The United States Department of Transportation has announced its largest ever allocation to one state under the Federal Highway Administration’s Emergency Relief Program.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation will receive $1.15 billion for repairs to road and bridge damage caused by Hurricane Helene. This brings the total amount of USDOT emergency relief funding toward Helene repairs to almost $2 billion.
The new allocation also builds on $400 million in federal-aid highway funds that went to North Carolina for Hurricane Helene repairs in June, part of a $1.5 billion USDOT package to assist communities impacted by storms, wildfires, flooding and other catastrophic events.
Recovery efforts haven’t stopped in North Carolina since Helene landed one year ago. The North Carolina Department of Transportation recently announced it will mine rock in the Pisgah National Forest as part of efforts to rebuild the hurricane-damaged Interstate 40 in the western part of the state.
The department plans to extract rock from a 33-acre site in the Pigeon River Gorge that lies across the river from I-40 and will store overburden material at an adjacent 11.5-acre site. Using the nearby rock instead of trucking in materials will reduce estimated construction costs and shorten timelines, the agency says.
It’s been just over a year since Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm, first made landfall in the Southeastern U.S. on September 27, 2024. The deadly storm caused billions of dollars in damage, particularly in western North Carolina and had state departments of transportation scrambling to remove debris and open roads.
