Attorney General Jeff Jackson and Hillsborough Mayor Mark Bell look out at the Eno River after it was flooded with wastewater. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)
Attorney General Jeff Jackson traveled to Hillsborough on Thursday to visit a pumping station that flooded during Tropical Storm Chantal, spilling millions of gallons of wastewater into area rivers.
Jackson made the visit to the Hillsborough River Pumping Station to bring awareness to flood resilience funding that was frozen by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), of which roughly $5.1 million would have gone toward the construction of a new pumping facility on a hill outside of the floodplain. Flooding from Tropical Storm Chantal on July 6 rendered the existing pumping station inoperable, however, leading to the sewage spill.
“We’re talking about millions of gallons of untreated sewage being swept into the Eno River, which dumps into Falls River, which is the the river that I live next to. It’s the one that my kids get their drinking water from,” Jackson told reporters. “This is as clear an example as possible of why these funds were well-allocated and deserved to go where they were pledged to go.”…