ELIZABETHTOWN — The problems with the Elizabethtown Cemetery have a new price tag, more than doubling the initial $2.8 million project to $5.8 million with a different projection than initially anticipated.
“We have made progress in response to FEMA’s requests from the previous meetings, and we have revised our project,” said Eddie Madden, the town manager. “The cost estimates were submitted electronically and reviewed.
“The revised estimate is $5.8 million. It’s being submitted to the CRC in Texas. It is anticipated that we will get a response from them in three months, or maybe four.”
CRC refers to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Community Recovery Center.
This new project means that the old deadline of one year does not apply; this is a separate project due to changes requested by FEMA.
The initial plan, involving relocation to a site off the N.C. 87 bypass, has been scrapped.
“It’s complicated,” Madden said. “We were submitting our project as an alternative project. Alternative projects have a one-year deadline.”
Large projects, such as this, do not have that same time constraint.
“What we have been told is that if it meets their requirements that FEMA has an obligation to fund the project,” Madden said.
Elizabethtown has to wait on moving forward until a resolution is made with FEMA, but that is not stopping progress by any means.
“We are still meeting with them every two weeks,” Madden said. “We have tentatively scheduled a meeting Wednesday in the hopes that we get a response back before.”
That response is from the CRC, and Madden doesn’t feel like they are rushing the process.
“They are telling us that this is such a complicated project that it could take 60 to 120 days before we get a response,” he said. “Essentially we started over with them last month.”
The project that has been written out is a stabilization project, with the plans to put in pilings, up to 50 feet, to hold the side of the cemetery up. This will allow the current graves to stay in place, with some damage control.
“This would be an extensive retaining wall method,” Madden said. “In addition to that we are pursuing funding from the state for land acquisition and a new cemetery.”
If that happens, FEMA would not be involved in funding relocation.
“Families would not be required to relocate, but under the current plan, assuming acquisition of the new property, the family would be given the opportunity to relocate,” he said.
Madden said that their engineers are saying that after this retaining wall is put in place there should be no need for anyone to feel that they should be pressured to move.
One thing that the plan does is limit the town’s footprint at the site. There would not be area for future growth or expansion.
“That’s what is compelling us to develop a new site,” Madden said.
The proposed location for the second cemetery is down off the N.C. 87 bypass.
The street separating the northern and southern sections of the cemetery are continually seeing problems.
More than 200 graves are estimated to have been affected by ground movement following historic flooding caused by Hurricane Florence.