Where is the state’s $5.4 billion in ARPA funding going?

Posted on November 27, 2022 by Carolina Public Press

To conclude its ARPA reporting project, CPP looks into how other ARPA funds, the $5.4 billion distributed directly to the state, is being spent.

by Shelby Harris November 23, 2022
Carolina Public Press

The Lake Lure dam on March 24. Lake Lure received $200,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding from the state to conduct an assessment of their sewer system, located beneath the Western North Carolina lake. Photo: Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press

The federal government distributed North Carolina’s American Rescue Plan Act funds in two ways — $3.2 billion to county and city governments, and $5.4 billion to the state government.

Carolina Public Press spent the past year looking into how ARPA funds are being used by Western North Carolina’s local governments.

To conclude the project, CPP looked into how the other funds, the $5.4 billion distributed directly to the state, is being spent.

The governor’s plan
ARPA, a multitrillion-dollar piece of federal legislation signed into law in March 2021, provides relief funds to state, local and tribal governments that have been negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, “delivering immediate and direct relief to families and workers impacted by the COVID-19 crisis,” according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Governments can use ARPA funds for specific purposes, including addressing public health concerns, replacing lost revenue, expanding broadband and providing premium pay.

County commissioners and city council members throughout the state made spending decisions for the $3.2 million in ARPA funding distributed to local governments. Those decisions varied from fixing sewer systems to bolstering local farmers markets.

For the state’s $5.4 billion ARPA allotment, the N.C. General Assembly made the spending decision, including Gov. Roy Cooper’s ARPA recommendation in the state’s fiscal budget approved in November 2021.

In the recommendation, Cooper wrote that the state’s ARPA allocation should be used for “assisting those families most impacted by the pandemic, upgrading our infrastructure, preparing our workforce, promoting business development and innovation and positioning government to best serve our people.”

Investing in infrastructure
More than half of North Carolina’s ARPA funds have been earmarked to improve the state’s infrastructure, or systems and facilities that maintain the community and economy.

To date, the state has allocated about $2.9 billion (of the $5.4 billion) in ARPA funds toward addressing infrastructure deficits, according to the N.C. Pandemic Recovery Office. Of that amount, about $1.8 billion is reserved for water system improvements, such as repairs to wastewater treatment facilities.

“It’s the category of spending that will probably have the longest sale,” said Lee Lilley, director of the pandemic recovery at the Office of Governor Roy Cooper.

“Built infrastructure takes a little while to do, but it’s really transformative for a lot of places,” Lilley said.

The state is using ARPA to fund N.C. Department of Environmental Quality grants that local governments and nonprofit organizations can apply to get funding for public water system projects.

The projects, many of which will take place on the coast, will update aging infrastructure to ensure clean drinking water for nearby residents.

“Spending money on water and sewer, I mean, that’s foundational for businesses to be able to make investments and to be able to grow. It’s foundational for communities to be able to increase their housing stock,” said Scott Mooneyham from the N.C. League of Municipalities, which advised local governments through ARPA allocations.

Other state ARPA-funded programs include the $48 million Rural Transformation Grant, which provided rural communities funding to enhance communities, revitalize downtowns and strengthen neighborhoods.

ARPA Funding
Broadband in “every corner of the state”

In addition to water system improvements, the state’s other large investment into infrastructure is through its broadband expansion initiative, to which the N.C. General Assembly allocated $660 million in ARPA funding.

Expanding internet access in North Carolina rose in importance during the COVID-19 pandemic, NCDIT Secretary for Broadband and Digital Equity Nate Denny said.

“The pandemic drove home how urgent access to a high-speed internet connection is to every part of modern life: the ability to work from home, learn from home, complete homework, access telemedicine services, apply for jobs or access government services,” Denny said.

Most of North Carolina’s ARPA money for broadband expansion has been used to bolster N.C. Department of Information Technology grants, specifically the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology grant and the Completing Access to Broadband program.

Through these programs, the state uses its ARPA money to match funds that local governments or internet providers pledge to broadband infrastructure projects.

In total, $750 million of the state’s ARPA funds will go toward the GREAT grant and CAB program, according to the state budget.

“Our goal here is to ultimately connect every corner of the state to high speed internet,” Lilley said.

According to the governor’s office, broadband infrastructure projects funded through the GREAT grant will provide high-speed internet access to 487,000 households and businesses in North Carolina.

Helping small business
The second-largest portion of North Carolina’s ARPA funds — $666 million — has been disbursed to businesses and organizations, spanning from public libraries to museums.

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Within this spending category, more than $500 million in ARPA funding has been earmarked for the Business Recovery Grant, for which small businesses that suffered an economic loss of at least 20% can apply.

More than 7,000 businesses have received funding through the program, according to the governor.

The state’s remaining $1.9 billion is appropriated toward COVID-19 research, premium pay for public school teachers, housing assistance and more.

Challenges with ARPA
Despite billions of ARPA dollars allocated to address the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the issues persist.

An estimated 4 million North Carolina residents lack reliable internet access, and $16.72 billion worth of water infrastructure projects is needed statewide over the next 20 years, according to the U.S. Department of Environment Protection Agency.

“Even with the significant funding we received through ARPA and other funding sources through the pandemic, is it able to solve all the challenges local governments and communities have? Absolutely not. The scale of those challenges are far greater than the funding available,” said Nathan Ramsey from Land of Sky Regional Council, which assisted Western North Carolina’s local governments in ARPA allocation.

All ARPA funds must be allocated by 2024, a deadline the state made with ARPA’s inclusion in the state budget. Any business or organization receiving the funding must spend it by December 2026.

Key milestones for the American Rescue Plan Act from 2021 to 2026. Credit: North Carolina Association of County Commissioners

As NC’s decades-old rape kits are tested, new DNA evidence emerges

Posted on August 31, 2022 by Carolina Public Press

The N.C. Attorney General’s Office now has a website that tracks kit testing and arrests.

A sexual assault nurse examiner opens a rape kit at the Solace Center in Raleigh. File photo by Alicia Carter / Carolina Public Press

Sitting in shelves and languishing in storage rooms throughout North Carolina, more than 16,000 untested sexual assault kits contained the keys to solving decades-old crimes.

Two of these kits stored by the Durham Police Department yielded their secrets, and earlier this month, two men pleaded guilty to separate sexual assaults after law enforcement identified them using the DNA they left in crimes committed years ago.

Carlos Dominguez-Aguiar assaulted a woman at knifepoint after breaking into her home in 2015, according to the Durham County District Attorney’s Office. Timothy Rorie’s saliva was found on his victim after he broke into her home in 2005. In both cases, the evidence of the crimes sat in a Durham County Police Department untested rape kit for years, the DA’s Office said.

It’s a familiar refrain playing out in police departments and courtrooms across the state as the decades-old backlog of rape kits is finally tested.

The two kits yielded enough quality DNA to be included in the federal Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, database. Law enforcement later learned of a match in each case.

Since the assault in 2005, state records show Rorie had been convicted of several crimes, including robbery, kidnapping, burglary and assault on a female, a crime commonly associated with domestic violence, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety. Dominguez-Aguiar was serving a prison sentence in Texas for illegal reentry into the country, according to a Durham Police Department quarterly report.

After having the largest backlog of untested kits in the entire country, North Carolina is methodically working through those kits — more than 16,000 of them. A statewide initiative in 2019 to eliminate the rape kit backlog culminated with the Survivor Act, which requires any entity that collects a rape kit, such as a hospital, to notify law enforcement within 24 hours.

The act also requires testing of each rape kit in order to submit DNA profiles into CODIS. To date, the state legislature has provided millions of dollars to test the untested rape kits. So far, several men have been convicted of multiple sexual assaults, each after the state tested rape kits containing their DNA.

Statewide, around 40% of kits with DNA uploaded to CODIS, or 1,018 kits, have found a match in CODIS.

The DNA from another 1,481 kits has already been uploaded to CODIS, awaiting a hit from a possibly unknown person. That information is now displayed publicly, including down to the law enforcement agency level, on a new website.

The Durham Police Department had the largest backlog of any agency in the state, with 1,709 untested kits, according to information from the state Attorney General’s Office.

Of those, 1,469 kits have been submitted for testing and evaluation, and 94 of them have had hits in the CODIS database.

“The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative is an example of excellent coordination between Durham law enforcement and the Durham DA’s Office to hold people accountable for these violent offenses, even years after the fact,” said Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry in a statement.

There have so far been seven arrests related to 10 assaults from the department’s backlogged rape kits, the DA’s Office said.

“I also want to recognize and thank the scientists whose work made these convictions possible,” N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein said in a statement earlier this month. “DNA is a powerful tool that helps us to achieve our goals of making our communities safer and getting justice for victims.”

Fort Liberty: Divided views on changing Fort Bragg’s name

Posted on July 13, 2022 by Carolina Public Press

Fort Bragg may soon go by another name: Fort Liberty.

In last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, Congress charged the Naming Commission with renaming any military installation whose name commemorates the Confederacy.

Fort Bragg is named after North Carolina native Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general and slave owner prior to the Civil War.

The Naming Commission released the potential new name of Fort Bragg, along with eight other military installation names that commemorate the Confederacy, in April.

In October, the commission will present the new names to Congress for review, after which the U.S. Department of Defense will implement the new names by Jan. 1, 2024, per the federal legislation.

According to documents from the Naming Commission, Liberty was chosen as a name due to its value being “more essential to the United States of America and the history of its military” than any other.

Waiting for the feds: Some NC counties sat on ARPA funds for months due to unclear rules

Posted on July 12, 2022 by Carolina Public Press

By Shelby Harris
Carolina Public Press

American Rescue Plan Act funds first reached local governments in May 2021, but few Western North Carolina counties immediately appropriated the money — opting, instead, to wait for clear direction on acceptable ways to spend the federal dollars.

As of February — nine months after governments began receiving ARPA money — Avery, Burke, Madison, Mitchell and Rutherford counties did not have established plans for the funding.

Since then, all but Burke have approved projects and plans to spend ARPA funds on.

No staff, no plans

Madison and Rutherford counties attributed their delayed plans to a lack of staffing to navigate the funds.

“Anytime you’re dealing with federal funds, there are a lot of regulatory requirements, a lot of contractual requirements that you have to meet,” Rutherford County Manager Steve Garrison said Feb. 7.

“It’s a lot, and to make sure that you’re checking all the boxes correctly and can meet an audit requirement, not only locally, but federally, it’s pretty daunting.”

Shortly after Carolina Public Press published an article about these counties’ lack of plans Feb. 14, Rutherford County, which received at least $8 million more in ARPA than Avery, Madison and Mitchell, pledged $3 million of its roughly $13 million ARPA funds to broadband expansion during a county Board of Commissioners meeting in March.

Commissioners approved a measure to claim the remaining $10 million as revenue loss and transfer it to the county’s operating budget to be used on to-be-determined expenses. Claiming ARPA funds as revenue loss is one of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s acceptable uses for the funds.

Madison County officials, who also said lack of staff impeded ARPA planning, hired Ross Young, the county’s recently retired cooperative extension director, to spearhead the county’s ARPA spending in early February.

In June, Young reported that the county would also use its $4.2 million in ARPA funding on broadband expansion and revenue loss.

Delayed guidelines lead to delayed plan

Burke County officials have determined categories — public health, negative economic impacts, premium pay and water/sewer improvements — to spend ARPA dollars on, but the county has yet to solidify projects falling into these categories.

The delay, Burke County Manager Margaret Pierce said, is because of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s eight-month lag in producing final ARPA spending guidelines.

“With the final rules just released from the U.S. Treasury in January, we will be working with commissioners to identify their priorities and eligible expenses,” she told CPP in February.

Though the legislation went into effect in March 2021 and local governments began receiving their first ARPA payments just two months later, the Treasury Department did not release the final rules for how the money could be spent until January.

“Nothing has changed,” Pierce emailed July 3 in response to a CPP request for updated ARPA information.

Things have changed for Avery County, where County Manager Phillip Barrier also said planning was made difficult because of rigid guidelines.

“The culmination of (federal and state) guidelines have really just choked the process,” Barrier said about regulations restricting counties from expanding broadband — a challenge many WNC counties have encountered.

“That’s the best word for it. It has choked the process.”

Like Burke County, Mitchell County has established a general category to use its ARPA allotment on — law enforcement.

County Manager Allen Cook did not specify which projects or programs the county was looking to fund and did not respond to CPP’s multiple requests for more information.

In February, Cook said county officials had not made plans for the ARPA funding because conversations with commissioners about the best way to spend the relief money were ongoing.

Local governments have until the end of 2024 to appropriate ARPA funds and the end of 2026 to spend them. Some county officials have said that time frame is achievable, but the lag from the state and federal governments has left others concerned.

“To make this happen within that timeline, it’s a lot of pressure,” Barrier said.

“I hate to say that, you know. It’s just a lot of pressure on the small rural counties to try to figure out how to get this done. We want to do the right thing, so you hear that frustration in my voice.

“Days become weeks, and weeks have become months, and months become years.”

Internet-starved counties see hope for broadband in ARPA funds

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Carolina Public Press

Residents excited at the potential to have access, but county officials planning to leverage federal dollars to build infrastructure say they are grappling with lags in NC broadband grants system.

by Shelby Harris July 7, 2022

While several Western North Carolina counties — Buncombe, Haywood, Madison, Transylvania and Rutherford — are dedicating some pandemic recovery money to expand broadband access, only one is dedicating nearly all of its federal dollars to the initiative.

Shortly after Avery County officials announced they would use $3 million of their $3.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to provide stable internet access in the small rural county, Phillip Barrier’s phone started ringing.

“I’ve actually had mothers … call me and say, ‘Is this my address?’” said Barrier, who has been county manager since 2017.

After he told the callers that their homes did fall within the 60-mile range in southwest Avery County where broadband fiber will be installed courtesy of the ARPA funds, Barrier said, the women cried.

“You know, they’ve got four kids in the school system, and they bought the house not knowing how spotty the internet was going to be,” he said.

Census data shows only 56% of Avery County households have internet through cable, fiber or digital subscriber lines — considered the most stable internet access providers.

That’s far less than the state percentage of 68% but on par with the rest of Western North Carolina, which holds an average of 55% of households with internet through cable, fiber or DSL.

The reason that cable, fiber and DSL provide the most reliable internet connection is also the reason that counties like Avery have limited access: These services require external infrastructure that carries a hefty installation cost.

So when Barrier learned Avery County would receive more than $3.4 million in ARPA funds, he quickly began conversations with county commissioners to figure out how to use the federal money to expand broadband access.

“We felt that it would make a difference to get affordable, reliable internet,” he said.

“This was a goal we felt was achievable.”

It is achievable with ARPA money, which the U.S. Department of the Treasury distributed to local governments to use for recovery from the economic and social debris of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ARPA for broadband

One of the Treasury Department’s key focuses of ARPA is ensuring stable broadband access — a necessity highlighted during the pandemic when school, work and health care moved online.

“The urgency of the digital divide became really obvious,” said Nate Denny, secretary for broadband and digital equity for the N.C. Department of Information Technology.

The state, which received an ARPA allotment separate from those given to local governments, is using the funds to bolster broadband access throughout North Carolina.

Roughly $840 million of the state’s ARPA money is going toward the Growing Rural Economies with Access to Technology grant, the Completing Access of Broadband program and the Broadband Stop Gap Solutions project — all of which work with local governments and internet providers to expand and enhance services.

While these programs help local governments looking to ease the burden of poor connection for online school or virtual doctor’s appointments, securing the funding is a long and difficult process.

“No (government) that I’ve talked to that needs broadband — and there’s a lot of mountain counties that do — no one’s been able to spend any money yet,” Barrier said.

Broadband roadblocks

Haywood County, for example, encountered difficulties in expanding broadband after finding out that if the county used ARPA funds to match the GREAT grant during the 2021-22 application cycle, the county would be unable to use the COVID relief money for the initiative in the 2022-23 cycle.

This information came after county commissioners approved using $257,000 in ARPA funds to match the GREAT grant, Haywood County Manager Bryant Morehead said.

“We didn’t want to go on a smaller scale and not be able to expand broadband as much,” Morehead said.

In Avery County’s case, frustration with the process lies in the lag in GREAT grant awards. While applications were due in April, the state has still not announced which counties received the awards and how much they will get.

Avery County officials plan to move forward with internet expansion with or without the requested match of $250,000 in GREAT grant funding, but they can’t move on the project without knowing whether they got the initial request.

If Avery doesn’t get a GREAT grant allotment, Barrier said he’ll work with internet providers to establish a firm plan for expansion with the county’s $3 million in ARPA funds, and then apply for a match through the Completing Access of Broadband program.

Those applications, however, won’t open until GREAT grant applications close, Barrier said.

“(State and federal) guidelines have choked this process,” he said.

Even if Avery doesn’t get state assistance through the Completing Access of Broadband program, the county will continue with broadband expansion on its own. Barrier said the county’s $3 million in ARPA funds will provide fiber access to 900 homes.

While more money for the project is preferred, ensuring that at least some homes have access to solid internet connections is a step forward.

“When you live in areas that are served, you have no idea what the other areas are going through,” he said.

Why small NC mountain city is taking on nation’s largest hospital system

Posted on June 13, 2022 by Carolina Public Press

Brevard officials hope other Western NC local governments will join lawsuit alleging monopolistic practices by HCA. None have, but none say they have ruled it out.

CAROLINA PUBLIC PRESS

by Shelby Harris June 13, 2022

Emergency room entrance of Transylvania Regional Hospital in Brevard, seen here on June 9, 2022. Frank Taylor / Carolina Public Press

A small mountain city is challenging the nation’s largest hospital system in court.

Brevard officials say that, after years of community complaints and declining medical care, they saw no other option.

“Somebody’s got to be first,” said Mack McKeller, Brevard city attorney.

On June 3, attorneys from Greensboro and Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit on behalf of the city of Brevard alleging a scheme by HCA Healthcare to monopolize medical services in seven Western North Carolina counties — a scheme that the lawsuit claims has led to inflated prices, lower quality of care and loss of services.

HCA bought roughly a third of the hospitals in Western North Carolina, including Transylvania Regional Hospital in Brevard, from nonprofit Mission Health System in 2019.

“HCA purchased Mission’s assets, in significant part, because Mission had monopoly power in the (general acute care) market in the Asheville Region — monopoly power that HCA knew it could exploit to maintain and enhance Mission’s monopoly power in the relevant markets,” the lawsuit states.

Relevant markets include Madison, Mitchell, Buncombe, Transylvania, McDowell, Macon and Yancey counties, where HCA owns between 70% and 90% of the counties’ acute care providers.

City struggles with alleged monopoly

Since HCA’s purchase of Transylvania Regional Hospital, Brevard Mayor Maureen Copelof said the hospital and connected HCA health care providers have both declined and become more expensive.

“The largest fear of our community is that our hospital will become just an emergency room and most services will only be available at Mission Hospital in Asheville,” Copelof said. Mission Hospital is roughly an hour’s drive from Brevard’s city center.

Since 2019, HCA has closed outpatient rehabilitation, primary care and chemotherapy service clinics in Candler, Asheville, Brevard, Franklin, Marion and Spruce Pine, according to the lawsuit.

Additionally, 79 physicians “had left or planned to leave the system since HCA’s takeover” as of March 2021, and several nurses described their units as “inhumanely understaffed.”

“Other doctors describe new employment contracts with HCA in which the compensation equations remove quality-of-care metrics and focus almost entirely on the number of patients seen and amount billed,” the lawsuit states.

“A significant number of patients have lost their preferred family doctors either due to doctors leaving the system or from HCA’s clinic restructurings and closures.”

Copelof’s concerns with HCA’s alleged monopolization is not only rooted in the fear that the hospital system is decreasing services and quality of care but also that it’s wasting taxpayer money.

As a city that operates under a self-funded insurance plan for its employees — or one that partners with a health care provider and foots the bill for the employee medical costs — Brevard officials say they are also concerned that the lack of options has led the city to pay more than it should have for employee medical care. This, consequently, meant more expensive health insurance rates for city employees.

“These higher costs impact the city in what we pay, and it also impacts the individual through their copay requirements,” Copelof said.

“No one is happy paying more than they should for health care. When extra tax dollars must be spent on paying for the city’s health care plan, then those tax dollars are not available for other pressing community needs. This impacts our entire community.”

Because HCA holds claim to the majority of hospital services in Western North Carolina, McKeller said, the system is able to inflate prices because insurance companies, without any other provider options, know they “are going to have to deal with (HCA).”

In some cases, he said, the region’s residents are paying as much as 75%-100% more for a procedure than its average cost in North Carolina — percentages also cited in the lawsuit.

“By tying their services and regions together, defendants coercively rob health plans of the ability to choose which service and providers are in or out of network,” the complaint states.

“At the heart of the scheme is this immutable fact: Because of Mission’s monopoly power, health plans require in-network access to HCA’s (acute care) services in the Asheville Region in order to offer any minimally viable health plan in the relevant geographic markets.”

Brevard is not the first issue to file a lawsuit against HCA, which grossed more than $50 billion in 2020, according to the June 3 complaint. Another case filed in Buncombe County last summer by a group of individuals alleged the same monopolistic practices. But Brevard is the first local government in Western North Carolina to take this step.

Even so, HCA spokesperson Nancy Lindell said Brevard’s lawsuit was “beyond disappointing” specifically because the hospital system’s CEO Sam Hazen met with Copelof and other community members just a month before the complaint was filed.

The meeting before the lawsuit

In May 2021, Hazen traveled to Transylvania County to meet with Copelof and a handful of other individuals concerned with HCA’s practices in Transylvania County. Among those was Mark Weinstein, president and CEO of nonprofit Brevard Music Center.

“It was amazing that this guy, the head of this multibillion-dollar operation, would come and visit with us and talk to us,” Weinstein said.

“It was encouraging.”

Weinstein served on Transylvania Regional Hospital’s board of directors until he and fellow board member Parker Platt, owner of a Brevard architecture firm, resigned in September 2021.

Weinstein and Platt stepped down after realizing that board members had “no real ability to have any kind of positive impact” while HCA was in charge, the pair wrote in an opinion piece for the Transylvania Times.

Weinstein said he was excited when HCA bought the local hospital — expecting growth and exceptional health care to follow the sale. Since then, however, he said he’s been disappointed and discouraged.

That article in the local newspaper stated, “In almost all instances, from the essentials of staff and community relations to marketing to the mass exodus of our physicians, our inability to provide direction or influence decisions have been apparent.”

Weinstein and Platt sat in on the May meeting with Hazen to express their concerns that the hospital was being operated from the top down rather than with input from community members.

During that meeting, Weinstein said the idea to create a “community council,” a group intended to link citizen concerns directly to hospital officials, was established. The 10-person council, which includes three physicians, has met only once so far.

Regardless of how the lawsuit unfolds — if Brevard does win and a jury requires HCA to pay the city’s legal fees and “recover threefold the damages determined to have been sustained by (Brevard) as a result of Defendants’ misconduct” — the community council will still gather to discuss issues with hospital officials, Weinstein said.

Aside from the establishment of the council, the meeting appears to have been less productive than HCA assumed.

“We hoped that meeting would be the beginning of a thoughtful and ongoing dialogue about health care in the city of Brevard and the broader Transylvania County region,” HCA’s Lindell said last week.

“In fact, we provided information requested during the meeting and hosted our first Community Council meeting just this week. At no point did Mayor Copelof mention this apparently long-planned lawsuit, which is frustrating and undermines what we thought were sincere efforts to build open, constructive relationships and lines of communication.

“We will now turn our attention and efforts to vigorously defending the lawsuit while continuing to provide excellent health care to the citizens of Western North Carolina.”

Copelof said the lawsuit has been in the works for several months, and while she “appreciates” Hazen meeting with her in May, that conversation surrounded issues specific to Transylvania Regional Hospital that are not “directly addressed in the lawsuit.”

“The lawsuit deals specifically with predatory monopolistic actions by HCA that impact available health care options and raise the cost for self-funded health care plans in the region and specifically the self-funded plan that we offer to city of Brevard employees,” Copelof said.

“Both the community concerns and the larger systemic practices alleged in the lawsuit are, however, related in that they impact the overall availability of quality healthcare for our local community.

“As such, I will continue to work on those issues that can be resolved locally via our community council and the larger issues of monopolistic practices in the region will be addressed via the legal system.”

Other counties react

The lawsuit alleges HCA’s monopoly has impacted seven Western North Carolina counties. The hope, McKeller said, is that those counties will join the lawsuit as plaintiffs.

Whether Madison, Mitchell, Buncombe, Transylvania, McDowell and Macon counties will join remains up in the air.

“I will tell you, since the lawsuit was filed, I have received a lot of phone calls,” McKeller said.

Carolina Public Press reached out to each of the counties and the city of Asheville and asked whether they planned to join the lawsuit. Representatives of Macon, McDowell and Transylvania counties as well as Asheville declined to comment, citing attorney-client confidentiality, or said no official decisions have been made.

Buncombe County, however, reacted to the lawsuit in a roundabout way during its June 7 County Commission meeting when commissioners approved a letter of support for a new, alternatively owned hospital — citing the need for more acute care beds and residents becoming “increasingly vocal of their desire for improved access and patient choice,” a county press release stated.

“There’s at least two nonprofit hospitals who have submitted proposals or expressed their intent to submit proposals (for a new hospital),” Buncombe County Commission Chair Brownie Newman said, specifying that the two interested entities were AdventHealth and Novant Health.

“The letter that’s been drafted does not endorse any one organization over the other but does endorse that we would like to see additional alternatives for families who need health care in our areas as well as endorsing the idea that it would be desirable to have a nonprofit hospital serving the region.”

Commissioners unanimously approved the letter. No further plans about establishing a new hospital were discussed.

Aging sewer system under the town’s namesake lake will take $60 million to replace over several phases. But $368k from ARPA will help stop leaks for now.

by Shelby Harris March 25, 2022

The Lake Lure dam creates the Rutherford County town’s namesake lake, seen here on March 24, 2022. Unfortunately, the lake is leaking into the aging sewer system under the lake, creating water treatment problems and forcing a costly replacement of the system. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press

Lake Lure’s long and costly list of sewer repairs got a little shorter with the help of federal COVID recovery money.

Shortly after receiving its first installment of American Rescue Plan Act funds, the Lake Lure Town Council elected to use all of its roughly $368,000 to fix more than 60 manholes in and around the 700-acre lake in Rutherford County.

Fixing the manholes, openings that lead to underground sewer pipes, has been a top priority for the county for more than two years, Lake Lure Mayor Carol Pritchett said.

“These manholes are what connects each property on the sewer system to the sewer lines that run through the bottom of the lake to the wastewater treatment plant,” Pritchett explained.

“(The manholes) are aged, and they were leaking.”

Sewer system wear and tear

Lake Lure, which plunges to 100 feet at its deepest point, produces enough water pressure to prevent sewage from leaking into the lake through the underwater sewage system.

Rather, lake water has been leaking into the sewage lines.

“People say, ‘Oh my gosh, the sewer is leaking into the lake.’ Au contraire, it’s the lake leaking into the sewer,” Pritchett said, adding that the leak has no negative effect on the lake or town residents.

“That’s why I take my grandchildren to swim in the lake every day that they’re here for 12 hours a day.”

The public swimming and recreation area at Lake Lure on March 24, 2022. Because the lake is leaking into the aging sewer system underneath, not the other way around, the lake remains safe for recreation. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press

However, this type of leakage presents a different issue, said Brian Houston from Labella Associates, the engineering firm the town of Lake Lure hired to handle sewer repair plans.

When nonsewage runs through Lake Lure’s sewer lines and ultimately deposits at the town’s wastewater treatment facility, a different type of treatment must be performed on the water.

“Most wastewater treatment plants operate with a biological population of bacteria to treat the sewage, and that bacteria needs to be fed and sustained,” Houston said. “If you can’t feed them a decent concentration of waste, … then you can’t keep them sustained, and you can’t treat (the sewage.)

“Because of (the leaked water), the town is not able to operate their wastewater treatment plant like a wastewater treatment plant should be operated. Instead, they have to operate it more like a water treatment plant.”

Though the leaks have caused Lake Lure’s water treatment facility to operate less efficiently than ideal, the plant has continued water treatment even with massive amounts of lake water. Houston estimated 450,000 to 600,000 gallons of liquid has been flowing into the facility per day. That’s two times more than the average daily sewage for a town the size of Lake Lure, which census data shows has a population of roughly 1,300.

“Somewhere between 65% to 80% of the water coming to the treatment plant is lake water,” Houston said.

To prevent this leakage, the town worked with Labella to fill pipe cracks with a polyurea coating, similar to coating put on garage floors.

Manhole repairs began in late November, when the town lowered the lake’s water levels, and will soon be complete, with only three more to repair, Pritchett said.

Turtles sun themselves near a manhole on Lake Lure on March 24, 2022. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press

While the leaks are not currently a concern for public safety, Houston said if the system weren’t repaired, catastrophic and expensive damage could be around the corner.

“If you took this plant that has a permit … right at a million gallons per day and started putting, say, 10 million gallons per day into that plant, there’s no way we could do anything other than kind of sit back and watch everything just overflow the plant and go to the river,” he said.

“It’s a ticking time bomb.”

A century-old system

Both Houston and Pritchett attribute Lake Lure’s deteriorating sewer system to its age. Built in the 1920s before the lake was filled, the sewage system consists of massive underwater cast-iron pipes that deliver sewage from more than 600 homes and businesses to the wastewater plant, which sits east of the dam.

A sewer system like Lake Lure’s wouldn’t be installed today, Houston said, because having sewer pipes underwater makes it tremendously difficult to access them for repairs if a large-scale leak occurs and sewage enters the lake.

When the system was built, limited access to pipes wasn’t as grave a concern as it is today. The Clean Water Act, federal legislation passed in the early 1970s that enforced sewage treatment, postdated the installation of the town’s sewer system.

Water flows through the gates of the Lake Lure dam into the Broad River on March 24, 2022. Colby Rabon / Carolina Public Press

“Trying to get into the mind of a developer from 100 years ago, I would imagine they were thinking, ‘Well, we could just dump the sewage into the lake, but we’re making a real nice lake, and people don’t want floaters in their lake, so maybe we should run it downstream below the dam,’” Houston said.

“Once it went through the dam, it was dumped into the (Broad) River.”

Sparse access to the underwater pipes has meant few improvements to Lake Lure’s sewer system. Houston said the only repair he knew of was about 15 years ago, when the town repaired sewer joints, devices that connect pipes.

The sewer system isn’t the only part of Lake Lure that has been neglected.

In March 2018, Carolina Public Press reported the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and its predecessor agencies had warned Lake Lure officials for more than a decade that they were badly behind on inspections and maintenance for the dam. The town has since addressed these issues.

ARPA for sewer repairs

The solution for Lake Lure, Houston said, is installing a new sewer system, which is currently being designed by Labella and projected to cost more than $60 million.

“We have a long-term plan to replace the sewer system in six different phases, but it will probably take over 10 years to do for a variety of reasons — probably among the first, funding,” Pritchett said.

To pay for the six-phase sewer project, Lake Lure increased its customer sewer rates, took out a $12 million revolving loan and received a $500,000 state-supported grant.

The first phase, which Pritchett said the town hopes to begin in the next year, will consist of expanding the sewer system from the dam northeast to Sunset Cove and southwest to the intersection of U.S. Highway 64 and State Route 9.

“It is sort of a pay as you go,” Pritchett said, adding that the town will work to secure funding for the project’s upcoming phases while completing those already paid for.

But the six-phase project leading to a state-compliant sewer system could not begin until Lake Lure fixed the immediate issues — namely the damaged manholes, which Houston said should hold the town over until a new sewer system is built.

The manhole rehabilitation, which the town expects to cost a total of $610,000, is being paid for mostly with American Rescue Plan Act money. The rest will come out of the town’s fund balance, Pritchett said.

Had the county not received ARPA money, it would have had to look for funds elsewhere through grants or loans.

“It was just providential when the ARPA money came along. We weren’t expecting it — nobody was expecting it, of course,” Pritchett said.

“It just could not have been better timing.”

Author: Carolina Public Press

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