Clyde loses out on debris deal
The Town of Clyde is out more than $3,400 in storm recovery reimbursement.
Cory Vaillancourt photo
It’s not a lot of money, but it’s the principle — the hurricane-ravaged Town of Clyde is out more than $3,400 due to a baffling disconnect between FEMA reimbursement guidelines and a state program meant to ease the burden of debris removal on private land.
“I don’t think we would have moved forward with rolling out this private property debris removal process had we known there wasn’t a full guarantee we wouldn’t get reimbursed for it,” said longtime Town Administrator Joy Garland. “Cleaning up as much debris as possible is one of the highest priorities for us.”
Early in 2025, Southern Disaster Recovery and DebrisTech notified the town of Clyde that a private property debris removal program was available through FEMA.
Due to the town’s layout, there were a number of private properties that had seen debris accumulation from the Pigeon River — sometimes large debris, like cars and trees.
Garland told The Smoky Mountain News Oct. 3 she felt at the time that the program would be a great benefit, so town staff began proactively contacting property owners to advise them of the PPDR program, even going door-to-door to ensure residents were aware they could apply for assistance.
Initially, the town collected and submitted eight applications. After town review, it was determined that one of the applications was invalid due to the property being outside the flood-damaged area. Ultimately, the town submitted seven applications for reimbursement and paid contractors a total of $3,484.67 to remove debris.
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FEMA guidelines, however, require a project minimum of $3,900 to be eligible for reimbursement.
The town expected to collect and file several more applications that would have pushed the project cost well above the $3,900 threshold, but on July 7, the town enrolled in North Carolina’s State Mission Assigned Recovery Task debris removal program, which allows for any future private property debris removal to be handled directly by the state.
The unforeseen consequences of entry into the SMART program meant that Clyde would not be able to gather more applications to push the project total above the $3,900 threshold.
Complicating matters, Garland said that the FEMA project manager the town had been dealing with was pulled from the project, which was then assigned to a new group called the debris task force.
“My biggest frustration is why, 10 months out, we are now dealing with somebody different for debris projects,” she said. “Why did they pull that [manager] out and put [the project] into a debris task force?”
Unlike in other local governments, Garland said the town has been fortunate with its reimbursements so far. In April, Clyde became the only Haywood County municipality to receive FEMA reimbursement of any kind — $46,000 toward $1.7 million in damage, coming one day before the six-month anniversary of Helene. Since then, several other projects have been completed.
Although $3,484 is a relatively small amount of money compared to the town’s usual $3.5 million budget — it’s closer to $4.1 million this year, due to an influx of Helene-related grants — any expenditure of taxpayer money by a municipal government that remains in recovery mode more than a year after the storm still stings.
“It’s enigmatic of a bigger problem,” said Clyde Alderman Frank Lay. “I certainly don’t mean to suggest that I understand the complexities of all the issues [FEMA] has to deal with, but obviously some things that might only be a little issue for a town of our size can obviously be a huge issue for someone much bigger.”
Garland said the town has been in conversations with Haywood County government to see if the town’s tab can be included with county submissions for possible reimbursement.
