Macon County planner Stacy Guffey would give anything to ensure nothing like the Peeks Creek disaster ever happens in his community again.

The Sept. 16, 2004, landslide, caused by heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan, sent a deluge of mud and debris barreling down Fishhawk Mountain that killed five people. Guffey, who had just started his new job, won’t soon forget the havoc wreaked by the forces of nature he witnessed that day.

“Anything that prevents the kind of devastation we saw at Peeks Creek, anything that lessens that, is worth it,” Guffey says.

Hope of preventing future disasters came in the form of the landslide hazard-mapping program, an initiative funded by the Hurricane Recovery Act of 2005 that aimed to pinpoint potential landslide hazard zones.

But now, the future of that program is in jeopardy. This year, the Senate’s budget included no money to continue the landslide hazard-mapping program. The House budget included the $390,000 to keep the program going, but whether any funding makes it into the final budget remains to be seen.

Sen. Joe Sam Queen, D-Waynesville, who supports the program, said he wasn’t sure why the money was left out.

“Things get dropped through the cracks sometimes,” he said. “It wasn’t on my to-do list to get done. I thought it was taken care of by others.”

Rick Wooten, director of the program and senior geologist with the North Carolina Geological Survey, said a loss of state funding would halve the size of the team working on the project. It “would be a pretty big blow,” he said.

The $390,000 Wooten requested would pay for three permanent positions and for operating costs. Each year, the state gives the project $185,000, but that’s only enough to cover three positions and zero operating costs.

Wooten’s been supplementing costs with money from the Hurricane Recovery Act, which the state established to help with recovery efforts following Hurricanes Frances and Ivan in 2004.

But Wooten received more bad news last week. The funding from the Hurricane Recovery Act ended prematurel at the end of June. Wooten and his group thought they had another year left of funding through the Act.

Now, “the situation is certainly more dire than we realized,” Wooten said.

The group has already created landslide hazard maps for Macon and Watauga counties. They’re currently working on Buncombe County and have their sights set on Jackson and Henderson counties next. They’d like to complete mapping all 19 WNC counties by 2014.

Guffey said the maps have proved to be a valuable resource for Macon County.

“It’s a huge help to us and property owners,” he says. “When somebody comes in to talk about development, we can show them where their property fits on the maps, and if it’s an area that’s prone to landslides.”

Guffey says the maps help property owners make better and informed decisions about where and how they build.

The maps have also equipped emergency services with information that will help them better handle a natural disaster.

“It’s opened our eyes to a lot of places that we hadn’t necessarily thought would cause problems,” says Warren Cabe, Macon’s director of Emergency Services. “We’re better educated on what to expect and how to deal with circumstances.”

Of the landslide hazard-mapping program, Cabe says, “It’s worthwhile, and we believe it was beneficial to Macon County. We regret the circumstances that brought it about, but we’ve been able to make some good out of a bad situation.”

It’s a critical time, Wooten says, for his group to continue mapping the rest of the WNC counties.

“During this time when we don’t have a lot of rainfall, that’s an excellent time when we can get maps together and ready for when the rain starts again,” he said. “It’s a window of opportunity.”

And from the group’s findings, there will certainly be more landslides to come in WNC — worse, even, than Hurricane Ivan and Hurricane Frances, which together triggered around 400 landslides.

In Watauga County, for example, the mapping team identified more than 2,000 landslides from a storm that occurred in the area in August 1940, Wooten said.

All in all, those involved say it’s a matter of public safety.

“It’s a genuine health and safety issue,” says Queen. “This isn’t pork. This is a genuine function of the government to keep citizens safe.”

In the end, being able to prevent destruction wreaked by natural disasters will save taxpayers money, says Guffey.

“Just think of all the money we have to spend cleaning up those things; the loss of life; the loss of property,” he said.

The continuation of the landslide hazard-mapping program is contingent upon state funding above and beyond the $185,000 now budgeted yearly.

“We could eventually get it done with half the people,” says Wooten, “but not without the operating costs.”

Wooten says the group really needs a six-person team of geologists to complete the project because each of the six has a unique set of skills.

“If we lose half the crew, it takes away skills that we would normally have,” he says. “The wheel needs all six spokes.”

Queen says funding for the program will be a priority in setting the final budget, but says he can’t guarantee it.

It’s been a calculated balancing act for the General Assembly this session. Legislators are working with a tight budget, and after following a mandate to raise state and teacher salaries, “there’s not much left,” says Queen. He acknowledges the program could get postponed for a while.

“We’ll be back down here in January again so it’s not the end of the world if it’s not in the short session budget, but we would like it to be,” he says.