State and feds look to head off economic disaster from Helene in Haywood
Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon) speaks to Haywood County leaders at the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office on Oct. 20, 2024.
Cory Vaillancourt photo
With the North Carolina General Assembly’s preliminary $273 million relief bill in the rearview mirror, Western North Carolina Sen. Kevin Corbin (R-Macon) is looking down the road at the General Assembly’s next move — a billion-dollar relief bill coming Oct. 24. During a recent meeting with Haywood County officials, Corbin spent about an hour trying to learn what, exactly, the needs are.
“I can promise you what you won't get,” Corbin said. “You won't get things you don't ask for.”
MAKING THE DOLLARS MAKE SENSE
Corbin rolled into the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office on Oct. 19 to meet with Haywood County Commission Chair Kevin Ensley, Vice Chair Brandon Rogers, County Manager Bryant Morehead, School Board Chair Chuck Francis and Schools Superintendent Trevor Putnam.
“What I think is going to happen is we're going to go down there [to Raleigh], and I think us western legislators are going to be asking for a lot of money,” Corbin said. “I just want to make sure that our share comes to us. I don't want any more than our share, but I want our share.”
Morehead told Corbin that although many unknowns remain and damage assessments in Canton and Waynesville are not yet complete, around 600 homes in Haywood County were impacted by Hurricane Helene, which roared into Western North Carolina Sept. 27. Almost a third of those homes, about 190, incurred major damage and are uninhabitable at present.
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Before the meeting, Corbin talked to Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-Henderson) who told Corbin that he’d spoken directly with President Joe Biden about federal money for temporary housing. Edwards also told Corbin that Yancey County had some 900 homes damaged.
Although Haywood County is still surveying damage, Ensley thinks its final count could be as high as Yancey’s, although Rogers opined that mitigation efforts over the past 20 years — removing flood-prone buildings after flooding in 2004 and 2021 — may just tamp down the totals.
“If we can get a number to [Edwards], we need a number that he's going to talk directly to the president [about],” Corbin said. “[Edwards] says he's going to push through all the red tape and try to get it here. I'm just telling you what I've been told.”
Rogers added that there’s an uncertain number of people staying with family or friends who may not be on the radar as far as housing needs are concerned.
“I don't know how you get a handle on that, because, again, you're dealing with mountain people that don't ask for help,” he said.
Ensley wanted to know if, after short-term fixes like trailers are deployed, the federal government could help the county build permanent housing. Corbin said he thought so.
Insecurity about the reliability of the 100-year floodplain level endures; Ensley said that some folks who want to build back on their own land need to elevate their houses by at least a few feet, but Corbin, in consultation with insurance industry bigwigs, said that FEMA money doesn’t usually cover that. Corbin is working on a way to direct state funding to such endeavors, which will be especially important in Clyde, where the low-lying downtown area was decimated.
Morehead related the story of a recently retired county employee who owned her home, was debt free and had no flood insurance. FEMA mitigation programs can give her the tax value of the house, but with current construction costs still soaring, she’ll never be able to build back to the size and quality she once enjoyed. Morehead said that he’d already asked Edwards, Sen. Thom Tillis and Sen. Ted Budd for a $180 million direct appropriation.
“That sounds like a lot of money, but 600 homes at $300,000 apiece, that's a big range, because we've got some [damaged homes] that are major and some minor, but there are gaps,” said Morehead.
Corbin responded with his desire to pull down as many federal dollars as possible.
“We pay federal taxes for that, and when this happens here, we need to make sure we get that money,” he said. “So federal money will be requested and spent, and then we need to make sure we put state money in where that federal money doesn't cover.”
During Tropical Storm Fred — the source of 2021’s deadly flooding in the eastern part of the county — the state was helpful, Ensley said, especially as state monies can be leveraged to draw down more federal dollars. And they’ll be needed; reiterating the uncertainty, Morehead cited a “scary” 2010 study by the Appalachian Regional Commission that focused on the economic impact of an Oct. 25, 2009, rockslide on Interstate 40 very near to where Helene eroded parts of the roadbed, pulling the eastbound lanes into the Pigeon River in several distinct areas.
The 2009 rockslide resulted in the highway being closed for six months.
“I don't want to sound like Chicken Little, but a lot of the things that we're going to need are unknown and specifically related to [I-40] and the Blue Ridge Parkway being out of commission for we don't know how long,” he said. A recent report suggested $1.4 billion in annual economic impact to rural communities from Parkway tourists. “Just from the county side, it looks like that could be close to $200 million a year in gross retail sales [lost], if the trend from 2010 was applied to 2024.”
According to a report of economic indicators produced by the Haywood Chamber of Commerce, in January 2024 retail sales were about $87.1 million, or roughly $1 billion a year. A $200 million loss would be disastrous for local businesses.
Morehead said that hotels, restaurants and retail establishments took a bigger hit than essential businesses like pharmacies in 2009, simply due to the unpredictable nature of the hospitality industry.
Last week, Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers called for direct financial assistance to affected businesses. Gov. Roy Cooper and Tillis, appearing in Canton Oct. 18, both seemed open to the idea, especially as some businesses remain reticent to take out loans from the Small Business Administration because they’re still paying them back from Tropical Storm Fred or COVID-19. Tillis and Cooper seemed open to the idea.
A decline in revenue on the order of $200 million would eventually ripple out into the budgets of local governments; most or all of those retail sales involve sales tax, portions of which make their way into state and county coffers. Responsible governments don’t use sales tax revenue for recurring line-item spending, but either way, a loss of tax revenue has repercussions.
“We could lose growth in our property tax base because of this,” Morehead said.
That’s apparent in Clyde, where much of the tax base is located right on the Pigeon River. Ensley asked Corbin to inquire about state money that could be used to develop, or redevelop, Clyde’s downtown. After flooding in 2004, the state gave Clyde around $1 million to develop a 40-unit subdivision, Barefoot Ridge, to bolster the tax base.
Ensley and Rogers serve on the board of the French Broad River Metropolitan Planning Organization, a state/local partnership that plans big-picture transportation strategy in parts of Buncombe, Haywood and Madison counties, as well as the entirety of Henderson County. Ensley said he’d read a report from the MPO that said DOT would be awarding a contract for the permanent fix of I-40 by the end of this month, but repairs will take time.
Other reports say I-40 could reopen at limited capacity in January, but in the meantime, Morehead is also concerned about how Helene will affect the local labor market.
“My ask is, we need some help, but I don't know how bad it is yet because a lot of it is based on estimated unemployment numbers that could go up,” Morehead said.
In September 2009, just before the I-40 rockslide, the unemployment rate in Haywood County was 8.4%. By January 2010, it had ticked up to 11.9% — equal to the pre-COVID high of January 1992. Since COVID, unemployment in Haywood County has lingered near historic lows, and as of August was just 3.7%.
On Oct. 16, Cooper issued an executive order increasing the state’s meager $350 weekly unemployment payments to $600, but that will only go so far, for so long.
As in 2021, county and local government staff are going above and beyond the call of duty, working more hours on more complex tasks involving more outside agencies. Morehead said that the county would ask for reimbursements for overtime pay, but might still have to add staff, particularly first responders.
The obliteration of I-40, in particular, is slowing response times in some cases from 30 minutes to 90 minutes.
“If we're losing revenue from sales tax and other things, [if] we can't keep up with the demand, we may actually have to ask an appropriation for operating [expenses],” Morehead said. “I think that is tough to ask for, because it has to be sustainable, but out of just need, I think that's where we're going to be.”
SCHOOL DAZE
Also as in 2021, Haywood County Schools suffered flood damage to school properties, notably to Pisgah High School’s riverside football stadium, as well as other athletic fields. Then, it was around $10 million. This time, it’s $5.1 million, including $520,000 already spent — mostly on insurance deductibles, unlocking reimbursements.
But of the $4.6 million in damage remaining, most figures are only estimates, like for Tuscola grass field repairs ($2.5 million), Pisgah and Canton Middle School grass field repairs ($965,000) and the demolition of Central Haywood High School ($500,000).
Pisgah’s Memorial Stadium persists as a controversial issue. Western North Carolina takes its high school football, including the decades-long county clash rivalry between Pisgah and Tuscola High School, very seriously, but that stadium is more than just a place where champions are made — it’s a monument to Canton’s war dead.
Flooding in 2021 wiped out the Black Bears’ 2021 and 2022 home schedules, and the stadium had just reopened in August 2023.
If the field is going to flood every three years, or flood three times in 20 years as it already has, some think it may be time to seek a new site, farther away from the river. That discussion, however, will likely be as muddy, turbid and tempestuous as the floodwaters that rose nearly to the top of the visitors’ bleachers.
“That's a local decision to be made between county commissioners and the school board, and I will not get involved in that discussion,” Corbin said.
“That’s a wise man right there,” Francis laughed.
DIVIDED WE FALL
Corbin concluded the meeting with a wide-ranging discussion about linking up the disparate municipal water systems from Canton to Maggie Valley and everywhere in between. Currently, Canton takes its water from the Pigeon River, just upstream from the town. The town then sells some of that water to Clyde, so when Canton’s service is interrupted, Clyde has to get water from the Junaluska Sanitary District.
“During this storm, we saw the need for water. We saw what our weaknesses were during this storm and I think we know what we need to do to make sure that if this happens again, that the water's coming,” Ensley said. “Waynesville has got a great reservoir up there. Maggie Valley's got two water intakes, one at Ghost Town, one on Campbell Creek. The Maggie Valley Sanitary District has bought huge tracts of land to protect that. I see in the future us having a great water system here in the county. Waynesville and Maggie Valley's water systems, as long as we’re connected to that, I think we’re good.”
It's a topic that’s regularly discussed at council of governments meetings, but the cost and the ability to implement such grand plans without soaking customers have torpedoed the issue.
“We've had federal money that's come down. We've had state money. Last time, we set aside $200 million, I think. We got quite a bit out this way for that,” Corbin said. “We got a chunk for Robbinsville and several towns got it.”
Ensley also floated the idea of centralized wastewater treatment facilities — another expensive proposition made more complicated by the status of Canton’s wastewater treatment plant, which is operated at almost no cost to taxpayers by Pactiv Evergreen on the site of its closed paper mill. The plant failed on Sept. 27, and since then has been spewing untreated wastewater into the Pigeon River. In March, Pactiv will no longer have to treat the town’s municipal wastewater. Canton has a stash of cash to build another plant, but no site, no permits and a timeline of several years after groundbreaking until it can operate. A proposed deal to sell the parcel, along with the plant, was in the works and was thought to include a wastewater treatment solution, but now that deal appears to be languishing. Nevertheless, regionalizing Haywood County’s water infrastructure may garner serious consideration in the future.
“Chimney Rock and Lake Lure are having the same conversation,” Corbin said of two Rutherford County municipalities devastated by Helene. “We’ve had the same conversation about internet, like power [from] two different directions — one gets cut off, you still got it.”
The General Assembly is expected to take up the relief bill on Oct. 24, which will largely determine which of the things Haywood County asks for — and which of the things 24 other federally declared disaster counties in Western North Carolina ask for — arrive, and when.
“I think the communities need to understand that we all need to work together right now,” Ensley said.
