North Carolina only has enough money to repair around 300 of the thousands of private roads and bridges damaged by Hurricane Helene, state officials said at a Monday meeting for the Governor's Recovery Office of Western North Carolina.
The state launched the $175 million program last year as a way to reconnect the homes that have remained cut off from public roadways since Hurricane Helene.
An initial estimate the governor's office conducted in late 2024 set the damage to private roadways at $460 million. That number has now ballooned to over $500 million.
One reason for that is because the projects are more expensive now than when the infrastructure was first built.
“A bridge that used to be a 10-foot bridge now requires a 75-foot bridge because of the span of the creek. And so, those figures and the cost of those bridges goes up exponentially,” said Don Campbell, Chief of Staff for North Carolina Emergency Management.
While applications remain open through Feb. 28, most of the funding is already committed, Campbell said.
There have been 51 repairs completed, with 236 additional projects in progress.
“That really is going to take the majority of the funding that we have available to the program right now,” he said.
The state has received more than 3,600 unique applications, according to Campbell. An estimated 7,000 private roads, culverts and bridges were damaged from Helene. FEMA’s Individual Assistance program has paid for some of these repairs, but that assistance is capped at $42,000.
Campbell said the state is prioritizing the projects that serve the highest number of households first, as well as households that do not have access to emergency services.
Gov. Josh Stein asked for $1.6 billion specifically for the repair of private and municipal roads and bridges as part of the $13.5 billion request he made last year. This month, Stein and other GROW NC committee members returned to Washington, D.C. to advocate for the funding.
“We've been pushing hard and we've seen some bipartisan interest in our congressional delegation to do more for Helene recovery,” he said. “We're going to keep pushing and keep pushing.”
