One Columbia-area riverwalk is still closed after Hurricane Helene. What’s the holdup?
More than two months after Hurricane Helene ripped through the southeast, a fence still blocks off the West Columbia Riverwalk as it remains closed with little word on when it could reopen to the public.
The half-mile-long portion of the trail that begins near the West Columbia Amphitheater and connects to the neighboring Cayce portion of the riverwalk has been closed since late September when Helene flooded the trail and caused extensive damage to the pathway. Meanwhile, Cayce’s riverwalk fully reopened last month, leading some to question why West Columbia’s section is still closed.
The holdup in reopening the walkway stems, in part, from the city of West Columbia awaiting necessary disaster funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to complete the project. City officials are set to meet with FEMA and S.C. Emergency Management later this month, a spokesperson for the city confirmed. Until then, officials say they will not have an estimated timeline for when the trail will reopen or how much the damages will cost.
“We’re waiting on landscape architects’ and engineers’ estimations and a FEMA site assessment,” city spokesperson Anna Huffman said.
Why wait on the funds?
After Hurricane Helene clobbered South Carolina, residents across the Midlands began to assess the damage in the early morning hours of Sept. 27. Public works trucks and utility line workers cleared the roads of fallen trees and downed power lines. Thousands across the state went days before power was restored.
Three days later, as upriver water from the Upstate and western North Carolina flowed down the Congaree River after historic amounts of rainfall, the river crested at 30.5 feet, fully immersing the West Columbia and Cayce riverwalks in water.
It took about a week from when the massive storm battered many parts of South Carolina for Lexington County to receive a disaster declaration from FEMA allowing West Columbia to submit a formal request for funds. The city submitted paperwork to FEMA on Oct. 14, Huffman confirmed.
But the city has only begun the process with FEMA, which requires site assessments and planning meetings before funding is given. It’s one of two key issues leading to the lengthy delay in opening. The other issue has been the extent of the damage caused to the trail by the storm. When flood waters receded, city officials found themselves stuck with a hefty task.
“Lots of times when you have storms come through, we go through and clean everything off and make the minor repairs, but when you have extensive damage from natural disasters you have to go through a different process,” West Columbia Mayor Tem Miles said.
So far, debris removal of things like fallen tree limbs is done and the city has reopened the parking lot, amphitheater and a very small portion of the trail. The rest is on hold until the city meets with FEMA.
The city leaned on FEMA’s disaster funds previously following the the historic flooding in 2015, which caused an estimated $2.2 billion in damages across the state.
What did Cayce do differently?
The closure has thus far lasted a month longer than that of the Cayce riverwalk’s, which fully reopened Nov. 7. City park staff and hired contract workers cleared out fallen trees and dug the trail out from under a few feet of mud.
“[The water] stayed up for about a week,” Parks Department Manager James Denny told The State in October. “During that time, it deposited anywhere from 6 inches to a foot of soft silt and debris onto the parkway. Trees and stuff came down across the pathway.”
The damages on the Cayce side were significant and comparable to the historic flooding of 2015, Cayce spokesperson Ashley Hunter said. After Helene, Cayce had to replace one of its boardwalks, among the fixes that contributed to the city paying at least $100,000 to independent contractors for repairs related to the storm, Hunter said.
But officials from both West Columbia and Cayce have been quick to point out differences that allowed Cayce to move more efficiently on reopening the trail. West Columbia’s portion had more extensive structural damage, Miles said. And Cayce repaired its issues with its own money and has applied for reimbursement from FEMA, according to Hunter.
“It’s such an important part of our recreation and who we are as a city,” Hunter said. “Getting that reopened was something we knew we had to really focus on and do.”
Cayce’s quick cleanup is a bit of an anomaly. It’s more common for the cleanup process following a storm or flood to be a lengthy one. Following damages caused by the flooding in 2015, the Cayce Riverwalk didn’t fully reopen until 2018, and West Columbia’s section didn’t fully reopen until the previous year, according to previous reporting done by The State. Following other major hurricanes, a 2017 study found recovery efforts typically take about three months to begin in earnest and can take upwards of a year to complete.
“Even though it has been two months since the hurricane hit, that’s not that unusual if you’re thinking about these major projects that are rebuilding and so forth,” FEMA spokesperson Gerard Hammink said.
West Columbia officials are set to meet with FEMA before the end of December to get a clearer idea of the timeline for reopening.
This story was originally published December 7, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
