The Federal Highway Administration recently issued an additional $1.15 billion worth of emergency relief or ER program funding to the North Carolina Department of Transportation to help the agency cover the cost of repairs to infrastructure damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Helene in 2024.
[Above photo by NCDOT]
With this extra funding – the largest single allocation ever under the FHWA’s ER program to a single a state – FHWA has provided a total of nearly $2 billion in funding to North Carolina alone for Hurricane Helene repairs.
“This historic investment in the recovery effort is just one of many actions my department has taken to support the region,” noted Sean Duffy, USDOT secretary, in a statement.
“Since January, we’ve toured the damage, slashed red tape, and expedited the I-40 highway rebuild,” he said.
“We will not rest until the communities devasted by Hurricane Helene are made whole again,” Duffy added.
[Editor’s note: The video below chronicles the recollections of six NCDOT employees from Divisions 13 and 14 regarding the challenges, teamwork, and resilience required of them for Hurricane Helene recovery operations.]
In late May, Duffy announced that NCDOT would receive $400 million for Hurricane Helene repair needs; part of a broader $1.5 billion ER funding allocation aimed at accelerating repairs to roads, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure damaged in various parts of the country by recent natural disasters.
USDOT added that newly confirmed FHWA Administrator Sean McMaster and other FHWA officials will join local North Carolina leaders to inspect progress on repairs to I-40.
That inspection follows Duffy’s February visit to North Carolina, where he announced a partnership between USDOT and U.S. Forest Service to secure a “Special Use” permit that allows NCDOT to source rock from Forest Service land and extract construction materials from a nearby river just one to three miles from where they are needed versus transporting them 20 to 50 miles.
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