(The Center Square) – North Carolina’s largest mountain city is making progress toward improving water quality for the community in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Asheville, population nearly 100,000 in the Blue Ridge Mountains, remains under a boil water notice in the six week of recovery since the fourth deadliest hurricane from the Atlantic Basin hit the South. Rain and flooding destroyed a 36-inch bypass line at the North Fork reservoir that sources 80% of the city’s water. The reservoir has experienced extremely high turbidity levels due to damages from the storm.
Many local businesses remain closed as a result.
In-reservoir treatments made last week, and the installation of “curtains” in the reservoir to reduce turbidity, has improved water quality, city officials said this week.
“As of early this morning, turbidity had fallen below 19,” Clay Chandler, a spokesman for the city’s Water Resources Department, said at a Buncombe County briefing Monday. “That is very, very good progress.”
“Obviously, this isn’t working as quickly as everyone would like, but it does appear the second round of treatment was considerably more effective than the first round was,” he said. “You can probably attribute that to the curtains. You can probably attribute that to more favorable weather conditions on day of application. Whatever you can attribute it to, we’re happy about it.”
While water quality has improved, it’s “very, very likely” the city will conduct a third round of treatment next week, Chandler said.
In addition to in-reservoir treatments, the city confirmed it’s also pursuing a treatment project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It could be operational in the next four weeks.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the early stages of implementing an alternative treatment project that could possibly – and I want to stress possibly – be operational very late November or very early December,” Chandler said.
The project would use mobile treatment units about the size of shipping containers that would be staged near the reservoir. The project timeline is dependent on weather and the procurement of materials being collected by the Corps.
“We will pursue this project concurrently with the in-reservoir treatment process,” Chandler said, noting the project would also need federal and state approval before operating.
“It’s possible that the in-reservoir treatment process clears up the lake enough for us to start treating water on a very large scale before the Corps of Engineers’ system is even operational,” he said.
North Fork started reproducing water last week with the existing treatment process at a “reduced capacity,” Chandler said.
This gave water clarity coming out of taps. It’s running 10-15 million gallons into system daily, when it typically runs 20-25 million.
