Municipal water systems make progress after storm. Work not over.

After weeks of drinking out of bottles and carefully disinfecting water for cleaning, residents and businesses in parts of the North Carolina mountains have regained some sense of normalcy as boil water notices are lifted across much of the region. As for municipal water resources departments, the work is far from over.

The flooding caused by Tropical Storm Helene destroyed water lines and damaged treatment facilities for drinking water and wastewater across much of the 27-county disaster area. The disruption to municipal waterworks in Asheville in Buncombe County and Spruce Pine in Mitchell County were particularly notable because of the extensive repairs required at their respective facilities.

Asheville lifted its boil water notice on Monday following seven weeks without potable water, signifying a major – but not quite final – step in returning its treatment and distribution systems to normal operations. Surrounding towns, some of whom source their water from Asheville, soon followed.

Thanks in part to help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, those municipalities finished repairs at a quickened pace. The job goes beyond that, however. Officials are not only restoring their facilities to the way they were before the storm, but strengthening them in a way that could avoid another public health crisis in the event of future natural disasters.

How Asheville got its potable water back

The North Fork Water Treatment Plant is the largest of Asheville’s three treatment plants and supplies about 80 percent of the city’s water, although it’s actually located to the east in the Town of Black Mountain.

The city’s other two plants are the Mills River plant in Henderson County, which was relatively untouched by the floodwaters, and DeBruhl plant in Swannanoa, which hasn’t been operational since the storm.

Not only did the excess rainfall from Helene damage the distribution system that directs water out of the North Fork plant and into thousands of homes and businesses, but it also churned the reservoir so that sediment, mud and other pollutants became suspended in the water.

That presented a separate problem, because officials feared that the increased turbidity in North Fork Reservoir could break the filtration machinery in the plant if they tried to push the normal amount of water through the system, which is around 25 million gallons per day.

On Oct. 11, the city decided to pressurize the distribution system by pumping water directly from the reservoir and bypassing the treatment plant altogether. That raw water was treated with high amounts of chlorine to achieve as much disinfection as possible. The decision helped restore tap water to nearly all of Asheville by mid-October, but the boil water notice stuck because of the potential for contaminated water remaining in the distribution system.

Asheville city officials originally said they would be able to lift the notice by early December. That timeline hinged on the idea that the turbidity in the North Fork Reservoir needed to be brought down to more manageable levels before they could push enough treated water into the distribution system for it to be declared safe for consumption. The benchmark, city officials had said in daily media briefings, was between 1.5 and 2.0 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTUs).

Asheville tried out several solutions over the past month aimed at getting that number down to the goal level. Those included multiple chemical treatments meant to increase coagulation of suspended particles, the installation of curtains that split the reservoir into more easily treatable sections and the initiation of a USACE project to build a portable system that can reduce the turbidity of the water before it reaches the plant.

The levels at the reservoir continued to drop, albeit very slowly, and hovered in the mid to high teens throughout November. That’s why Friday’s announcement that Asheville could soon lift its boil water notice came as such a surprise. Water Resources Department spokesperson Clay Chandler said the turbidity in the reservoir that morning measured 15.5 NTUs.

However, North Fork’s capacity to push treated water into the system had risen to just over 20 million gallons per day, and Chandler said that was enough to meet demand without mixing in raw water. Water Resources took samples of the water in the distribution system and sent them to a third party lab to ensure that chemical, bacterial and mineral contaminants were under maximum levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Those samples came back with encouraging results, and on Monday the city lifted its boil water notice.

Surrounding municipal systems slowly restore water

Parts of the nearby towns of Woodfin and Black Mountain receive some of their water from Asheville, and they lifted their own boil notices on Monday as well. Spruce Pine, which sources its water independent of Asheville, lifted its notice Wednesday afternoon.

Woodfin has its own reservoir and water treatment plant which faced relatively few issues after the storm, but it took several weeks to repair water lines across the town of 8,000 people. Woodfin residents west of the French Broad River receive their water exclusively from the North Fork Reservoir and had their water restored on a timeline that mirrored Asheville residents. Because Asheville water intersected the Woodfin distribution system at several points, the entire town remained under a boil notice until this week.

The Town of Black Mountain purchases about 30% of its water from Asheville, and also had to wait on Asheville until it could lift its boil notice. The rest of Black Mountain’s water is sourced from 12 public supply wells which feed into a distribution system that required extensive repairs in the weeks following the storm. As of Monday, Black Mountain’s system has returned to normal operations.

Further away in rural Mitchell County, the Town of Spruce Pine is still working toward recovery after having both its drinking water and wastewater treatment plants catastrophically damaged by the storm. While Asheville and its surrounding towns were relatively lucky in having minimal disruption to their wastewater services, Spruce Pine mayor Phillip Hise told CPP on Oct. 5 that the town’s sewer system was unsalvageable.

Town Manager Darlene Butler told CPP on Tuesday that part of the town is being served by a portable wastewater treatment system provided by a private contractor, while wastewater from other areas is being collected from holding tanks and hauled to alternate treatment facilities. Repairs are being made to the town’s typical treatment plant in the meantime, but there is no set timetable for the completion of those repairs at the municipal facility.

Spruce Pine is providing water service to residents via the reservoir at Beaver Creek dam and two wells, while USACE has put a plan in motion to make repairs to the water intake on the North Toe River that bisects the town. The town is supplying water without drawing from the North Toe, which is typically its secondary source.

The town’s boil water notice was lifted this week after samples sent to an independent lab showed that all potential contaminants regulated by the EPA were under maximum levels.

Job’s not finished for municipal utilities

Although a vast majority of Western North Carolina residents on municipal water have had their service restored, with several boil advisories lifted this week, lots of work remains to be done by local governments to return operations to the way they were prior to Helene.

A major takeaway for many municipalities is the need to prioritize secondary water sources and treatment options that can provide backup capacity in the event of a disaster.

The DeBruhl plant in Asheville, for example, remains offline. The city is working with USACE to remove debris in the area and rebuild access roads just so they can start to assess damage and begin repairs.

Although the North Fork plant is once again operating at close to normal capacity, USACE is going ahead with their planned pre-treatment system meant to reduce turbidity of raw water before it reaches the plant. USACE Wilmington District spokesperson David Connolly told CPP that materials for that project began arriving last week and that construction is scheduled to be complete by Dec. 7.

Chandler explained in Tuesday’s media briefing that the project will add an extra layer of protection that can only benefit Asheville’s water system.

“The most important thing that system does is create redundancy for our municipal water supplies,” he said. 

“Everybody knows North Fork is really the workhorse of our water system, and weather is unpredictable. If we were to have another storm one week from now, three months from now, one year from now, whatever it is, we want to make sure that system is in place because what it allows us to do is filter out the sediment in a way that we can make sure that North Fork is always operational.”

Chandler added that the city plans to create an after-action plan for the municipal water system, and one of the goals of that plan will be to reduce dependency on the North Fork plant and increase capacity at the Mills River plant.

In Spruce Pine, USACE is working to similarly bolster the town’s water system through its work on the North Toe intake line, although that contract has not been awarded yet. Connolly told CPP he expects USACE to be awarded the contract this week, then work can start to be done on the project.

Safety tips as boil advisories are lifted

Asheville’s Water Resources Department recommended that residents on the municipal water system should flush their pipes before consuming tap water as normal.

To do this, people should run their cold water faucets for 5 minutes. The city also recommended that any equipment with water line connections such as ice machines, water filters and dishwashers should be flushed, cleaned and sanitized according to the manufacturer’s instructions. People with ice machines should make three batches discard each before consuming the ice.

Buildings built before 1988 might contain lead, a toxic metal, in their internal plumbing, which could leach into water that has sat undisturbed in pipes for multiple hours. The storm did not affect the presence of lead in residential tap water, but people living in homes built before 1988 are still advised to run their tap for 30 seconds to 2 minutes or until it runs cold before consumption.

Last week, county health officials announced at a Buncombe County media briefing that four county elementary schools, two city elementary schools and one participating private school had tested positive for lead in their water. Nobody had ingested that water because staff and students had not been consuming water from drinking fountains or faucets since the storm.

Both school systems notified parents and have implemented mitigation measures which include installing new filters and undergoing a flushing plan to remove any detectable levels of lead from the water.

Asheville is offering free lead and copper testing for residential homes, but because of high demand they are prioritizing families with young children or any pregnant or breastfeeding members of the household. To request a testing kit, or for more information on protecting against lead exposure, contact Water Resources at 828-259-5962 or email leadprevention@ashevillenc.gov.

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