Haywood County authorizes Southern Disaster Recovery for emergency stream and private-property debris removal

Haywood County commissioners voted unanimously to authorize the county manager to issue a notice to proceed to Southern Disaster Recovery (SDR) to implement emergency stream debris removal and a private-property debris removal (PPDR) option following Hurricane Helene.

County officials and state and federal recovery staff told commissioners the work is limited to debris that poses an imminent threat to public infrastructure and that SDR can mobilize quickly. Chip, president of Southern Disaster Recovery, said the company has already removed “somewhere around, 33, 34,000 cubic yards of debris” from right-of-way work in the county and that the first waterway package — on the Pigeon River — includes about 22 eligible sites with permits in hand.

The board’s decision matters because debris jams against bridges and other structures can raise near-term flood risk and delay recovery. Commissioners were presented with two paths: proceed immediately with SDR, which county staff and the contractor said could begin rights-of-entry work and mobilize crews in about a week to 10 days; or request the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do the same work, a process county and state speakers said would require a corps assessment, bidding and contracting and could take 30–60 days.

Chip said SDR would begin by securing rights of…