonable time period for this money to come back on our books.”

Board Chair Bill Lapsley declared that he was “ready to get in the car and go wherever we need to go and get in somebody’s face,” to demand repayment.

“I just want everybody to know we’re watching this close, and I’m getting nervous again,” he said.

Waterway debris

The county has identified more than 100 sites to clean up in streams, creeks and rivers. That process is under way.

“We just finished packaging up what’s called the Broad River drainage, which includes part of Reedy Patch Creek going from Edneyville to Bat Cave, the Rocky Broad River and several other drainages in the Bat Cave community,” Brissie said. “We have to evaluate every piece of debris that’s threatening infrastructure. That then goes to FEMA for their concurrence. They have to look at where that debris is and determine are any of those parcels of land environmentally sensitive or historic properties. We can start the debris removal once they’ve signed off on that.”

As always with federal programs, there’s miles of red tape.

“If they find properties that do have environmental or historical nexus, we have to hire an archeologist to go out there and watch them pick the sticks out of the creek,” Brissie said.

Help for those who lost everything

FEMA’s hazard mitigation program covers homeowner buyouts, elevating homes in flood zones and stabilization of landslide areas.

“People that have lost everything — you’ve made it very clear that you want that to be a priority,” Brissie told the board. In April, commissioners reviewed and sent to the state hazard mitigation applications for 28 “group 1” properties. Last week the county received “the almost final list of group 2 and 3, which is going to include another 59 properties for acquisition.”

“FEMA will come in, appraise the property and then purchase it at pre-storm values, and then that space gets turned into a green space,” Brissie said.

Lapsley said he had heard that Haywood County homeowners who applied for hazard mitigation money after Tropical Storm Fred in 2021 were still waiting for payment.

“On behalf of our citizens, I’m concerned that we could be sitting here a year from now and these things not get closed out,” he said.

“The numbers we’ve been telling folks is 18 to 24 months best case scenario,” Brissie responded. He and Mitchell met with the chief of mitigation for state emergency management on June 13. “We did find out that our group 1 that was submitted in April currently is going through contract review with the state,” he said. “They anticipate issuing orders for surveys and appraisals in August. If all goes well as it navigates the procurement piece, he told us he’s hopeful they could see some properties closing as soon as October.”

Once FEMA buys them, the parcels will be deeded to the county with a conservation easement or restrictions. “And then the county would choose what to do with that property from that point,” Brissie said, though no development is allowed.

Asked whether the county could deed parcels to Conserving Carolina, Brissie said it could.

“There is a pathway to partner with HOAs or other entities as long as there’s a public interest there, or (with) another municipality,” he said. “For example, I know the city of Henderson is interested in some of the properties in their jurisdiction.”

Landslide mitigation

The county has received more than 50 applications for landslide mitigation. “We have about 40 of them that are eligible and we have submitted an application to the state for what’s called advanced assistance,” Brissie said. “That application is for about a million dollars, where FEMA would provide funding to further evaluate those properties and determine can they be stabilized and then what that cost would look like. That’s at no cost to the homeowner, no cost to the county.” Brissie projects that North Carolina is in line to receive around $1.6 billion for landslide work.

Hickory Nut Gorge

In February, commissioners directed the planning department to create a recovery plan specifically for the hard-hit area east of the Continental Divide.

“Within weeks of having signed a contract with our consultant team, they immediately started meeting with us, and we also took them on a site visit so that they could have first-hand experience of the area,” Planning Director Autumn Radcliff said. The county and the consultant team hosted the first community partners group that on June 9.

Focused on long-term recovery instead of immediate needs, the Hickory Nut Gorge recovery effort will form long-term recommendations to guide recovery. Pieces of that include river restoration, hazard mitigation, transportation, economic development, public health and “long-term resilience of the landscape and then looking ahead at the future of the Gorge area,” Radcliff said.

Long-term recovery

Mitchell assigned Christopher Todd to organize a long-term recovery effort to work on needs beyond the immediate emergency. To make that happen, Todd turned to a woman he had never met.

“In Henderson County, when we needed this to happen, we found a partner who was willing to take the lead on that, and that was the United Way,” said Todd, who is assistant county manager. “I had never met Ms. Carlton, who’s the new director, but her first day was Oct. 1” — four days after Helene struck — “and she found us. She came to the King Street building. She knew there was something that she could be doing. She just wanted to better understand what it was, and she came and offered the United Way and their services to us.”

Addressing the commissioners, Carlton said Helene had created a whole new dimension to crisis intervention.

“When Helene struck, we were called to serve at an even higher capacity,” she said. “The first days and weeks were like so many of you — neighbors helping neighbors, communities coming together to help people address basic needs and respond to the needs of the day.

“The second (challenge) is that the hill was steep for so many of our community members before the storm and even steeper after. As a matter of fact, 43 percent of our county (households) fall into what is called the ALICE category” — asset limited, income constrained, employed.  “These are households that earn more than the federal poverty level but less than the basic cost of living in the county,” she said. “That means that for many, despite working fulltime jobs, it’s nearly impossible for almost half of our residents to keep up with the rising cost of housing, health care, food and other basic needs to make ends meet — and that was before the storm.”

Together, the county and United Way formed the disaster recovery partnership made up of “50 organizations working together to make long-term recovery a reality,” Carlton said. “These agencies include local nonprofits that were here before the storm and are here for the long haul. They also include new-to-us agencies that thankfully showed up after Helene and have committed to staying and working in our community to serve families with Helene-caused unmet needs and we’re grateful for them.”

In order to guide people through the maze of applications, the United Way is working with disaster-recovery partners “to create and fund an integrated case management system where neighbors can fill out one form, share their needs and be connected to a local, informed disaster case manager to help walk them through the process of navigating resources.”