This week FEMA released another $172 million in Hurricane Helene relief funds that will pay for property buyouts, waterway debris removal, road repairs and utility projects in 11 Western North Carolina counties.
North Carolina Congressman Chuck Edwards announced the funds on Monday in a press release.
A significant portion of the money, $29.1 million, is slated for 62 property buyouts in Buncombe County.
The buyouts are part of FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, a decades-old initiative that allows some homeowners to sell their houses to the local government. If the sale goes through, that land is then deeded for parks, greenways and other municipal projects.
This is the fourth batch of properties from Buncombe that has received a FEMA review, according to Kevin Madsen, the county’s Helene Recovery Officer. In total, FEMA has approved 251 properties out of the 278 properties in Buncombe County. However, some of the outstanding properties may still qualify for a buyout, Madsen said.
“We do have a number of properties that are still in review, and that may equate to a fifth batch, or they may get approved throughout the process as they’re reviewed by the federal partners,” he said.
FEMA approved the first batch of buyouts in January, after a lengthy wait for some homeowners. None of those properties have been demolished yet, but Madsen told BPR that “a number of properties” have signed paperwork to sell their homes to Buncombe County.
“We are in the early conversations with permitting for demolitions,” Madsen added.
Under the program, property owners negotiate with the state for a pre-disaster fair market value for their homes.
Once the state purchases the property, the damaged structure is demolished and handed over to the county to be preserved as open space.
Statewide, about 800 property owners who experienced damage by Hurricane Helene have applied for the program, according to data from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety. FEMA has approved more than 400 of these projects.
$32 million for Yancey County
Another large slice of the funds announced Monday, $32.2 million, will reimburse Yancey County for waterway debris removal.
The money is sorely needed for the small rural community, which has struggled to address a massive amount of debris after Helene floodwaters swallowed roads and swept away homes, trees, vehicles and pieces of infrastructure downstream.
On the South Toe River, the work was so complex that at one point, the debris removal crew needed a Blackhawk helicopter to assist in pulling items like golf carts and trailers out of the ravine.
Yancey County Manager Lynn Austin told BPR that the county has spent more than $55 million on debris removal since Helene. At times, the slow federal reimbursement process has strained the county’s budget, which sits around $39 million annually, she said.
“It has been a budget crunch,” she said. “But when it’s all said, we hopefully are more resilient and stronger.”
Yancey County has received a total of $69 million from FEMA in total, Lynn said. She estimates that the county will need around $110 million in total support from the state and federal government.
“But we’re finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said. “FEMA is finally releasing some of those funds.”
She added that she’s seen more movement from the agency in the last six months than she has “the whole time.”
The speeding up of federal aid comes after major leadership changes at the Department of Homeland Security, the federal division that oversees FEMA. In March, former department head Kristi Noem was fired. Noem required her personal signature on any expenditures over $100,000, which bottlenecked the funding approval process for many Helene recovery costs.
Noem’s replacement, Markwayne Mullin, who took over in March, pledged to speed up the flow of federal disaster aid to the state during a visit to Chimney Rock.
The funding announcement also included:
- $21.5 million to NC Emergency Management for Jackson County waterway debris removal
- $18.1 million to NC Emergency Management for Henderson County waterway debris removal
- $14.5 million to NC Emergency Management for Lake Lure waterway sediment removal
See the full list of projects from this latest funding announcement.
BPR’s Gerard Albert III contributed to this report.
