HELENE NOTEBOOK: Recovery will take time

Despite Tropical Storm Helene wreaking havoc over Western North Carolina and the South Carolina Upstate nearly a month ago, things will take time to return to any measure of normalcy.

In Western North Carolina this week, I attended an appointment in Henderson County, which borders Asheville.

On one of the main roads, I noticed one supermarket was closed, but there was a sign stating the pharmacy was open. I saw fencing around the building of another shopping center that had a specialty food store and a pet store. There was a chain pharmacy that had a trailer at its location for the pharmacy staff. These observations were made while driving.

I got out and entered one supermarket to purchase a couple of items before going home and noticed what looked to be an increase in traffic. Judging by the amount of cars in the parking lot, one would think it was the day before Thanksgiving and customers were stocking up before the big meal.

The next day, I drove to the grocery store in my own city and noticed the same traffic signal on the same main road has been out since the storm. While there are a lot of activities that have resumed, there are still reminders of what happened in an area that received less damage than the North Carolina mountains.

Mitchell County’s Spruce Pine without a water treatment plant

According to The (Asheville, N.C.) Citizen-Times this week, Spruce Pine’s wastewater treatment plant was totally destroyed by the storm. There is no timetable for a fix.

While the county seat of Bakersville has relatively uninterrupted water service, it’s very different in Spruce Pine.

From The Citizen-Times:

However, Spruce Pine, the largest town in the county of just over 15,000 residents, faces larger problems. While some water has returned to parts of town, its wastewater treatment plant located just north of Main Street, is entirely out of operation after the disastrous floodwaters from Tropical Storm Helene, Cook said. The storm hit the Western North Carolina mountains and river valleys Sept. 27, washing away homes and businesses and taking dozens of lives. — The (Asheville, N.C.) Citizen-Times

On Oct. 18, the NCDEQ (North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality) announced that the agency will offer low-interest loans to help local governments restore water and wastewater treatment facilities. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, at the request of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has also provided aid to address wastewater treatment facilities with over 250 engineers and contractors providing support to 25 counties in North Carolina. — The (Asheville, N.C.) Citizen-Times

BROOKINGS: Protecting voting rights during natural disasters can be damaging

According to The Brookings Institution, there are measures states can take to increase voter access.

While measures such as combining or changing polling places might be unavoidable, state and local governments can provide resources to set up emergency polling places and increasing the flexibility of early voting.

Rather than reduce voter access after storms, states and localities can work to offset the difficulty of voting post-disaster by increasing the pathways that voters have to the polls. That can mean providing resources for setting up emergency polling places and making absentee or early voting more flexible. North Carolina’s state election board is allowing voters in some counties to receive absentee ballots in person and return their ballots to other counties. The state also allowed county boards to modify early voting locations and times. Florida loosened signature requirements for sending mail-in ballots to new addresses and allowed early voting to continue until Election Day. In particular, promoting early voting may be most effective if there is insufficient time post-disaster to fully promote and implement voting by mail, as occurred during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and Hurricane Michael. — The Brookings Institution