Outpouring of assistance boosts post-hurricane recovery in western North Carolina

Note: Among the thousands of people affected by Hurricane Helene, two water community families in western North Carolina who have worked tirelessly through the storm and recovery efforts now need help themselves. Read about Chad and Brittany Eggers and the Craig Family on their GoFundMe pages and consider donating.

When torrential rains and remnants of Hurricane Helene battered western North Carolina in September, the City of Asheville was among the communities in the crosshairs. Over two days, more than a foot of pounding rain coursed down roads and carried away houses, fallen trees, torn apart bridges and waterlines. The unprecedented catastrophe was responsible for at least 89 deaths in the state.

More than two months later, the city’s devastated water system is well into major rebuilding, thanks to help from the North Carolina Water WARN (Water/Wastewater Agency Response Network), the North Carolina Rural Water Association, state and federal agencies, city staff, and many individual heroic acts of selflessness.

Thousands of impacted Asheville residents and businesses were thankful to be released from a 53-day boil water notice last week as local and volunteer crews labor to restore destroyed infrastructure, treat muddied waters, remove debris, and repair roads. Many city staff suffered flooding and damage to their own homes but continue to show up for work every day.

“Our water family has been fantastic,” said David Melton, the City of Asheville’s water resources director and emergency management incident commander. “We’ve had an unbelievable outpouring of help, including from about 50 different utilities, and there are folks still here helping us. Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region Four and the Federal Emergency Management Association have been embedded here almost from the beginning, and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been good partners throughout.”

Preparing for the unprecedented

“One thing that’s really helped with the public’s understanding and response to the water system situation is the real-time drone footage we’ve been able to share,” Melton said. “Once they saw that the pipes were literally gone, they were like, ‘Oh, OK, I understand. Some things you just can’t be prepared for.’”

On Sept. 23, several days before the storms swept through, the city implemented its emergency management process to monitor weather forecasts, pull resources together and determine activation levels and strategies. Tactical meetings and public briefings have continued in the weeks since.

Of the community’s three water treatment plants, two are operational. One is being assessed for damage and remains largely inaccessible due to storm debris and damaged roads. Water from the main water reservoir has literally been upended and whipped into elevated levels of turbidity that must be filtered and treated until it can be distributed.

Will Jernigan, chief operations officer with water efficiency consultant Cavanaugh and a resident of Asheville, has been supporting local field and office staff in efforts to get the water system back online. That includes locating leaks in the system, identifying damaged areas, and connecting with outside resources like utilities from Tennessee and Georgia.

Data helpful for prioritizing repairs

Fortunately, Asheville’s water department had been working with Cavanaugh prior to the storms to develop district metered areas to measure flow and pressure for leak detection. Using data from that equipment deployed in the system, Jernigan has been able to help field operations prioritize damage repair.

“After the hurricane, everything went to zero for about three weeks before raw water was introduced back into the pipes,” he said. “It’s a very complex thing to completely empty and recharge a water system from scratch, and the City has been able to use its Water Loss program to identify which parts of the system were getting water first and which were more damaged.”  

To illustrate the damage caused to the water system, Jernigan said that a bypass water main built from one of the treatment plants after a flood 20 years ago was buried 25 feet deep to withstand another flood event – but it and the other two main lines were all washed away.

“There is a river system along the north corridor from the plant into the urban Asheville area, and the flood carved a new center line for the river and moved it over 200 feet. The river is literally in a different location now,” he said.

Jernigan said his family was fortunate not to have their home damaged, but “we know a lot of folks whose homes washed away or totally flooded and have to be completely rebuilt. A number of people in the water department had to find other places for their families to go sleep at night while they still went to work. It was remarkable. I’ve never been more proud of our Asheville Water Department family.”