"The change may speed up flood recovery, but it will leave communities — and taxpayers — facing the same problems over and over again."

"Earlier this year, elected officials from 18 towns and counties devastated by Hurricane Helene gathered outside the Madison County courthouse in Marshall, North Carolina. Standing in a street still stained with the mud left behind when the French River overran its banks, they called for swifter state and federal help in rebuilding their communities.

Everyone stood in the chill of a late January day because the first floor of the courthouse, built in 1907, remains empty, everything inside having been washed away in the flood. The county’s judicial affairs are conducted in temporary offices as local leaders wrangle state and federal funding to rebuild. Local officials hope to restore the historic downtown and its most critical public buildings without changing too much about it. They, like most of the people impacted by Hurricane Helene’s rampage in September, don’t doubt another flood is coming. But they are also hesitant to move out of its way.

“When you talk about what was flooded and moving it, it would be everything, and that’s just not realistic,” said Forrest Gillium, the town administrator. “We’re not going to give up on our town.”"

Katie Myers reports for Grist in partnership with BPR April 9, 2025. [2]