News

Helene damage to trail ‘could have been way, way worse’

County Engineer Marcus Jones said the Ecusta Trail emerged from Hurricane Helene relatively unscathed.

By Bill Moss, Published: November 20, 2024

Amid a celebration of the Ecusta Trail's long road to fruition and an unveiling of its new logo and website, trailer supporters braced for bad news when Henderson County Engineer Marcus Jones rose to deliver his assessment of the damage from Hurricane Helene.

“Let me assure you, 30 years being an engineer and working in the public sector, the news I’m about to give you is actually very positive news when you look at it in perspective,” he said.

Granted, the news would have been better in mid-September.

“We were on track to complete construction by December of this year. Then Sept. 28 of this year came around and gave us a little bit of setback, which was probably the only thing that was going to stop us from getting the trail done,” he said.

(The engineer noted one measure of Helene’s damage. Debris removal alone is projected to cost $4 billion — five times the previous all-time high for a hurricane in North Carolina.)

About three weeks after the county's “all hands on deck” emergency response, Jones was able to survey the trail damage.

“I was very much pleasantly surprised by the condition of the trail,” he said. “No sections completely wiped out, all the bridges were intact. There were certainly scour and erosion from the storm, especially in the Shaw’s Creek area. But overall, it was amazing how little damage there was to the trail.”

After meetings with the NCDOT engineers and the rail-trail contractor, the county agreed on a supplemental contract for $406,000 to repair the storm damage. Opening of the trail is expected to be delayed until next summer.

“It could have been way, way worse,” he said. “We are capturing the contractor’s work associated with the storm and isolating it into one change order, so Henderson County is going to try to have that money reimbursed by FEMA.” (County Manager John Mitchell previously told commissioners that FEMA covers damage to public facilities like parks and greenways.)

When he issued a similar update at a meeting last week of the county Rail Trail Advisory Committee last week, Jones noted that someone had questioned heavy-duty bridges and stormwater improvements.

“Why are y’all overbuilding the trail? We're glad we did," he said.

Assistant County Manager Chris Todd said NCDOT and the federal transportation department, which are the primary funders of the project, have strict construction rules.

“It held up because it was built to a higher standard," he said. "It’s a terrible way to test it but I think it’s evidence that that bears fruit.”