Margie Huggins lives on 16 rolling acres of farmland in Transylvania County, North Carolina. 

The Little River winds its way up to her property line, and she likes to take a golf cart downhill from her house to sit in the shade and visit.

“We've got not quite a half a mile of Little River frontage, which is just a beautiful river that stays clear,” Huggins said.

Huggins grew up here and now takes care of this land as an adult.

A year ago last month, Helene caused the river to flood about 12 feet up the riverbanks on her property. The water didn’t reach her house, but it changed the river’s flow and covered the riverbank in mud. In March she noticed federal contractors starting work. 

“And they brought in their big heavy equipment and started coming up Little River to remove debris from Helene,” Huggins remembered.

It’s been more than a year since Hurricane Helene swept through western North Carolina. Cleanup is ongoing, and as with any natural disaster, and it can be big business. Sometimes, local communities have to navigate tough and expensive choices when it comes to debris removal.

For water quality, habitat and flood safety, it’s important to get it right. But it turns out, removing Helene’s mess has become a mess of its own. 

The contractors used the pristine Little River as a road, driving the heavy machines downriver — which Huggins believes destroyed habitat and crushed freshwater mussels.

Huggins doesn’t know exactly which company did the work by her property, but there were many federal contractors and subcontractors working on cleanup at that time, including one company called AshBritt. The company’s president of disaster response, Brian Thomason, said his workers comply with environmental regulations and guidance. 

“We apply the best management practices to the best of our ability to make the situation better and not create more harm than good,” Thomason said. 

Here’s the thing — the way that contractors are paid for disaster cleanup can cause problems. Federal contractors were often paid by the amount of dead trees and debris they took away.

“The more that was removed, the more money they could potentially make off of it,” said Hans Lohmeyer, a conservation biologist with local nonprofit Conserving Carolinas. He’s been helping Huggins steward her land, as she hopes to replant and heal it from both Helene, and the subsequent debris removal. 

Lohmeyer has observed that federal debris contractors removed healthy vegetation from riverbanks, which helps prevent flooding.

“That provides an essential role not only allowing the banks to stay stable but also providing shade for the water which then reduces water temperature overall,” Lohmeyer said.

That cool water supports beloved local critters like hellbender salamanders and brook trout, and mussels, which Lohmeyer and other regional scientists recovered, crushed, from several rivers and creeks around the region. Though much of the region’s debris removal is complete, Lohmeyer is hoping to take lessons from this past year. 

There’s more than one way to do this work, after all. Using the federal contractors employed by the Army Corps isn’t the only way.

Local communities don’t have to use the federal contractors employed by the Army Corps. Neighboring Henderson County, North Carolina didn’t use federal contractors.

It wasn’t easy, though. The advantage of letting the Army Corps handle it is that FEMA reimburses them directly, and local communities don’t have to front any of the money. 

Initially, Henderson County contracted the work directly for the sake of speed. Counties do receive FEMA reimbursement for this, but it can take a long time.

The county response and recovery director Natalia Santana-Pollard told Marketplace that Henderson County is still waiting on a FEMA reimbursement for $32 million. 

“There’s just a cash flow issue,” said Santana-Pollard. 

So, they changed tactics. The county eventually started working through the state, which operates the North Carolina State Mission Assigned Recovery Task, or the SMART, program. Eleven counties, and two towns, are participating in this program, through which the state pays contractors to conduct debris removal and gets reimbursed by FEMA.

Santana-Pollard feels the state contractors seem to listen to local concerns.

“Before a piece of equipment lands in the water,” Santana-Pollard said, “everybody knows where they're allowed to go, what they're allowed to touch, what they're not allowed to touch.”

For waterway debris removal, the major state contractors are paid by both distance traveled cleanup, and sometimes weight, instead of just by weight. Conservationists have been working with the county to protect wildlife.

“They set up a flag, and they were like don't move this branch because there's a mollusk environment there or there's salamanders in this river or whatever the case might be,” she said.

But there’s a delicate balance between removing debris quickly and doing it right that counties are still trying to navigate.

“I would argue it's the most psychologically impacting part of a hurricane or a disaster that strikes an area,” she said. 

Because, she said, there’s nothing worse than being surrounded by reminders of what your life used to be.