Unsightly debris that has plagued mountain rivers since Helene’s destructive flooding Sept. 27 will be removed by June 1, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Friday, and that includes downed trees and vegetation as well as vehicles, appliances and other storm debris.
“So we’ve got pretty clear guidance from the state as well as FEMA, in terms of our target goals, to get this mission completed,” Corps Col. Brad Morgan told a press gathering Friday afternoon at the Swannanoa River. “So the mission you see behind me, the waterway mission, our target for completion is June 1.”
That includes all waterways in 25 counties, Morgan said. In Buncombe County, that means the Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers, which were deluged with fallen trees, ruined vehicles, propane tanks and other detritus, are scheduled to be cleaned up by June 1.
The deadline for the Corps’ private property debris removal mission is June 30, Morgan said, and April 1 for right-of-way debris removal.
“So that’s very loud, that’s very clear — those are the dates that FEMA, the Corps of Engineers, and the state of North Carolina, as well as some of the other counties (that) are also using their own contracts, their own capability, to work the debris — we’ve all agreed to these dates, and we’re all working to push to meet those dates right now,” Morgan said.
Morgan said river debris removal work started in Buncombe County on Feb. 1, and 16,000 cubic yards of debris were cleared in six days along about two miles of river. The Corps estimates it will have to remove 1 million cubic yards of debris by June 1, although Morgan said that number will likely rise.
From left, Rob Ray, a vice president with the primary debris removal contractor, AshBritt, and U.S. Army Corps Col. Brad Morgan addressed the media on Friday at the Swannanoa River. // Watchdog photo by Starr Sariego
Morgan, as well as Rob Ray, a vice president with the primary debris removal contractor, AshBritt, and Buncombe County Solid Waste Manager Dane Pedersen, addressed the news conference. They previously had given elected officials and city and county officials a tour of the work.
They stood by the Swannanoa River off Old Farm School Road, where two large Ponsse timber machines crawled through the river behind them, snatching up fallen trees and limbs and placing them into a hopper for removal.
“Obviously, we’re continuing to ramp up our staff and our crews,” Morgan said. “We expect to have 10 working by this weekend, with another 20 to 25 within the next week.”
Work on French Broad in RAD to begin soon
Work on the French Broad River in the River Arts District will start soon, but Morgan said because the river is deeper there they’ll have to bring in different types of equipment, including small barges.
Morgan and Ray said contracts were in place before President Donald Trump visited Swannanoa on Jan. 24, issuing an executive order and vowing to speed up the recovery process. Trump’s order, and another from North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, helped expedite the work, Morgan said.
“FEMA provides me my mission assignments to the Corps of Engineers to do the work,” Morgan said. “So we were extremely close to getting to where we are today prior to the executive order, and that just helped us push over, break through some of those bottlenecks to get actually into what we’re seeing behind me.”
Morgan said the Corps has about $500 million in contracts in place right now for cleanup, “and I expect that number to continue to grow.”
Ray said the flood damage here is the worst he’s seen in 23 years in the industry. His company will double crews to 16 in the area in the coming week, meaning more than 250 workers will be on the cleanup job.
The job is difficult because of the mix of debris present in the river.
“You can very easily see all the woody debris, but in a lot of these piles of that woody debris, you’re going to find household hazardous waste,” Ray said. “You’re going to find crushed vehicles in the larger piles — basically anything that’s in your home or in a building, we’re going to find in these streams.”
AshBritt has to separate the debris, recycle what’s possible and then take what remains to collection sites in Enka and Beacon Village.
Pedersen said so far about 1 million cubic yards of debris has been removed in Buncombe County.
Amanda Edwards, chair of the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners, termed the news “significant progress for Buncombe County.”
“I am grateful for the work of the Army Corps, AshBritt and the support from our federal and state officials for keeping their foot on the gas pedal and not forgetting that western North Carolina exists,” Edwards said. “And thank you to the residents of Buncombe County for your patience and reminding us how important this work is to recovery and to rebuilding Buncombe County back even stronger.”
Asked why it has taken more than four months to get the river debris rolling, Morgan said, “It’s been a combination of a multitude of things.” That includes securing permission from private property owners for the debris removal, securing proper entry to the river, conducting site and hazard assessments, and then securing contractors.
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting during this crisis is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-03-24 14:48:00
(The Center Square) – Citing national security, foreign influence on higher education in America and transparency, a report from Americans for Public Trust says a North Carolina private university received more than $94.1 million in foreign money last year.
Duke University, in Durham, was only behind Cincinnati ($237.1 million), Cornell ($203.8 million), Harvard ($150.1 million), Stanford ($125.9 million), Juilliard ($119.9 million), Massachusetts Institute of Technology ($106 million) and Texas A&M ($102 million). Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of the nonpartisan nonprofit report author, said elected leaders need to “crack down on reporting lapses” at the institutions,
“For far too long, a staggering amount of foreign money has flowed into our colleges and universities with little to no transparency or oversight,” Sutherland said in a release. “Much of these foreign funds can be traced back to countries that have well-established adversarial relationships with the United States or engage in direct or indirect malign activities against our country. It is no coincidence that, in the same time period, we’ve seen a rise in anti-American demonstrations and radical ideas being cultivated at these institutions.”
The DETERRENT Act, shepherded in the U.S. House of Representatives by Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner of Washington, is billed as “defending education transparency and ending rogue regimes engaging in nefarious transactions.” It expands oversight and disclosure requirements related to foreign sources and institutions of higher education.
The bill was filed Feb. 15 and includes reporting to the Department of Education. Since then, President Donald Trump has called for the elimination of the department though not all its activities. Those, such as Pell Grants, would be transferred to another oversight authority.
Foreign gifts and contracts exceeding $250,000 to American colleges and universities must be disclosed, per federal law. Americans for Public Trust says “fewer than 300 of the approximately 6,000 U.S. institutions self-report foreign money each year.”
The nonprofit accuses “bad actors” of using “foreign funding to influence research, campus policies, and the curriculum to push anti-American narratives.” It further said, “some of the largest foreign contributors to U.S. schools include countries with histories of espionage, intellectual property theft, and efforts to sow discord in America.”
by Sarah Michels, Carolina Public Press March 24, 2025
North Carolina voters are partial to purple — in a political sense, at least. In last year’s statewide elections, they opted for six Democratic and eight Republican outcomes. While Republican President Donald Trump carried the state by three points, voters also chose Democrats Josh Stein for governor and Jeff Jackson as attorney general. Republicans and Democrats also split victory spoils in Council of State and statewide judicial races. In fact, no state was more split than North Carolina.
Split-ticket voting, or choosing different parties for different offices, is not a new trend in North Carolina. In the past half century, voters have chosen a governor of one party and a president of another in eight of 13 elections as well as different parties for senator and governor in six of eight elections.
But in an increasingly nationalized political scene, the purple pattern gets more peculiar.
“It seems like North Carolina is the exception to the rule,” said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. “Almost everywhere else in America, there’s no ticket splitting.”
Split decisions
In a sense, the impetus of North Carolina’s ticket-splitting culture may be geography.
As a peripheral southern state, North Carolina has found itself caught between the political ideologies of the North and South throughout history, Cooper said.
“The South was overwhelmingly Democratic,” he explained. “We were not as Democratic as our southern neighbors, and when the South went overwhelmingly Republican, we didn’t go quite as Republican as our neighbors. We’re sort of sitting somewhere in the middle.”
After the South switched to Republican support, rural North Carolina Democrats held on to power in some offices. But that’s also changed. Now, rural North Carolinians tend to vote Republican while urban voters lean Democratic.
While the environment that originally allowed the state’s ticket-splitting culture to develop is history, there are several newer factors that continue the trend.
For one, North Carolina is among the fastest-growing states, with steady growth since the 1990s, Carolina Demography Director Nathan Dollar said. Most of that growth comes from people moving to North Carolina from other states and countries — 47% of the population was born out of state, including a 9.3% foreign-born population.
They come here largely from Florida, New York and South Carolina, Dollar said, and tend to gravitate towards urban areas. They include younger people, who are more likely to register unaffiliated, and older, wealthy retirees. And they naturally bring different cultural norms and political ideologies with them.
Those moving to North Carolina for jobs may have more formal education, which is sometimes a trait of split-ticket voters, according to Cooper. But besides that, he said there doesn’t seem to be any major demographic patterns of split-ticket voters.
Republican state Rep. Harry Warren sees the impacts of growth in his Rowan County district, which has a history of Scottish and Irish immigration.
“You have people from different nationalities that came into the state and are bringing with them their personal histories and experiences,” Warren said. “And I think it’s just a carryover generationally, as people pass down their values and their beliefs from one generation to the next.”
One of the biggest stories in state politics — and a significant contributor to North Carolina being purple — is the rise of unaffiliated voters. Since Republicans opened their primaries to unaffiliated voters in 1988, unaffiliated registration has steadily increased (Democrats subsequently opened their primaries in 1996).
“I think that probably leads to a little bit more ticket splitting as well because these are people that are not moored to a party in the way that a registered Democrat or registered Republican might be,” Cooper said.
In 2018, unaffiliated voter registration surpassed Republican registration; it later overtook Democratic registration in 2022. Now, 38% of registered voters are unaffiliated. These unaffiliated voters are disproportionately younger and from out-of-state. Warren said that likely reinforces the purpleness of the state.
North Carolinians’ desire to vote in a more purple way led to the elimination of the straight ticket option in a 2013 election omnibus bill sponsored by Warren. Eliminating the option meant that North Carolina voters could no longer check a box at the top of their ballots to automatically vote for all the Democratic or Republican candidates; they had to fill out each race separately.
“It encourages people then to go out and learn about the candidates and evaluate the candidates on the basis of their policies and what they’re proposing, rather than just arbitrarily voting for a party right down the line,” Warren said.
A ‘blue dot in a red city’
Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers is a Democrat, but he’s “not one of those,” according to his majority Republican constituents.
Growing up with a father and grandfather heavily involved in politics, Smathers was taught to qualify his Democratic identity; he was a “North Carolina Democrat” or a “Jim Hunt Democrat.” That is to say, more moderate than the national Democratic Party.
While most Canton elections are technically nonpartisan, with no “D” or “R” next to candidates’ names, Smathers is a “blue dot in a red city.” Republicans hold every seat on the Haywood County Board of Commissioners and Canton went for Trump by a 34-point margin in the 2024 election.
But no Republican challenged Smathers in his 2017 and 2021 mayoral races.
That makes sense to Smathers; so much of local government is practical leadership, or “getting things done.” People judge him and his team based on their accomplishments, not their party affiliation.
In Canton, that’s meant leading the community through the aftermath of 2021’s Tropical Storm Fred, a subsequent paper mill closure and, now, Helene recovery.
After Helene hit, there was a decision made among local leaders, Smathers recalled.
“We knew how toxic the political climate was, and so it’s not saying everyone always agrees, but all of us have made a really strong effort to make this bipartisan in some regards,” Smathers said. “We want that to be one of the lasting legacies of all these crises that we have faced in Canton.”
North Carolinians often split their ticket along federal and state lines. That tracks for Smathers.
If he ever gets criticized, it’s usually for something the national Democratic Party did, he said.
“I think out here, even ones who didn’t vote for him, I think people respect (former Democratic Gov.) Roy Cooper, I think people are thinking Josh Stein’s doing a good job…They view myself, people like Gov. Stein, differently than people at the national level.”
Democracy at work
States like North Carolina tend to get a lot of attention — in the form of candidate visits and ad spending — during presidential election years. In the past three presidential elections, North Carolina has been among the top three most-visited states.
Does that translate to special political favors from national politicians? Not really, Western Carolina’s Cooper said.
However, being a split-ticket state does have some other political reverberations. It forces candidates running for statewide office to make broader appeals to a more diverse electorate, Warren said.
And it pushes people like Stein, faced with a majority Republican legislature, to include and acknowledge the GOP in task forces and speeches.
But while splitting the ticket may appear to encourage politicians to reach across the aisle, at least rhetorically, it doesn’t necessarily lead to more moderate policy, Western Carolina’s Cooper said.
“In a close state, when you get power, you try to use it quickly, and so they tend to act with haste more often,” he said. “So actually you see, in some ways, less moderate actions in closer states because they know they have to act right then or else they might lose power.”
This session’s Senate Bill 58 is a prime example of that type of policy, according to Democracy NC Policy Director Katelin Kaiser.
Senate Bill 58, presented by a Republican-led legislature, would bar the attorney general, a newly-elected Democrat, from filing litigation against any presidential executive order.
Kaiser sees the move as trying to “undermine certain choices of voters.”
“Seeing split tickets in North Carolina, that is North Carolinians’ choice to be able to have and decide,” she said. “And so if they want a Republican president and they want a Democratic attorney general, that is, I think … democracy working.”
SUMMARY: North Carolina’s new State Treasurer, Brad Brer, aims to make the state pension plan more aggressive to achieve higher returns, comparing the current investment strategy to driving too slowly. He suggests potentially investing in assets like Bitcoin, albeit cautiously, starting with a very small percentage despite legislative allowance for up to 10%. Brer also faces a significant deficit in the State Health Plan. His proposed solutions include seeking more funding from lawmakers and implementing a sliding scale for premium increases. He also intends to reinstate coverage for weight loss drugs, viewing them as a long-term cost-saving measure. While acknowledging the need for legislative cooperation, Brer believes his role is largely non-political.
North Carolina State Treasurer Brad Briner left a career in high finance to pursue one of the highest-pressure roles in state government. Briner oversees the state pension plan and the state health plan, which serve hundreds of thousands state government employees, retirees and their families. Briner recently spoke with WRAL’s Dan Haggerty about everything from investment strategies to coverage of weight-loss drugs. Haggerty offers highlights from their wide-ranging conversation.
