North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson visited Hillsborough’s river pumping station today to highlight the importance of restoring federal funding that had been earmarked to protect the state’s infrastructure, including water and sewer services.

North Carolina and 19 other states sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency earlier this month over its decision to cancel the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program, which provided funding for disaster preparation projects. In April, the agency abruptly canceled grants awarded over several years that had not yet been paid out, including two grants awarded to the Town of Hillsborough in August 2023 for floodway mitigation and resiliency.

During the visit to Hillsborough’s wastewater treatment plant, Mayor Mark Bell and Utilities Director Marie Strandwitz showed the attorney general the River Pumping Station that floodwaters made inoperable during Tropical Storm Chantal earlier this month. Flooding from the heavy rainfall caused several sanitary sewer overflows that discharged an estimated more than 7 million gallons of sewage in Hillsborough, including from the pumping station.

“It was a really illustrative tour,” Jackson said. “I had heard about what happened here. When you see it up close, you really get a sense of how high the water rose and how dramatic the impact was.”

The River Pumping Station transports about 75% of the sewage of Hillsborough customers to the Wastewater Treatment Plant for processing and return to the environment. The station was to be replaced and relocated to higher ground out of the Eno River’s 500-year floodplain with the federal funding. Due to the damage from the storm, the town is using three bypass pumps now to prevent sewage spills while new pumps, motors, and electrical and control systems are purchased and installed in the station.

“This is as clear an example as possible of why these funds were well allocated and deserve to go where they were supposed to go. We’re here because we are suing FEMA for $200 million that they owe North Carolina,” Jackson said about his office’s visit to Hillsborough. “They pledged those funds to us. Those funds were authorized by Congress. Those funds were not FEMA’s to cancel.”

The mayor and utilities director also spoke to the attorney general about a water booster pumping station that Hillsborough planned to build off Old N.C. 86 with federal funding from the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program. The project would improve the interconnection between the town’s water supply and the Orange Water and Sewer Authority’s supply in southern Orange County.

The improved connection would meet the water demands of either utility during a drought or an emergency. It would benefit the entire town and specifically help serve the UNC Hospitals Hillsborough Campus and Orange County/Hillsborough Economic Development District in an emergency due to the planned location near receiving pipes in southern Hillsborough.

“To avoid costly reactive disaster spending like we are doing at this moment, we must proactively invest in our critical infrastructure with only usage fees, system development fees and grants, such as the BRIC program,” the mayor said. “Utilities, such as ours, are not allowed to use tax revenue to pay for water and sewer expenses.”

Bell thanked the attorney general for representing Hillsborough and dozens of other North Carolina towns and counties impacted by the sudden cancellation of the grant funding, which came without warning.

“We are scrambling to identify alternative funding sources to stay on track with these two critical projects, but the easiest, fastest and most common-sense thing to do is to restore the BRIC grants that were duly authorized by Congress,” he said.

The estimated costs for the projects are more than $8.2 million for the River Pumping Station and $1.43 million for the water booster station. The federal government canceled over $5.1 million in funds for the wastewater project and $831,418 for the drinking water project.

The lawsuit filed by the 20 states alleges the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s decision violates the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts and asks for a preliminary injunction to prevent the agency from spending funds from the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program in other ways. It also requests a permanent injunction to restore the program and the funds promised to the states.

More Information

• See the town’s project pages on the River Pumping Station and the Starfield Booster Pumping Station.
• From the attorney general’s office, see the news release on the lawsuit and the news release on the visit to Hillsborough.