Helene washed out sewer pipes, overflowed septic systems, and washed water treatment plants into rivers all over. Much of this infrastructure was old, and extreme rainfall caused by climate change poses new risks. A new tranche of funding from the Environmental Protection Agency could help communities fix this expensive damage – including, for the first time, septic systems.
This $337 million in new funding, announced Wednesday, is being paid to the state to repair Western North Carolina water and sewer systems damaged by Helene – and help communities prepare for future disasters.
The newly established Decentralized Clean Water Safe Revolving Fund also awarded North Carolina over $22 million to improve the resilience of septic systems and assess and connect homes served by septic systems to centralized wastewater systems…