DOT outlines I-40 rebuild: With environmental permitting process over, real work begins
Kyle Perrotti photo
The signs are still there lining the fragile bank separating Interstate 40 from the Pigeon River — chunks of jagged asphalt, wayward pipes, rusty cables bent into submission by nature.
Just 11 months ago, as Hurricane Helene mercilessly swamped the whole region, the river, now low and calm, was force-fed by its tributaries and swelled to the point it carried away 10 sections of I-40’s eastbound lanes over about a five-mile stretch near the Tennessee border.
Following a year of seemingly slow progress and few details about efforts to restore the vital stretch of highway, the public now has more information than ever about not only how the highway will be rebuilt, but also how engineers are planning for the highway to stand firm against the next big flood.
Last Thursday, engineers from the North Carolina Department of Transportation spoke to a gaggle of reporters from around the state, East Tennessee and Upstate South Carolina, providing some of the details people in Haywood County and beyond have sought for the better part of a year. The most notable facts: the project will cost an estimated $1.4 billion and is forecasted to be finished in 2028.
Wesley Grindstaff has been involved in this project’s planning since the floodwaters receded the afternoon of Sept. 27, 2024 and in March, NCDOT announced that he’d been promoted to the Division 14 engineer, meaning he oversees the state’s 10 westernmost counties. There are many ongoing projects Grindstaff must attend to as part of the larger Helene recovery, but none are quite like I-40. Grindstaff, a Cherokee County resident, never thought he’d see such destruction in his own backyard. He compared encountering the breathtaking immensity of the damage on I-40 to “seeing the ocean for the first time.”
“[The project] is beyond the scope of anything we have ever done. It’s considerable,” Grindstaff said.
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Following the devastation Helene wrought late last September, NCDOT anticipated opening one lane in each direction in January, but that was delayed until March after a chunk of asphalt unexpectedly broke off and fell into the river below, a reminder of the perilous nature of the initial repairs.
A machine drives a soil nail into the embankment. Now, NCDOT has installed 128,000 square feet of soil nail walls. NCDOT photo
For the first phase of repairs, Wright Brothers Construction and GeoStabilization International shored up what was left of the eastbound lanes and created the temporary safe passage motorists are using now. To stabilize the land under the road, crews installed 128,000 square feet of soil-nail walls, which anchor the slopes and are covered with a thick layer of shotcrete, which is basically concrete applied using a high-velocity sprayer. Sensors were installed in the 10 affected areas to detect soil movement under the road. If there’s even the slightest shift, an engineer is alerted via text message and email, and the severity of the problem and whether there are any imminent safety hazards are assessed.
During a February visit to I-40, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy outlined a plan to save time and money. Instead of sourcing rock from offsite, up to 50 miles away, they’d instead use what’s called a “borrow” site from across the river in the Pisgah National Forest.
“If we get that local rock, it’s going to mean this project happens much more cost effectively, and probably in a third of the amount of time,” Duffy said in February. “So the Forest Service has been willing to streamline, fast track the process, and we’re hopeful that we get a positive answer, which means we get the I-40 open that much quicker.”
While Duffy didn’t offer many details during his visit, the plan has become clearer over the course of the summer.
The first step happened on March 25, when the U.S. Forest Service conveyed a temporary federal land transfer to Federal Highway Administration. On March 28, the FHWA conveyed a Temporary Construction Easement in the Forest to the NCDOT for the borrow material.
In June, NCDOT announced that out of seven potential spots to dig into the earth, it had selected a 33-acre site from which to draw the rock and a nearby 11.5-acre site where overburden material will be stored. The overburden material — rocks, sand and dirt hauled out of the construction site during the project — can be stored and reused in other phases later on.
On Aug. 1, NCDOT announced that it had received the required permits from the Army Corps of Engineers and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to begin sourcing rock. This allowed for what NCDOT Secretary Joey Hopkins called the “most significant phase” of construction.
As the permitting processes played out, workers constructed a causeway that runs along the river below I-40 for about five miles. Wide enough to accommodate the passage of one large construction vehicle in each direction, the causeway will be used to move material, equipment and personnel as needed. Even construction of the causeway required a significant effort, including bridging across large boulders that couldn’t be moved to create a level surface.
“So our whole goal with building our causeway and all road is to stay out of traffic, for not to impede traffic, and for traffic not to impede us,” Blake Soblesky, an engineer and project manager for design subcontractor RS&H, said.
When the project is complete, the causeway will be removed.
NCDOT’s Josh Deyton takes questions from reporters. Kyle Perrotti photo
More recently, workers built a narrow haul road across the river on top of large culverts to ideally allow for minimal disturbance to the river and surrounding land. The haul road disappears into the dense woods of the Pisgah National Forest, currently allowing the transportation of overburden materials and personnel to prepare the 33-acre site for mining.
The borrow site is only about 1,000 feet from the south bank of Pigeon River with Harmon Den Road, referred in planning and permitting documents as Buzzard Roost Road, running right through the middle. That road has been temporarily closed.
The next step is to construct a pair of temporary steel truss bridges, prefabricated by Acrow, a New Jersey company that specializes in such projects. At the east end of the causeway where the haul road now crosses the river is a dusty workcamp with several portable structures and a variety of construction equipment, the temporary base for the workforce that will swell to 500 during the busiest construction phases. This is also where the concrete will be mixed using rock harvested from the borrow site. Engineers refer to it as “rock crusher city.”
Soblesky echoed what Duffy had previously said, telling reporters that sourcing materials across the river will save time by making the transit shorter, and everyday drivers will see fewer dump trucks on the highways, which improves overall commute times and safety. According to NCDOT’s 169-page application for the DEQ permit to establish the borrow site, the 3 million cubic yards of rock needed for the project would have come from 20 to 50 miles away and required 1,200 daily trips. By using the borrow site, that drive becomes much shorter and will only require 500 daily trips.
From the time Duffy made his announcement almost seven months ago, there have been questions surrounding the permitting process to create what’s legally a mine in the national forest, especially regarding potential environmental impacts to the river and national forest. Although the creation of a borrow site in the Pisgah National Forest felt like a foregone conclusion, publicly available documents and emails created during the permitting process show that the review and implementation of follow-up actions was thorough — even cumbersome — and included a good deal of back and forth between regulators and engineers. It appears that thousands of working hours were spent to ensure that the borrow site would have the least impact possible to the surrounding forest.
Attached to the application is a series of documents noting that no potential archeological sites are expected to be encountered, but that if something of potential cultural significance is found, work must stop right away. It notes that engineers sent two letters each to the Cherokee Nation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Muscogee Nation and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. Only the Muscogee Nation replied, saying its leaders weren’t aware of any areas of concern near the borrow or waste sites.
After the application was submitted, NCDEQ’s Department of Water Resources sent along a list of questions that challenged several of the stated plans, including the location of the haul road, potential of storm runoff from the borrow site into surface water and the footprint of a proposed retaining wall.
Some potential borrow sites were rejected because they were too close to crucial infrastructure tied to the Waterville Dam and also Mt. Sterling Creek; others were rejected because they presented other logistical challenges that would cost more money or take more time. One site had too much sensitive old growth forests and was a peregrine falcon habitat. Throughout the process, along with considering damage to falcon nesting sites, most attention was paid to preservation of native brook trout and bat habitats.
“The Pigeon River is bounded by extensive USFS holdings that support abundant and diverse terrestrial wildlife,” one North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission memo notes.
When it comes to the public-facing campaign, NCDOT has gone above and beyond to address the environmental concern in its press releases, saying in one that evaluations included “extensive” field surveys and review with numerous state and federal agencies.
A truck crosses the haul road from rock crusher city into the Pisgah National Forest. Kyle Perrotti photo
“The efforts to rebuild I-40 are critical to the long-term recovery of Western North Carolina, and when looking at the time and resources needed to get this work complete, sourcing material from the Pisgah makes the most sense,” Forest Supervisor James Melonas with the National Forests in North Carolina said in one release. “Once this critical work is complete, we will have the opportunity to improve ecological resiliency through forest restoration, as well as improve game and aquatic habitats.”
After some back and forth, the plan was refined to consider how to best protect the river and woods, and on July 24 it was approved by NCDEQ.
Soblesky said the rock drawn from the borrow site meets all state-required specifications and posited that by drawing materials from across the river, the cost savings will be “tremendous.”
“It would cost probably a third to get materials on site, and it would probably cut the time in half,” he said.
Over the last 11 months, a whole host of state and federal officials have visited the spot around mile marker 3 where the eastbound lanes of I-40 disappear entirely, leaving a sharp chasm that has served as the backdrop for pictures seen across state and national media outlets. Those officials, including former Gov. Roy Cooper, current Gov. Josh Stein, Rep. Chuck Edwards, Sen. Thom Tillis, Duffey and Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg each made a visit. All pledged that not only will I-40 be rebuilt — it’ll be stronger than ever.
“I’d say it’s clear that to do right for the 2030s and 40s and 50s, we can’t have the same assumptions that led us in the 1950s,” Buttigieg said during his visit in October of last year, about a month after the storm. “I hope and pray that nothing like this is visited upon this community ever again. But the reality is, the United States is in for more frequent and extreme weather events.”
“We may need to rethink how we build those back for more resiliency in the future, versus just assuming we’re pushing dirt back into the existing roadbeds and putting bridge structures back where they once were if it no longer makes sense and it’s not in the long-term best interest of the communities,” Tillis said during the same visit.
At the media visit on Aug. 28, engineers explained exactly how they intend to build a more resilient stretch of highway through the Pigeon River Gorge. The new fix will combine two methods to shore up the embankment on which the highway sits, which previously had no form of additional support or protection from the river, which hadn’t raged as it did during Helene as long as the road had been there.
This is the first time NCDOT has ever used these methods in a road construction project.
Some sections of the embankment will be fortified using use rolled concrete, which NCDOT Division 14 Construction Engineer Josh Deyton described as “very stiff” with “zero slump.”
“Basically, it’s very hard to work with,” Deyton said.
Rolled concrete is a dryer, denser material with a higher load-bearing capacity and greater resistance to thermal-stress cracking than its run-of-the mill cousin. Not typically used in road construction, rolled concrete is more commonly seen in dams. Deyton expects that in some areas, the “very massive” rolled concrete retaining walls will be up to 70 feet tall and 30 feet thick.
The other innovative method will be the use of interlocking pipe pile walls, which are secured into bedrock horizontally and vertically using large sacrificial drill bits. These are typically used in cofferdams and drydocks, where it’s essential to keep construction sites dry.
According to the website for ApexRoc, which manufactures such products, the drill bits “are essential cutting tools designed to create holes while installing self-drilling anchors or hollow bars.” The pipe piles themselves are large steel casings that will be anchored into bedrock all the way down close to the elevation of the river and filled with concrete. Because these pipe piles are connected to each other using watertight ball-and-socket connections, when the river again rises, it ideally won’t get behind the wall and undermine the roadway.
Soblesky said that determinations whether to use the pipe pile walls or the rolled concrete depend on the height of the wall and proximity to the water, among other factors. Retaining walls will be built up over the water level seen during Helene and are designed to withstand an even greater flow rate.
As the retaining walls are constructed, crews will use material removed from other parts of the construction site and the quarry and will backfill behind the wall.
NCDOT has spent a total of about $600 million on repair projects following storms over the last 23 years, according to Grindstaff, the division 14 engineer. It’s estimated that the total price tag of such repairs due to Helene will be $5 billion. Even I-40 alone will dwarf previous numbers, costing about $1.4 billion.
Sen. Thom Tillis (right) takes a look over the sharp chasm where I-40 eastbound lanes washed away. Kyle Perrotti photo
There has been much debate in state and federal legislatures over how much government funding should be used to put a dent in the $60 billion in total damage.
Some legislators approached the crisis response with a great sense of urgency in the beginning. On Oct. 16 of last year, Tillis, along with fellow North Carolina Republican Sen. Tedd Budd; Georgia Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof; and Virgina Democratic Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, wrote a letter to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget urging it to submit a detailed supplemental appropriations request that considers the full cost of recovering from Hurricanes Helene and Milton so Congress could expedite the supplemental appropriations needed.
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency will require significant additional funding to ensure it has the resources it needs for Hurricane Helene and Milton recovery, and additional federal funding will be required to support states and federal agencies’ emergency response efforts,” the letter read.
While some needs, such as small business support, have been unmet, the effort to procure funding to repair the region’s transportation infrastructure has been significant. Just after the storm, the USDOT’s Federal Highway Administration released $167 million, and in January the department sent $352 million for infrastructure repairs in North Carolina and Tennessee, with $250 million going to NCDOT to fund repairs, including those needed on I-40. In May, Duffy announced that the USDOT was providing an addition $400 million for North Carolina Helene-related road repairs. When asked by a reporter last week who’s footing the bill for repairs to I-40 as they continue, Deyton said it’ll be the federal government.
“We work with the Federal Highway Administration,” Deyton said. “The money is allocated by Congress for emergency relief funds, and those have to be approved as we go on through the project.”
Now that the project has firm direction and the promise of funding to keep the ball rolling forward on the I-40 repairs, work continues at rock crusher city. Grindstaff said he’s happy to see the project moving forward and that he’s proud of how hard everyone has labored to even get to this point, like the teams of workers who came out in subfreezing temperatures to operate the equipment that pounded the soil nails into the earth over and over again, day in and day out. Grindstaff also said it’s hard for people to have an understanding of just what goes into such a large project, the things they’ll never see.
“I’m so proud,” he said. “What people don’t realize is the amount of work that takes place behind the scenes that nobody sees. You’ve got all of your design, thousands and thousands of man hours that aren’t even accounted for until you see the final construction.”
